Pat Summitt: Indomitable On and Off the Basketball Court

 

Pat Summitt reached the pinnacle of college basketball.  With 1,098 career wins, the most in NCAA history, she secured her spot in the NCAA Hall of Fame in 2000 when she was also named the Naismith Basketball Coach of the Century.  Over her 38-year coaching career, her team won 84% of the time it took the court.  By the time she retired prematurely in 2012 at age 59 due to early-onset Alzheimer's, she had won 8 National Championships - a standing record when she put away her clipboard for the last time.  Summitt also won two Olympic medals: a gold as head coach of the 1984 U.S. women's basketball team where she was only the female coach for any country in the entire Olympic tournament and a silver as a player on the 1976 team. In 2009, when the Sporting News placed her at number 11 on its list of the 50 Greatest Coaches of All Time in all sports; she was the only woman on the list. She was the first woman coach to earn $1 M a year.  In 2012, when she retired, she was awarded the  Presidential Medal of Freedom  the highest civilian award in the United States for her work in women's sports.  

She was raised on a tobacco farm in Clarksville, TN where the work was physical, tough and constant and her father's expectations tougher.  But there was always basketball.  She graduated from the University of Tennessee, Martin in 1974 leaving the team as the all time leading scorer with 1,045 points.    ("There was never a day without some kind of heavy lifting," Pat Summitt)

At 22, Summitt became the head coach of the Lady Vols at the University of Tennessee. It was 1974 and just two years after Title IX passed.  This was a time when women's sports received little to no resources and even less attention.  UT could afford to put the team into the hands of a  22-year-old with no coaching experience.  No one paid any attention to women's basketball anyway.  Her first game had 53 spectators and those were mostly parents.  

Women's basketball wouldn't become an NCAA-sanctioned sport for another 8 years (the men's NCAA tournament was started in 1939).  Her team had no uniforms, no budget and was relegated to the oldest facilities on campus.  None of this stopped Summitt from building the Women's Basketball program at Tennessee into a perennial powerhouse.  The Championship game between Tennessee and Connecticut in 1995 had 18,000 in attendance.

But there was something she was just as proud of as the win tally - the impact of her leadership on her players.  All 122 players who completed eligibility on her teams went on to earn a degree.  And she bred leaders; when Summitt retired, 78 of her former players occupied basketball coaching or administrative positions.  A former player and assistant coach is now the head coach of the Lady Vols.  She demanded everything on the court, but that wasn't enough.  She also demanded that her players work hard at everything they do and be solid citizens in their communities as long as they represented the team and the program.  

How did she do it?  With complete and total commitment to winning.  She drove herself and her players relentlessly.  She won because she simply willed it to be so.  Cutting corners was anathema.  You didn't miss a sucker on a tobacco plant and you didn't show up even one minute late to practice.  Her players knew this and respected her for it.  Her practices were legendary.  She worked the team until they thought they had nothing left and then she helped them find more.  No detail was too small.  She seemed to see everything.  She was unbelievably tough but she was clear about the rules and the expectations.  And they were applied evenly to everyone.  She once benched a star player even with her family in the stands after that player missed bed check by 20 minutes.  They respected her because her standards were as as much about helping them be successful long term as they were about the season at hand.  ("I've shown you what it requires to win, what real effort looks like.  Now you know, and if you turn away from it, take a shortcut, you'll be settling for less.  And if you do it once, you'll do it for the rest of your life," Pat Summitt)

She won because her commitment was all consuming.  She simply never stopped and she never let her players stop either.  She was a fighter.  She was determined.  She worked non-stop because that is what she had been taught to do.  She wasn't a genius so much as an indomitable will.  It was her work ethic that made her special.  Her commitment was renowned.  ("She had no discernible traces of fear or self-consciousness.  She was forceful, uncompromising, strong-voiced and she didn't seem to think she had to demand less of because we were women," Lady Vol team member.)

Her early days of coaching were played out in the throes of the feminist movement of the 1970s.  Summitt noted and supported the changes women were fighting for but contributed in her own way.  She thought the best way to improve the status and options open to women was to show that we can compete.  That we can win.  She watched the protests but stayed focused on getting her team to the winner's podium.  ("But there was only way I could see that changed things: winning. You changed things for women by winning," Pat Summitt)

In 2011, Summitt was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's.  She coached for one more season with the help of her talented staff, reaching the Regionals in the NCAA Regionals following a 27-9 season.  When she was first diagnosed, she attacked this challenge as she had so many others with resolve and energy.  Refusing to back down and refusing to quit.  ("We keep score in life because it matters. It counts.  Too many people opt out and never discover their own abilities, because they fear failure.  They don't understand commitment.  When you learn to keep fighting in the fact of potential failure, it gives you a larger skill set to do what you want to do in life.  It gives you vision.  But you can't acquire it if you aren't willing to keep score.  Pat Summitt)