Area Lady Vols players are part of Pat Summitt's legacy

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Those of us who were those four seniors on that first team could have easily been a speck in the spectrum of all that's happened over the course of her lifetime and career, but she said, 'Once a Lady Vol, always a Lady Vol,' and it's true. We're all part of that 161 players who played for her, and she made that happen. We couldn't have done it without her.

As the rain stopped, the screeching noise rose.

Pat Summitt was so focused on the road - or on something - during this road trip in the 1974-75 season that she left the windshield wipers on as the clouds parted above the van she was driving that carried her first Tennessee women's basketball team.

"And you know that horrible noise windshield wipers make across a dry windshield," Joy Scruggs said.

Scruggs, a Chattanooga native who attended Brainerd High School before graduating from Cleveland High and playing for Summitt's first UT team, was in the van that day more than 40 years ago and recalled the story Tuesday.

"Nobody would say anything to her, and then finally someone said something like, 'So is it still raining?' and we all about died laughing because nobody wanted to say it," Scruggs said.

Summitt was just 23 at the time, a coach hardly older than the four seniors on her team, two of whom were from southeastern Tennessee. But she had instilled enough fear in her players that they knew better than to challenge her authority - even in regard to the windshield wipers.

What Scruggs and her teammates did not know is that they were laying the foundation for one of the greatest legacies in sports history.

Summitt, who died Tuesday morning at the age of 64 following a bout with early onset Alzheimer's disease, won eight national championships during a 38-year coaching career that began with her acting as a team chauffeur and fulfilling just about every other role that large support staffs now handle.

"We were just basketball players who were happy to be playing basketball," said Scruggs, who coached at Girls Preparatory School before spending 28 years as the women's basketball coach at Emory and Henry College in Virginia. "At that time, a lot of people didn't even know there was such a thing as women's college sports."

Summitt spearheaded the change, cementing a place in history by opening doors for women in Tennessee and across the nation, all while stealing a place in the hearts of the 161 women who played for her, including several from the counties surrounding Chattanooga.

"We had no idea that it would turn out to be like this, that she would be the winningest coach in NCAA history," said Dianne Brady Fetzer, a Calhoun, Tenn., native who like Scruggs was a senior on Summitt's first team. "When we were with her in 1975, all I knew is that it was really exciting to play for her and that she would turn us loose and let us go."

After Fetzer graduated and the Lady Vols began taking charter flights across the country, filling arenas with thousands of fans and winning national championships, she would write to Summitt, congratulating her former coach on the program's various accomplishments.

The program's days of playing in front of a few dozen fans were long gone, but Summitt's appreciation for her first players remained.

"She would always write back and say, 'I want you to know that you're a part of this. Don't ever forget that you were a part of this,'" said Fetzer, who now lives in Polk County, adding that Summitt always remembered to include the second "n" in Fetzer's first name - something most others forget.

When Fetzer's mother died in 2000, Summitt called, even though it had been 25 years since Fetzer had suited up for her.

"I guess her lasting legacy to me is that everything I do now, people remember me as being Pat Summitt's first point guard, and that's something no one can ever take away from me or ever change," Fetzer said. "She had so much integrity and always taught us to do the right thing, no matter what."

By the time Jody Adams-Birch made the trek up Interstate 75 to Knoxville in 1990 after a standout career at Bradley Central High School, the Lady Vols were a powerhouse.

"It was a dream of mine to play for Pat, and I was able to fulfill that," Adams-Birch, now the Wichita State women's head coach, said Tuesday.

Adams-Birch was the starting point guard on Tennessee's 1991 national championship team. She recalled Summitt kicking her out of practice on a certain occasion but also going out of her way to help the young point guard with her communication skills.

"That was mentoring," Adams-Birch said. "It was not part of her job description. It was teaching, and that's what you loved about her, is that she mentored you."

Meigs County native Misty Greene won three national championships in her three seasons playing under Summitt from 1995 to 1998 and is now a middle school boys' basketball coach in Garner, N.C., a role she said she wouldn't have without Summitt.

"What she's done for women's athletics in general, it's amazing," Greene said. "We wouldn't be where we are today without her. She's a pioneer."

Scruggs agreed that Summitt will be remembered publicly as a pioneer and someone who challenged, someone who led.

"But I think for many of us who played for her, the lasting thing will be the family," Scruggs said. "I didn't play with kids that won the first national championship. I didn't play with them. But when the team gets together, people across the decades interact with each other.

"Those of us who were those four seniors on that first team could have easily been a speck in the spectrum of all that's happened over the course of her lifetime and career, but she said, 'Once a Lady Vol, always a Lady Vol,' and it's true. We're all part of that 161 players who played for her, and she made that happen. We couldn't have done it without her."

Contact David Cobb at dcobb@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6249.