As a student at Carlsbad High in the early 1990s, Vanessa Nygaard — now UC San Diego women’s basketball associate head coach — would sneak into the old Lancer gym after dinner, walking a few blocks from her childhood home to work on her jump shot.
Her backyard hoop was fine, but the neighbors didn’t love the late-night noise, so her co-conspirator — a custodian she remembers as Clarence — would prop open a door so she could practice.
“I don’t know if it’s breaking in if the custodian knows me and the door’s just a little jarred,” Nygaard told The Coast News. “I don’t think anyone knew about it — maybe just the custodian and the friends who would go shoot with me. My coach? My parents? No idea. The janitor was supportive; I think he was a former basketball player.”
At Carlsbad, playing for head coach John Duberville alongside standout point guard Renee Demirdjian — future USF Hall of Famer — Nygaard, a 6-foot-1 center, was a three-time Avocado League Player of the Year and a two-time first-team All-CIF San Diego Section selection, including CIF Player of the Year honors in 1993.
She led the Lancers to back-to-back section finals, winning the 1992 title with a 53-43 victory over University City.
“That’s like 100 years ago,” Nygaard said with a laugh, trying to remember the names of the players she faced before recalling Oceanside center Mildred Conston, who scored 1,500 points over her high school career.
“Santa Fe was really good because Terri Bamford was the coach,” Nygaard said of the longtime La Jolla Country Day coach and winningest girls basketball coach in San Diego Section history. “Turns out she’s always been a great coach. And we had a great coach, too; John Duberville did a great job with us. I remember we played a zone, and Renee and I only played the first half of games until the playoffs. We shot free-throw-line jumpers. I posted up, grabbed rebounds, went coast-to-coast, or hit turnaround jump shots. I worked on that a lot. I never shot a three in high school; I just played hard. I think that was one of my biggest talents.”
In those days, before the WNBA existed and long before stars like Caitlin Clark drew national audiences, Nygaard’s exposure to elite women’s basketball was limited to the final two games of the NCAA Tournament, aired on television each March.
“When I was a kid, I looked up to the Lakers. I wanted to be James Worthy,” Nygaard said.
She began playing basketball at the Carlsbad Boys & Girls Club, mostly with boys, before joining the first girls’ team at Valley Middle School.
“There wasn’t anything [women’s basketball] out there,” Nygaard said. “It’s nice to see that there are so many more role models for young people now. There’s so much more opportunity for girls to play on teams and try different sports. I think it’s fantastic.”
Back then, the idea of pursuing basketball for most girls was foreign. The only guidance Nygaard received came from a co-worker of her mother’s — a former college player whose name she has long forgotten — who came to one of her games and offered a single piece of advice: when she got to college, she’d have to move up a position — from center to forward.
“It’s actually totally true,” Nygaard said. “But that’s the only time there was another adult woman who played sports near me.”
After Carlsbad, Nygaard played at Stanford from 1993 to 1998, becoming a key contributor to Tara VanDerveer’s program. Nygaard helped the Cardinal reach three Final Fours and compile a 113-14 overall record, including a 69-2 mark in Pac-10 play.
Nygaard finished her career as Stanford’s all-time leader in three-pointers made and earned All-Pac-10, All-Pac-10 Academic, and honorable mention All-America honors in 1998.
She then went on to a six-season career in the fledgling WNBA, with stints at the Cleveland Rockers, Portland Fire, Miami Sol and Los Angeles Sparks — three of those franchises now defunct.
“My first year, I made $26,000 and had no health care,” Nygaard said. “I remember needing a screw taken out of my knee, and I had to go back to Stanford and negotiate a price with the doctor who’d done the surgery. It’s nice to see [WNBA players] now negotiating for what they deserve.”
After a long coaching career spanning high school, college and the WNBA, Nygaard returned to Carlsbad in 2024, joining the staff of Heidi VanDerveer, the younger sister of her former college coach.
Her return has brought about a full-circle moment: her daughter, Emerson, a 5-foot-11 sophomore forward, now plays for Carlsbad High, just as Nygaard once did.
“These players are much better than we were,” Nygaard said. “They train, they start playing younger, they’re getting so much more exposure to different things, and they know they can play at college; professionally, there’s a lot of great young players in San Diego.”
Nygaard joked that she’s only the second-most famous Nygaard in town — behind her mother, Julie Nygaard, a longtime Carlsbad councilwoman.
“Carlsbad is much bigger than it was,” she said. “There’s a lot more golf carts. But it still has that vibe of belonging and community. I just moved back two years ago, and it’s amazing how many people I grew up with are still here. I run into my high school English teacher, and she starts recommending books to me. I’m reading everything she suggests.”
In Nygaard’s second year with the program, UCSD is off to a 12-6 start.
“As I’ve gotten older, the inequality stuff and the things that haven’t changed bug me; bother me more,” she said. “It would have been great if I had gotten a million dollars [playing], but I still look at it like I live in Carlsbad, so can’t be that bad, right?”
