Pat Summitt, the iconic University of Tennessee women’s basketball coach who became the winningest coach in college basketball history, has died at the age of 64, several years after being diagnosed with early onset dementia, her foundation’s website says.
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Summitt’s family released a statement Sunday saying “the past few days have been hard…as her early onset dementia, Alzheimer’s type progresses”.
The woman who grew up playing basketball in a Tennessee barn loft against her brothers, and started coaching only a couple years after Title IX was invoked, spent her life working to make women’s basketball the equal of the men’s game.
Summitt’s greatest adversary on the court was Auriemma. She retired from coaching following the 2011-12 season after 38 seasons with the Lady Vols.
Former Florida and SC football coach Steve Spurrier spoke Monday about Summitt’s legacy.
“He noted that first came the date of birth and spoke the following date with tears, but he said what mattered most of all was the dash between those years”.
Tennessee then won three consecutive national championships, beating UConn in the Final Four in 1996, avenging a regular season loss to UConn in 1997 and racking up a 39-0 regular season record in 1998 before beating Louisiana Tech for the national title. Summitt ended the series after the 2007 season. She launched the Pat Summitt Foundation, which is dedicated to researching and educating people about the disease while also providing services to patients and caregivers.
The world Summitt leaves is vastly different from the one that she entered, and her legacy is that she has had something to do with that.
Legendary University of Tennessee Women’s Basketball Coach Pat Summitt has died, the Associated Press reported.
1976 – As a player, co-captains the US women’s basketball team to a silver medal at the Olympic Games in Montreal. And most of all, she made herself accountable. It was hot and humid outside, so I was inside, on the couch in our living room, reading “Raise the Roof”, the first of three books that Summitt wrote with journalist Sally Jenkins.
We are in the process of finalizing the details of a public celebration of her life which will take place in one of her favorite places, Thompson-Boling Arena.
Most of all, Summitt left her legacy on the Tennessee program, Pearl said. “I ask all of you to join me together so we will win”.
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In 2012, President Barack Obama awarded Summitt the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. She completed the recruiting visit, then flew home to Knoxville, Tenn., asking the pilots not to stop so her son would be born in the Volunteer State. He said a private funeral and burial will be held in Middle Tennessee and asked that the family’s privacy be respected.
