Stephens said Summitt’s health has declined rapidly and a line of former players have come to see their beloved coach and say goodbye.
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She has been battling Alzheimer’s since 2011.
“You can trust Pat for her word”, she said.
Most of all, Summitt left her legacy on the Tennessee program, Pearl said.
Cash smiled remembering when Summitt spoke at Cash’s athletic awards banquet when she was in 10th grade.
“You can’t say enough about her”, Diana Taurasi said after the Mercury’s OT win.
Her family actually moved from Clarksville to Cheatham County so Pat could play high school basketball. “It’s been about (how) we can find a cure for this disease, and she has done it facing it straight-on and she’s done it giving back as she always has”. “It was probably one of the hardest things I ever had to do was call her up and tell her I wasn’t coming”.
It could never take away the influence she had on hundreds of players and coaches that she taught how to live life and fight the good fight when all seemed lost.
“She would put us through grueling practices, and we still walked out of there still loving her”, said Singleton, who grew up in Morristown. But as we talked, you could sense the great odds she overcame to be successful from a rough beginning. Women’s basketball held little, if any, allure when she started coaching and she said many a night she would stick her head out the window of the van carrying her players trying to stay awake.
WNBA stars Candace Parker and Tamika Catchings are among almost 20 of those who traveled back to the city where they attended college in order to connect with their coach again over the weekend, The Tennessean reported. Pat won 16 Southeastern Conference regular season titles with the Lady Vols, as well as 16 tournament titles.
In other finals, Maya DiRado qualified for her first Olympic team in the women’s 400 IM, knocking off 2012 silver medalist Elizabeth Beisel. She had a career 1,098-208 record. She coached the Vols for 38 seasons and became the winningest coach, regardless of gender, in NCAA Division I history.
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“She was the one that everyone tried to emulate”.
