By Mike Lehman, TTU Sports Information
COOKEVILLE, Tenn. – There's no denying the role that the late, great Pat Summitt played not only on the game of basketball, but with the emergence and consistent growth of women's athletics over her incredible, 38-year career as the head women's basketball coach at the University of Tennessee.
There's no denying that what Summitt accomplished on the court, including eight NCAA Championships, 22 Final Four appearances, 38 straight postseason tournaments, 16 Southeastern Conference Championships, 16 SEC Tournament Championships, and a Gold Medal in the Olympics, could have very well played second fiddle to the millions of lives she impacted simply as a pioneer of women's athletics and even more specifically, women's basketball.
And there was just no denying her.
The reach of Pat Summitt and the impact she made is felt across the region, the state of Tennessee, from coast to coast across this great nation, and even overseas. That impact all began in the winter of 1974, when she took over as the head coach of the University of Tennessee.
Thirty-eight seasons later, she had compiled a 1,098-208 record for the Lady Vols, the most wins in NCAA basketball history by any coach, male or female. She boasted the eight national titles, ranging from her first in 1987 to her last in 2008. And she had propelled the University of Tennessee to the winningest women's basketball program in NCAA history.
Prior the Pat Summitt era in Knoxville, Tenn., however, it wasn't the Lady Vols that reigned supreme in the state of Tennessee.
Led by the first head coach in program history and future TTU Sports Hall of Famer, Marynell Meadors, the Tennessee Tech Golden Eaglette squad was not only the class of the state, but was widely recognized as one of the best teams in the nation. In her first four seasons, Meadors led Tech to a highly impressive, and often times dominant, 99-24 record.
In that same time frame, Tennessee sat well behind with a mark of just 60-19. Even in her first few seasons, Summitt had a tough time in dealing with a team that had already claimed multiple appearances in the AIAW national tournament, compiling just a 1-7 mark in her first eight meetings with the Golden Eaglettes.
In a way, Summitt shaped her teams and her career around finding a way to defeat Tech. After falling in seven of her first eight match-ups with Tech, the future Basketball Hall of Famer found it and led the Lady Vols to 13 consecutive victories over the purple and gold, including the final game played in the series back in 1990-91.
To this day, the Tennessee Tech program still ranks among the nation's winningest programs, coming in at No. 14 in all-time victories with 891 prior to the 2015-16 season. But it's a stat and record that means so much more today because of what Summitt would accomplish just 100 miles down the road.
Summitt made an impact that spread so far across the state and nation, but it also spanned multiple generations. And that fact is not lost on Tennessee Tech and its coaching staffs, both past and present.
"I know it was very tough to beat her teams," Meadors said when recalling what it was like to coach against Summit. "They were well prepared and I knew we had to be well prepared to win. Preparation for the games was what Pat was all about. It was about practice and doing that right things at the right time. She was very detailed and demanded the very best out each and every player that she had on her teams.
"She set the standard for women's basketball and provided opportunities for young girls to play the game," Meadors continued. "She was women's basketball up one side and down the other. Everyone in the basketball world and her friends are devastated by her passing."
"When I think of Pat Summitt, I think of Tennessee," Bill Worrell, who coached at Tech from 1986 to 2006, said. "She is Tennessee, from the east side of the state to the west. She just touched everybody in the state. All the victories are just secondary. Just the kind of person she was and what she represented in Tennessee and the way she carried herself, she was what she was.
"Her legacy is going to live on," Worrell continued. "She's going to be in our hearts. Every little girl in the state of Tennessee should know who Pat is. If they don't, they will. She brought women's basketball to the level that it is in the state of Tennessee. The rest of us were just on the court with her. She was the head of the class."
"Once you were a friend of Pat, you were her friend for life," TTU Associate Director of Athletics and former Golden Eagle men's basketball coach Frank Harrell recalled. "I was a graduate assistant at Tennessee when she was first getting started and remember meeting her to talk about scheduling practice time in the gym. She told me just to give her Coach [Ray] Mears' schedule and she would work around it, at least until she had won some championships and then he'd have to work around hers."
"Watching her in those early years, she would work just as hard as her players," Harrell continued. "She would scrimmage along with her, and she was a heckuva player. She played in the Olympics and many people just don't realize how good she was. She cared about her girls dearly though, and would defend them and look out for them off the court as well.
"After I got to Tech, I kept my connection with her, congratulating her whenever she'd hit another milestone. Pat would always say how it was because she'd been doing it so long, but we both knew better than that. When it came time to search for a new women's head coach, and they'd list her as a reference, I'd give Pat a call and she would be completely candid about who would be the best coach, not for Tennessee Tech, but for the women's game in general.
"Pat was no slouch with X's and O's, but her best quality was her leadership. She had so many sayings that would inspire even those who didn't play for her. And I would try to adapt some of those into my coaching career as well as my professional life after coaching."
"Pat Summitt didn't just set the standard, she created it," current TTU head women's basketball coach Kim Rosamond said. "The wins and championships are staggering, but her legacy will carry on in the lives that she touched and made better on a daily basis. From high school girls basketball in the state of Tennessee, to the college game and the WNBA, her footprint is everywhere. She left this game and life a much better place than how she found it, and she inspired a generation of young women like myself to want more, do more and be more.
"As a player and coach," Rosamond continued, "I was fortunate to spend 15 years competing against her teams because win or lose, they always made you better by showing what it took to be a champion. It was an honor to know her and stand on the same court as her. I can vividly remember 'Rocky Top' beginning to play and the crowd erupting as she walked onto the floor. Fan or opponent, it was amazing to witness not only how the fans loved her, but how she loved them.
"There will never be another Pat, and we will all be forever grateful for her sacrifice, her courage, her example, and her journey. We mourn with her family, friends, and Lady Vol nation over the loss of such an amazing woman, but we also celebrate a life so brilliantly lived."
May we all strive to have even a sliver of an impact as she did.
"God doesn't take things away to be cruel. He takes things away to make room for other things. He takes things away to lighten us. He takes things away so we can fly."
– Pat Summitt
