It's Stanford for Warren's Boothe

Stanford's picturesque university boasts about 43,000 trees.

It's about to get another.

Sarah Boothe, Warren's 6-foot-5 incoming senior pivot, made a verbal commitment last Friday to play basketball for the Cardinal and hall-of-fame coach Tara VanDerveer.

Boothe's decision ends essentially three years of suspense, as she appeared destined to earn a major-college basketball ride since the first day she laced on her high tops for the Blue Devils.

She chose Stanford over Notre Dame, Wisconsin, Purdue and DePaul.

"I don't think there was a bad choice in the lot," Warren coach John Stanczykiewicz said. "You got Stanford, Notre Dame, Wisconsin, Purdue and DePaul. Those are great academic institutions that also happen to sport highly successful athletic programs."

Stanford is located in California, between San Francisco and San Jose in the heart of Silicon Valley. The campus is surrounded by redwoods, cedars, Canary Island palm and eucalyptus trees.

"It was amazing. It's probably one of the prettiest campuses I've seen," said Boothe, who visited Stanford for the first time in early spring and planned on taking an official visit before the basketball season started.

"Everyone was great. It was a great experience visiting."

Stanford's women's basketball program has a great history of success. VanDerveer has led the Cardinal to a pair of national championships, 20 consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances and 16 PAC-10 titles.

Stanford went 29-5 last season and won the PAC-10 regular-season and tournament championships.

"The PAC-10 is a good league that will suit her style," Stanczykiewicz said of Boothe, whom he's coached all three of her seasons at Warren. "The PAC-10 plays a transition game and Stanford runs a variation of the Bulls' triangle offense."

VanDerveer is considered one of the top coaches in all of college basketball, men and women. She was inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 2002.

"Coach VanDerveer is a legend, and (Stanford's) academics are amazing," Boothe said. "(Academics) was the main thing I was looking for."

While Boothe scored a 26 on her ACT and has a 3.9 GPA on a 4.0 scale, the future business major has posted equally great numbers on the basketball court.

A varsity starter since her freshman year, she'll enter her senior season with 1,403 career points.

More than just a low-post scoring threat, last season she averaged 16.2 points, 8.7 rebounds, 3.4 blocks and 2.6 assists. She even sank five 3-pointers, the first ones of her career. She was named second team all-state.

This summer she earned an invitation to the prestigious USA Basketball Youth Developmental Festival at U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., and held her own, she said.

"It was a lot of fun, Boothe said. "It was great competition. I played with the best players in the country, and it was a great opportunity to see where I was. I got to play against some great posts."

Perhaps the only drawback for Boothe in choosing Stanford is that it's located halfway across the country.

"That's why it took me a while to make a decision, because it's far," Boothe said. "But I talked to my parents, and they were really supportive of me and my decision to go there. That meant a lot."

Funny, before Boothe entered high school, she said Stanford was her "dream school." She imagined playing for the Cardinal.

"I never thought it would be a reality," she said. "It was just a gut feeling that every athlete talks about. That's where my heart was and I just had to follow that."

Boothe begins her senior year Thursday. Come November, she'll begin her quest to get Warren back downstate, a destination she helped the team reach her freshman year.

"It's a major relief," Boothe said of getting her college choice out of the way. "After committing, a big weight was lifted off my shoulders. Now I don't have to deal with the stress. I can just focus on the season, my teammates, and us winning."

"I'm really happy for her," Stanczykiewicz said. "I think she went about the recruiting process the right way. She and her parents took a long, measured look at all her options."