“This was the biggest game in women’s basketball, and that’s what I’ve been waiting 19 years to see”, Summitt said. She had just won the national championship.
Advertisement
Thank you coach Pat Summitt.
She made her mark everywhere she went. He said it didn’t matter that Summitt was a woman.
Tennessee athletic director and vice chancellor Dave Hart said Summitt “is synonymous with Tennessee”, and “a global icon who transcended sports and spent her entire life making a difference in other peoples’ lives”. Off the court, she went public with her battle with depression. I was extremely proud of our academic success.
Shes the most important figure in the history of the sport, former Tennessee player Kara Lawson said.
“She was more than a coach to so many”, he writes.
One of those was Candace Parker, who is still playing in professional women’s basketball. “But I felt a lot of strength from her and from the Lady Vols family”. Becky Hammon, who made history two years ago by becoming the first full-time female assistant coach in the National Basketball Association, said Summitt was a “true pioneer in every sense of the word”. “Pat was looking up in the stands”. She became the first millionaire coach in women’s basketball in 2006 and was paid $1.5 million in her final season in 2011-12. She played college basketball at the University of Tennessee at Martin where she received her bachelor’s degree in physical education. People came from far and wide to be there in her presence for one last time, hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst. The NCAA didn’t even sponsor a national championship game at that time.
Shes not a person that just talks the talk, she walks the walk as well.. That team won the silver medal at the 1976 Olympics. “Obviously, it was a special night today and we all played with heavy hearts”.
“That was the standard”, said Iowa State head coach Bill Fennelly of Summitt’s teams. If you ask any of her former players they will tell you how much she helped them. “We’re not going to sit here and feel sorry for Pat Summitt”.
She was known as a tough, sometimes even harsh, coach who cared deeply for the young women she recruited to the University of Tennessee.
Pat Summit was walking towards her.
In 1974, at 22 years old, Summitt took over the Lady Volunteers program – eight years before women’s basketball was an officially sanctioned NCAA sport.
As the Lady Vols game came to an end, I saw Pat Summitt sitting in the front row in the middle of the arena.
Tennesseans are very, very proud of Pat Summitt.
But it was only in 2012 when being honored with the Arthur Ashe Courage Award that Summitt shared she had six miscarriages before giving birth to her son, Tyler.
A book could not be written on all that Summitt has done throughout her life.
Advertisement
Four years ago at a young age, 60 years of age, suddenly she had Alzheimer’s disease.
