After claiming 42 NCAA championships in 15 years, Stanford may be on the verge of setting a national record for titles this year
by Keith Peters
It was a nice spring afternoon in April 1992 when Ted Leland walked into Burnham Pavilion, surveyed the competition unfolding before him and wondered aloud how the Stanford men's gymnastics team was faring in its quest for an NCAA championship.
That doesn't seem very unusual, except for the fact that Leland was watching a volleyball game at the time. The gymnastics team was hundreds of miles away in Lincoln, Neb., at the NCAA championships. Unable to be in both places, Leland was watching the men's volleyball team prepare for its own bid for an NCAA title.
While the volleyball team fell short of its goal in the NCAA championship game that season, a victory by the men's gymnastics team brought Stanford's total of NCAA team titles in 1991-92 to five, tying UCLA for the most ever by any school in a single academic year.
"I was kind of flabbergasted," said Leland, who was in his first year as Stanford's athletic director. "Plus, it seems to me we won four (NCAA) titles on four straight weekends. It was just unbelievable."
After winning five that year, Cardinal teams captured four more in 1992-93 and four again in 1993-94. In all, since 1980, Stanford teams have won 42 NCAA championships. The only team that comes close to that accomplishment is UCLA which has 30 in that period.
"And we're in good position to win even more this year," Leland said. Stanford, in fact, is ahead of the pace it set in 1991-92, thanks to championships won by the women's volleyball team (its second) and the men's water polo squad (its ninth). The real push begins Thursday when the nationally No. 1-ranked Cardinal women's swim team goes after its fourth straight NCAA crown in Austin, Texas.
A week later, the No. 2-ranked men's swim team also will seek its fourth straight title when it challenges No. 1 Michigan in Indianapolis. The weekend of April 1-2 could find the No. 5-ranked women's basketball team competing in the NCAA Final Four in Minneapolis, Minn., with the men's gymnastics squad quite possibly seeking its third national crown in five years on April 21 in Columbus, Ohio.
The possibilities don't end there. A young and talented men's volleyball team could challenge for NCAA honors May 6 in Springfield, Mass., with the women's tennis team doing the same May 12-20 in Malibu. The top-ranked and undefeated men's net squad will be among the favorites to capture its 13th national crown beginning May 13 in Athens, Ga.
And, don't forget about the men's golf team, which has returned every starter off last year's NCAA squad and has added the finest junior golfer in history in Tiger Woods.
It's no wonder, then, why a framed needlepoint--courtesy of his daughter--hangs behind Leland's desk and appropriately proclaims: "Home of Champions." The statistics speak for themselves: 65 collegiate team crowns (NCAA and others) and 269 NCAA individual titles in school history.
Leland, who has worked in various capacities at Dartmouth, Northwestern, Houston and Pacific, said the fundamental issues an athletic director deals with are basically the same when it comes to the desire to win.
"Those things are relatively universal," he said. "I thought our athletes in the Ivy League wanted to win as badly as anyone else. Once that's said, it's different here because of the quality of athletes we have, and the willingness of those athletes to prioritize sport in their lives.
"When I was in the Ivy League, we had a philosophy--a kind of feeling where parents asked if it's good for the students to be winning so much. Here, it's 'Yeah, we've won 14 titles. Let's win 15. Nobody would even think of slowing down. One of my friends has always said that nobody jogs at Stanford, everybody wants to run a marathon."
But why the prevailing attitude? What makes Stanford different when it comes to success at the NCAA level?
It starts with the school and its academic reputation. "Students who want to be good students and are great athletes, well, we're right at the top of their list," Leland said. "We don't have to pick up the phone. That's a significant difference."
"It boils down to, you're offering one of the best educations in the country," said Dante Dettamanti, who got the NCAA championship ball rolling this season by guiding the Stanford water polo team to its eighth collegiate title in November. "It's the best combination of academics and athletics in the country. This is a perfect combination."
Richard Quick, who has won nine of the past 11 NCAA women's swim crowns (five at Texas from 1984-88), says former All-America Summer Sanders was sold on Stanford before he even began recruiting her. The mother of current star Jenny Thompson was sold so much on Stanford that she would call Quick and tell him how to recruit her daughter.
The winning formula continues with the coaching staff. "Because of the quality of life in the area and the reputation of the institution, we don't have a lot of coaching turnover," Leland explained. "It's the ones who have been here a while who are our most successful."
Dick Gould is in his 29th season at Stanford. During that time, his men's tennis teams have won 12 NCAA titles. No coach in college history has won more.
Dettamanti just finished his 18th year at Stanford. His water polo teams have won seven NCAA titles.
In his 16th season on the Farm, women's tennis coach Frank Brennan has guided his teams to eight national collegiate crowns--including an unprecedented six straight from 1986-91. Skip Kenney, in his 16th year as men's swim coach, is seeking his seventh NCAA title.
Mark Marquess, another veteran, is in his 19th year as Stanford's baseball coach. He captured back-to-back College World Series titles in 1987 and '88. Sadao Hamada is in his 23rd season as the men's gymnastics coach. He, like Marquess, is seeking his third NCAA title this season.
"We have a pretty solid staff here," said women's volleyball coach Don Shaw. "I've learned a lot by just going by and watching other practices. What a great resource. Where else are you going to find better people in their business than here?"
Kenney and Quick, for example, are head coaches for the 1996 U.S. Olympic swim teams.
Another factor in Stanford's NCAA success, according to Leland, is the NCAA itself. "The NCAA regulations, regarding initial eligibility--what I would call the Presidents' Revolt in NCAA athletics--is nothing but beneficial to us," Leland said. "With the (college) presidents around the country demanding more of a student model, well, that's been our model all along.
"So, higher initial eligibility standards haven't affected us, but in some cases have prevented our opponents from recruiting who they used to recruit."
Leland pointed to three other administrative-type factors that allow Cardinal teams to go about the business of winning national titles.
"Internally, we've been able to improve our facilities, balance our budgets and work out our ideas with the admissions office--eliminating some of the problems we had a few years ago that took the coaches away from their sport and had them worrying about something else."
Every year, Leland said, there was a controversy involving the athletic department or difficulties with admitting athletes.
"There was controversy about the budgets, and there was controversy about whether we were going to drop this sport or that sport. One thing we've been able to do is eliminate all that."
And then there's motivation of winning an NCAA title. "That's our goal every year," said Shaw, who captured his first women's national crown in 1992 and his second in this past December. "You want to win one. You want to be part of the gang.
"I don't think any of the coaches make you feel that way, but if you're one of the coaches here who haven't won one, you definitely feel like you want to belong. That's the tough thing about being here (at Stanford)."
Leland is well aware of the situation. That's why he laughs every time he's asked to speak at a service club and tell the lunch folks how he motivates his athletes.
"Our problem is not motivation around here to be successful," he said. "Our problem is helping them reach their potential and deal with something that might be short of a national championship. We probably have more difficulties that way. I don't have to walk around this (athletic department) building and get these guys (coaches) excited about trying to achieve high standards."
Leland remembers talking with cross-country coach Vin Lananna after the Cardinal men's and women's teams competed together in the NCAA meet for the first in school history.
"I asked him after the cross-country season, what he thought his greatest accomplishment was. He thought it was the fact his athletes were happy to get sixth (men) and seventh (women). And I asked him, 'what do you mean?'"
And he said, 'Well, you know, most schools would be happier than heck if you got sixth place in the nation. But at Stanford, people want to know why. It's like, well, that's too bad.'"
"I think that's something all our coaches have to deal with--that we have such high ambitions and ambitious athletes."
And that brings us to . . . . money. Leland has a yearly operating budget of $26 million, of which $6 is used for financial aid. That allows most of the 33 intercollegiate varsity teams to attract the finest athletes, despite the cost of a full-ride Stanford scholarship that's approaching $27,000 a year. "Without the scholarships," Shaw said, "we'd be Ivy League material. Athletics is made possible by a lot of donations. It's all privately raised."
"The ability to offer scholarships really makes a difference," Dettamanti said. "I couldn't do this without scholarship help. I can go after the best players. The only limitation is academics. The years we win championships, we've had a few good years where we've been able to recruit the best athletes.
"The bottom line is, the teams with the best athletes usually win."
And speaking of recruiting . . . "You can't have an A league with B league players," said Gould, who attracted future pro stars like Roscoe Tanner and John McEnroe in the 1970s and 20 years later has the nation's top two freshmen in Paul Goldstein and Scott Humphries.
The credibility of each program and the winning tradition established also makes the choice easy.
"Some athletes may chose to go elsewhere in order to be a star," Quick said, "but at Stanford they know there are going to be other great swimmers on the team. They have a chance to be the best they can be."
Given the collection of NCAA hardware at Stanford, that apparently has happened. And there's no sign of it letting up.
"If you look at our freshman class here at Stanford," said Leland, "athletically it may be the best freshman class ever recruited--across the board--in the country."
Leland can point to such individuals as golfer Tiger Woods and volleyball-basketball standout Kristin Folkl, who were selected as the 1993 national high school athletes of the year. Folkl came to Stanford as the prep volleyball recruit of the decade while Woods brought the impressive title of defending U.S. Amateur champion.
Add to that group such first-year standouts as 7-1 basketball center Tim Young and swimmer Sabir Muhammad plus the entire freshman classes of the women's volleyball and basketball teams, and Stanford is sure to remain competitive on the national level for some time to come.
"We've worked with great athletes before," Leland said. "We know they can be successful here."
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