Pat refuses to die because she knows so many people are wanting to see her. “And that’s hard to do”, said Holly Warlick, the current Lady Vols coach who played and coached for Summitt. Wagner coached at a Tennessee basketball camp and made recruiting trips to Knoxville with Russell.
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“If Pat Summit walked in the gym, it was like the president of the United States”. It’s fantastic to see the outpouring that she had an effect on all those kids.
Players recalled that intense competitiveness and character Tuesday as they shared memories of the coach. It was, in part, Summitt’s famous icy stare that pushed Haave, who starred at Evergreen High School before becoming a three-year starter for Tennessee, to three Final Four appearances and a “player of the game” nod in the national championship game in 1984. Her impact on the game of basketball is legendary, and she is the single-most influential person in the history of the women’s game. And in turn, her players felt a duty to not let her down. “That’s I guess where we got the stare”.
“It makes you realize, even when you think you couldn’t do any more – keep trying and keep pushing”, she said. “It’s her personality, the presence, what she demanded of herself”. “You were not going to step on the floor if you missed a class, her rules were very simple”.
And it wasn’t just her players. The WBNA’s Tamika Catchings played for Summitt at the University of Tennessee from 1997 to 2001.
“It’s nearly like she’s in the huddle with me”, said Manvel High School girls’ basketball coach Bryan Harris. I will always cherish those moments of talking to her and getting advice from her, as well as the moments of playing against her.
Family members say Summitt died peacefully in Knoxville. During that time 161 young women learned the game of basketball, but just as importantly, the game of life.
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Summitt has been inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame, the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and the International Basketball Federation, or FIBA, Hall of Fame. “Pat agreed to do it and we were able to fill this place at 22,000 and I still think today, we probably picked up 2 or 3,000 season ticket holders just from that one game”. “They were just first-class people”.
