Many of you heard from me quite alot yesterday regarding the earthquake that shook the Eastern Seaboard. One of the many feelings it mustered in me was that of unexpectedness. With both that and the situation in Libya dominating my thoughts, I was incapable of sleeping for even a moment. While watching the various early morning news telecasts, another story suddenly struck me. Since I am a sports scribe on the innovative Swipelife.com, I will only pontificate on the latest story.
Last night the coach of the Tennessee Women’s Basketball Team announced publicly that at the age of 59, she has dementia. You must demonstrate a minimum six months of symptoms which, in general, are the diminishing of cognitive abilities. So, although Pat Summitt has been dealing with this condition, clinically speaking, for at least a half a year, her public acknowledgment was delivered in a way that very few could. Steadfast. Honest. Somewhat combative.
In 1974, with women’s basketball not even a sanctioned sport, a 22-year old Summitt began her coaching career as a graduate assistant at the University of Tennessee. She was promoted to head coach quickly as the former coach abruptly resigned. On a salary of $250 a month, Summitt not only washed her players’ uniforms, she held fundraisers to purchase them. Early on, Summitt drove her own team in a passenger van to road games, once sleeping in a gym inbetween games with her entire team. When asked about such times, Summitt said, “we had mats…our little sleeping bags…and we didn’t wash our uniforms. We only had one set. We played because we loved the game. We didn’t think anything about it.” During her first season as head coach, some of her players were born in the same calendar year as Summitt. Yet, they respected her as an elder. Pat Summitt never requested, nor demanded that respect. She just got it. In 1976, Summitt co-captained the United States Women’s Olympic Team in the first Olympic Games in which women’s basketball was recognized, earning the country a silver medal. Eight years later, she coached the same team to a gold medal, becoming the first United States Olympian to win a medal as both a player and a coach.
That love and respect for the game and more importantly, your team, helped Summitt build a juggernaut in every aspect of the word in terms of sports. Her players wholeheartedly bought into the idea that no one player is more important then the team as a whole. While it is admirable for someone to garner that commitment from athletes at any level, it transcendents normality when one can instill those values, and truly make the best players in the country, in the world, have that team-first mentality.
I will spare you the unending list of accomplishments on Summitt’s resume, but I will give you two. As a head coach, she has 1,071 wins versus 199 losses. 100 percent of her eligible players have graduated, with over a hundred earning their doctorates. She is the spearhead of a sport that now has over 4,000 division-one scholarship female athletes, which when she began coaching, had zero. UConn has built a dynasty recently, but Tennessee was the first in the game. Personally, as an avid sports fan, I hate lists. As a writer, they are good food for fodder. I would put Pat Summitt in my top 10 coaches in American sports history. All-time. Any sport. Any level. She did as much with less as anyone, and sustained excellence for decades. On top of that, in lieu of all the NCAA infractions plaguing the country, not once has Summitt been implicated. Not once in almost 40 years. If there has ever been a woman that could coach a prominent men’s team, it would be Pat Summitt. I would hope my son would some day have a coach like her in his life.
I could go on for paragraph after paragraph about Pat Summitt’s greatness. 8 national championships in 20 years. 16 conference titles out of 21. 18 Final Fours. Men’s or Women’s, John Wooden is 2nd. With just 12. She was named by the Naismith Basketball Committee as College Basketball Coach of the Century. The records are too great to not recognize. She wants to remain as the head coach at Tennessee. No one could ever tell Pat Summitt she can not coach anymore. That is a decision all her own. As a sports fan, I hope she takes care of herself before anything, because Pat Summitt has etched her name as one of the greatest leaders in the history of American sports.
“My parents taught me a long time ago that you win in life with people, and that’s important, because if you hang with winners, you stand a great chance of being a winner.” You, Coach Summitt, are the epitome of a winner
