Pat Summitt, former women’s basketball head coach at Tennessee, has passed away from complications of Alzheimer’s disease. She was 64 years old.
Coach Summitt is the winningest basketball coach in NCAA basketball history, but her contributions to the game of women’s basketball go far beyond wins and losses.
A Legend is Born
Pat Summitt was born in Clarksville, Tennessee, about an hour northwest of Nashville. As so many children of her generation in this area, Summitt learned the value and meaning of manual labor by working farm jobs with her family. She would be a high school stand out and played basketball at the University of Tennessee-Martin. This was before women’s basketball was an NCAA-sanctioned sport and before Title IX legislation was passed, so she was not afforded an athletic scholarship. It is this austere women’s athletic environment that Pat Summitt had such an influence in changing.
Overshadowed by her coaching career, Summitt was an All-American as a player, captained the first Olympic U.S. Women’s National Basketball Team, and won a silver medal as a player in 1976, two years after being hired as head coach at Tennessee.
Building a Dynasty
Pat Summitt was hired as a graduate assistant at Tennessee immediately out of college. After being on campus for a short time, the head coach resigned and Summitt was immediately hired as the head coach. The rest, they say, is history. Her awards and accomplishments are a roll call of excellence:
-Most wins in college basketball history (1,098-208 [84%])
-8-time National Champion
-Olympic Silver Medal (Player)
-Olympic Gold Medal (Coach)
-16-time SEC Champion
-16-time SEC Tournament Champion
-7-time NCAA coach of the year
-Member, FIBA Basketball Hall of Fame, Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame, and International Women’s Sports Hall of Fame
-Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient
Her list of accomplishments could exhaust the memory capacity of some small computers. She never played or coached on a team with a losing record. Didn’t even really come close. Tennessee has played in every single Women’s NCAA basketball tournament. 36 consecutive 20-win seasons. 20 seasons of 30-wins or more. 15 Championship game appearances. 18 Final Fours. While this list of accomplishments is impressive by any measure, it does not reflect the true impact that Pat Summitt left on this world.
Growing A Game
Summitt’s lasting legacy will be her impact on growing the game of women’s college basketball. Coach Summitt’s Tennessee teams were this sport’s equivalent of the Yankees of the 1920s or the Packers of the 1960s. Yes, the sport existed before these teams, but they were the first true dynasties of their sport. The first measuring stick of success. In a Hagelian fashion, Summitt’s Lady Vols were the impetus for the competitive growth of so many other programs, particularly in the SEC. If you could defeat a Summitt-coached team, you had accomplished something. If you could win enough that it became a rivalry, you knew you had arrived on the sport’s biggest stages.
Summitt’s Tennessee teams blazed a trail in televised women’s sports. Especially with the emergence of the signature Tennessee-Connecticut rivalry, women’s basketball had its must-see-TV. On par with Duke-UNC, Barca-Madrid, Yankees-Red Sox; in the world of women’s basketball this rivalry drove the train of growth for women’s basketball through an era producing more revenue and television broadcast than many thought possible only one generation ago.
In addition to the success, the rivalries, and the money and television, Pat Summitt’s signature is firmly affixed to the future of the game. Summitt’s coaching tree serves as the very root of the women’s college game. 45 former players have gone into coaching, including 17 active head coaches. 41 Lady Vols have played in the WNBA. Every single player that completed her eligibility at Tennessee under Pat Summitt reached an Elite Eight and graduated with a degree. That may be the truest mark of the champion that was Pat Summitt; her ability to achieve success in life for her players through their success on the court.
It is no coincidence that the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame is in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Pat Summitt, The Person
But Pat Summitt never really changed from who she was — the farm girl from Clarksville. Her presence was Presidential without the pompousness of politics. She commanded a room like a Queen but without a crown. Her former players and coaches, in fact anyone who ever knew her, revered her. Even at a southern football school with such a history as Tennessee, she stands on par with General Neyland and Peyton Manning — above if anything else — in the pantheon of beloved patrons. She was the rarest of champions: respected by teammates and foes alike; true and authentic as the day is long. We live an era where success and money and status change men and women. The millions of people who were lucky enough to met Coach Summitt will all tell you the same thing: they could see the champion and the farm girl all in one person.
They will all tell you one more thing, the one epithet that defines each Tennessee Vol:
She gave her all for Tennessee today.
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