Pat Summitt
Patricia Susan Summitt was an American women's college basketball head coach and college basketball player. She coached 1,098 career wins, the most in college basketball history at the time of her retirement. She served as the head coach of the University of Tennessee Lady Vols basketball team from 1974 to 2012 and is considered one of the greatest basketball coaches of all time.
Summitt won a silver medal at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal as a member of the United States women's national basketball team. She returned to the Olympics in 1984 as a head coach, guiding the U.S. women's basketball team to a gold medal. Summitt won eight NCAA Division I basketball championships. In 38 years as coach of the Tennessee Lady Volunteers, she never missed the NCAA Tournament nor did she ever have a losing season. Summitt retired from coaching at age 59 following a diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer's disease.
Summitt was inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 1999 as a member of its inaugural class. She was named the Naismith Basketball Coach of the Century in 2000. In 2009, 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. In 2012, Summitt was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama and received the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the 2012 ESPY Awards. In 2013, she was inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame.
Early life and family
Summitt was born Patricia Sue Head on June 14, 1952, in Clarksville, Tennessee, to Richard and Hazel Albright Head. In her early years, she was known as Trish. She had four siblings: older brothers Tommy, Charles, and Kenneth, and a younger sister, Linda. Summitt grew up on a dairy farm and began playing basketball when she was six years old, on a hoop her father had installed in a barn.When Summitt was in high school, her family moved to nearby Henrietta so she could play basketball in Cheatham County, because Clarksville did not have a girls team. From there, Summitt went to the University of Tennessee at Martin, where she won All-American honors playing for UT–Martin's first women's basketball coach, Nadine Gearin. In 1970, with the passage of Title IX still two years away, there were no athletic scholarships for women. Each of Summitt's brothers had received athletic scholarships, but her parents paid her way to college. She later co-captained the United States women's national basketball team as a player at the inaugural women's tournament in the 1976 Summer Olympics, winning the silver medal. Eight years later in 1984, she coached the U.S. women's team to an Olympic gold medal, becoming the first U.S. Olympian to win a basketball medal and coach a medal-winning team.
Coaching career
1970s
Just before the 1974–75 season, with women's college basketball still in its infancy and not yet an NCAA-sanctioned sport, 22-year-old Summitt became a graduate assistant at the University of Tennessee, and was named head coach of the Lady Vols after the previous coach suddenly quit. Summitt earned $250 monthly and washed the players' uniforms – uniforms purchased the previous year with proceeds from a doughnut sale. Summitt recalled that era of women's basketball during a February 2009 interview with Time. "I had to drive the van when I first started coaching," Summitt said. "One time, for a road game, we actually slept in the other team's gym the night before. We had mats, we had our little sleeping bags. When I was a player at the University of Tennessee at Martin, we played at Tennessee Tech for three straight games, and we didn't wash our uniforms. We only had one set. We played because we loved the game. We didn't think anything about it."During Summitt's first year as head coach, four of her players were only a year younger than she was and all were from Tennessee high schools, which until 1980 employed a six-person game where offensive and defensive players never crossed mid-court. She coached her first game for Tennessee on December 7, 1974, against Mercer University in Macon, Georgia; the Lady Vols lost 84–83. Her first win came almost a month later when the Lady Vols defeated Middle Tennessee State, 69–32 on January 10, 1975. The Lady Vols won the Tennessee College Women's Sports Federation Eastern District Championship for the third straight year. However, the team finished 4th overall in the TCWSF, and were not invited to the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women tournament.
In her second season, Summitt coached the Lady Vols to a 16–11 record while earning her 1976 master's degree in physical education and training as the co-captain of the 1976 U.S. Women's Olympic basketball team that won a silver medal in Montreal. Starting with the 1976–77 season, Summitt directed two 20-win teams, winning back-to-back AIAW Region II championships. The Lady Vols defeated 3-time AIAW champion Delta State by 20 points in 1978, and earned Tennessee its first number one ranking. 1978 saw the Lady Vols participate in their first AIAW Final Four, where they finished third. Summitt also recorded her 100th win during this season, a 79–66 victory over NC State. Tennessee closed the 1970s by winning the first-ever SEC tournament, and returning to the AIAW Final Four, where they finished runner-up to Old Dominion, 68–53.
1980s
During the 1980–81 season, the Lady Vols went 25–6, and avenged their championship game loss to Old Dominion by defeating them three times. The team made it to the AIAW Final Four for the third straight year; finished runner-up for the second consecutive year, losing to Louisiana Tech, 79–59.The 1981–82 season featured the first ever NCAA women's basketball tournament. The Lady Vols were one of 32 teams invited and named a 2 seed in their region. In the region championship, the Lady Vols upset top-seeded USC 91–90 in overtime to advance to the Final Four. They lost their Final Four match-up with Louisiana Tech, which went on to win the tournament.
The next season, the Lady Vols won the regular season SEC title but fell in the SEC tournament to Georgia. Tennessee was invited to the now-36 team NCAA tournament and awarded its first-ever 1 seed. Tennessee made it to the regional championship, but fell to Georgia again, 67–63. Summitt won her 200th game on December 3, a 69–56 victory over St. John's during the Coca-Cola Classic in Detroit.
The 1983–84 season saw Tennessee start out 6–4. However, Summitt rallied her team and finished 22–10, for her eighth straight 20-win season. Tennessee not only made it to the NCAA Final Four for the second time in the first three tournaments, but also made it to the title game. However, Tennessee lost by 11 to USC, which also had won the title the previous year. Summit earned Coach of the Year honors. The 1983–84 season was followed up by another 20-win year in which Tennessee earned both the regular season SEC title and the tournament title. However, the Lady Vols fell in the NCAA tournament to Ole Miss during the round of 16.
The next season was a similar story – the Lady Vols had a good regular season, played a great tournament, but fell before winning the title.
In 1986–87, Tennessee broke through and defeated perennial power Louisiana Tech 67–44 to win the Lady Vols' first national title. Tennessee's Tonya Edwards was named the Most Outstanding Player in the Final Four. During the regular season, Summitt also earned her 300th win, an 87–66 victory over North Carolina. The next year in 1987–88, the Lady Vols were positioned to repeat, as Tennessee made it to the Final Four yet again. However, Louisiana Tech avenged the previous year's championship game loss with a 9-point victory and went on to win the title.
In 1988–89, the Lady Vols reached the Final Four for the fourth straight year. After eliminating Maryland by 12 points, Tennessee faced SEC rival Auburn for the national title. Auburn had lost by two points to Louisiana Tech in the NCAA title game the previous year and had suffered its only loss in the SEC Championship game by 15 points to Tennessee. The championship game was similar as Tennessee took home its second title in three years with a 76–60 victory. It was Tennessee's best season yet; the Lady Vols won 35 games while losing only two regular season contests to Auburn and Texas. The Lady Vols won every NCAA tournament game by at least 12 points.
In 1989–90, the Lady Vols started off the season well, winning the SEC title. However, the team fell by 1 point to Auburn in the SEC Championship Game and lost in overtime to Virginia in the regional finals, one game shy of making a trip to the Final Four, which that year was held in Knoxville. Summitt accomplished another milestone that season with her 400th win, a 70–69 victory over South Carolina on January 25.
1990s
Tennessee failed to win the SEC regular season or the tournament championship in 1990–91, but after a close win in the NCAA regional semifinals against Western Kentucky, the Lady Vols eliminated Auburn for the second time in three years. In the national semifinals, the Lady Vols beat Stanford, 68–60, to earn the chance to avenge the previous year's tournament loss against Virginia. Just as the previous year's game had gone into overtime, so did this one. Tennessee escaped with a 70–67 win and its third national title in five years. The next season in 1991–92, the Lady Vols did not make it to the regional championship, falling 75–70 to the same Western Kentucky team they had beaten in that round the previous year. In 1992–93, Tennessee defeated the defending champions Stanford twice and swept the SEC season for the first time. However, the Lady Vols were unable to win the SEC tournament title and fell 72–56 in the NCAA tournament to Iowa in the regional finals.Early in the 1993–94 season, Summitt grabbed her 500th win, an 80–45 win over Ohio State on November 21. Tennessee went on to win the regular season and tournament SEC titles before falling 71–68 to Louisiana Tech in the regional semifinals. The next season marked Tennessee's return to the Final Four. Tennessee went undefeated in the SEC regular season for the third straight year, but failed to win the tournament title. The top-seeded Lady Vols breezed their way to a fifth national title game, with no other tournament game being closer than 21 points. However, in the national championship game, the Lady Vols fell 70–64 to the undefeated UConn Huskies, coached by Summit's rival, Geno Auriemma, in the first of twelve championships for UConn. During the off-season, Summitt recruited high school stand-out Chamique Holdsclaw.
In 1995–96, with freshman Holdsclaw and senior Michelle M. Marciniak, the Lady Vols won the SEC tournament and made a second straight Final Four trip. In the semifinals, the Lady Vols avenged the previous year's tournament loss to UConn by ousting Auriemma and the Huskies with a hard-fought 5-point win in overtime. The championship game was not that close as Tennessee easily won its fourth title with an 83–65 win over Georgia.
The 1996–97 Lady Vols posted one of the worst records ever for a Summitt-coached team. In addition to losses to powerhouses such as Louisiana Tech, Stanford, Old Dominion, and Connecticut, Tennessee fell to teams such as Florida, against whom they had been previously undefeated. Summitt earned her 600th win with a 15-point victory over Marquette on November 23, 1996. Summitt and the 1996–97 championship team were the subject of an HBO documentary titled A Cinderella Season: The Lady Vols Fight Back. The Lady Vols posted a 23–10 record heading into the NCAA tournament. However, Tennessee righted itself during the tournament, shocking previously undefeated Connecticut in the regional final before defeating Notre Dame and Old Dominion in the Final Four to win the team's second straight national championship.
In many aspects, the 1997–98 team was Summitt's best. With the top-ranked recruiting class as well as Chamique Holdsclaw, the Lady Vols ran the table to a 39–0 season while playing one of the top-ranked schedules in the country. Only three teams came within 10 points of beating the team, and the Lady Vols won a 93–75 victory over Louisiana Tech for their third straight national championship. After the championship game, opposing Louisiana Tech head coach Leon Balmore proclaimed the Tennessee team to be the "best ever", echoing a similar claim made by Old Dominion University Hall of Famer Nancy Lieberman.
Holdsclaw predicted that the 1998–99 team would be the greatest ever. However, Tennessee didn't claim another national title or make it to the Final Four. Injuries to several players decimated the team and the Lady Vols ultimately fell to Duke in the regional finals. A landmark was set during this season however, as Holdsclaw, Tamika Catchings, and Semeka Randall became the first trio from one team to be named Kodak All-Americans.
The Lady Vols ended the decade with a third straight 30-win season, third straight SEC title, and third straight SEC Tournament title. Additionally, they defeated UConn in the regular season, 72–71, in UConn's only loss of the year. In the NCAA tournament, Tennessee breezed its way to the title game, winning all five games by at least 10 points. In the championship game the Lady Vols were beaten soundly by UConn, 71–52. This marked the fourth time in six years that either Tennessee or UConn had eliminated the other from the tournament. UConn's two wins in that period came in championship games, adding more intensity to the Summit-Auriemma rivalry. During the season, Summitt earned her 700th win, 85–62 at Wisconsin.
At the 2000 ESPY awards, the Lady Vols basketball team was named co-team of the decade, along with the Florida State Seminoles football team. Additionally, Summitt was named the Naismith Coach of the Century and Chamique Holdsclaw earned recognition as Naismith Women's Collegiate Player of the Century.