Tara VanDerveer had a vision. Years later, Stanford again enjoys the view from the top.

“I have a vision of where you’re going to go,” Azzi recalls VanDerveer saying often, “and I’m not going to stop until you get there.”

This persistence of vision is not an optical illusion. It is VanDerveer’s superpower, the stamina to focus on what matters longer than anyone, an unceasing pursuit of better that has carried her through both jaw-dropping consistent excellence and agonizing defeats on the grandest stages.

On Sunday, 29 years after she last led the Cardinal to an NCAA women’s basketball national championship, VanDerveer stood atop the sport again. She won her first title with an Azzi-led squad in 1990 and celebrated a second two years later. Then, despite maintaining a championship-caliber level for three decades, VanDerveer and Stanford kept having their most glorious visions distorted.

The game taunted them. After the 1992 title, the program went to the Final Four 10 times without cutting down the nets. The Cardinal was such a machine that it even made it to the national semifinal in 1996, the year VanDerveer was away coaching the U.S. women’s national team. But it kept falling short.

Include six defeats in the Elite Eight, and the Cardinal made 16 deep tournament runs in those 29 years. It stayed at the sport’s cutting edge, only to feel the blade rather than use it. VanDerveer’s teams lost twice in the title game, to a 36-2 Tennessee squad in 2008 (the late Pat Summitt’s final championship) and to a 39-0 Connecticut juggernaut in 2010. It lost two semifinal games by a single point, to Old Dominion in 1997 and to Texas A&M in 2011. From 2008 to 2014, VanDerveer led Stanford to the Final Four six times in seven tournaments, but still, she was denied title No. 3.

Finally, the torture of almost has ended.

When Arizona guard Aari McDonald’s fadeaway heave bounced off the back of the rim Sunday, Stanford could celebrate this impossibly difficult title. The Cardinal held off its Pac-12 rival, 54-53, just as it had outlasted South Carolina by one point in the semifinal. After the heartbreak of the past 29 years, Stanford can be allowed the good fortune of a nail-gnawing pair of victories.

But while some of the games over the years have been painful, VanDerveer wasn’t a tortured coach. She didn’t feel incomplete, just motivated. Her vision, of an individual player or an entire team, doesn’t necessarily include a trophy. And her relentlessness has nothing to do with enhancing her legacy.

“This isn’t why I coach,” VanDerveer, 67, said Sunday night during a postgame video conference in San Antonio. “I wanted to be a teacher.”

Even in her moment, VanDerveer chose to review the film to teach a greater lesson.

“I really told our team before the game that, whether we won this game or we didn’t win this game, it doesn’t change you fundamentally as a person,” she said. “I had some just fantastic teams — Kate Starbird’s team in ’97 — where we lost in the semifinals. It’s heartbreaking to go through that. I know that these women are kind of on the shoulders of those women.

“Former players would be so proud to be part of this team because of the resilience they’ve shown, because of the sisterhood that they represent. I’m thrilled for this team but also for all the women out there that played at Stanford.”

Of course VanDerveer would spread the love. That’s who she is. And this season has been too difficult for too many for the coach to make the accomplishment about her legacy. But it is fitting that, in the hardest of years, we’ve had reason to pause often and toast VanDerveer. In December, she won her 1,099th game and passed Summitt as the winningest coach in women’s college basketball history.

Now, with her 1,125th win, she’s a three-time national champion. But VanDerveer will remember this season as one of perseverance. She marvels at how her team handled playing through a pandemic and being displaced for most of the season because of local coronavirus restrictions. She admitted entertaining thoughts of shutting the season down, at least for a while, out of concerns about the players’ physical and mental health. She struggled with every facet of this season. She didn’t need this reward, but she is grateful to have it.

“This is the time we live in,” VanDerveer said. “Sometimes you just have to stick with things. For me as a coach, you want to win a national championship. We have had shots at it. I’ve had heartbreak with teams that had great shots of winning it. But this team won, and I’m so proud of them for what we might call the covid championship. It might have an asterisk, but it was tougher being down here.”

There is no asterisk necessary, unless it is intended to detail what an emotional, worthwhile ride the past three weeks have been. From difficult conversations about sexism and inequality to the appreciation of the tournament’s gripping drama, the whole experience was good for women’s basketball.

We should emerge from it with a deeper understanding of the game’s virtue and the importance of celebrating it. We should emerge from it thinking about all that VanDerveer has given to the game and see the benefits of belief and commitment.

“This program is what it is because of Tara,” said Haley Jones, the tournament’s most outstanding player. “The legacy she’s created … it’s just a blessing to be here right now. So many great players have passed through this program. They have all come for the same reason that we have: to be coached by the greatest to develop you not only as a player but just as a person, as a young woman. So I think this is just an honor to be able to do this for her and with her.”

For decades, Stanford players have been saying the same.

“She’s been a huge influence on me,” said Azzi, who coached at San Francisco before becoming the school’s associate vice president of development. “She’s so intellectual, so detail-oriented about the game. She’s just wired to coach and drill down to the most specific aspects. You learn something whenever you’re around her.”

The lesson Sunday was one of grace. After a 29-year wait, VanDerveer didn’t exhale. She definitely didn’t boast. She opted to put a long journey in perspective.

Her vision remains, strong as ever.