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Art Walk @ Argenta Arts District — 07.15
The monthly art walk features live music, local artists and food in the Argenta Arts District. Stores and shops stay open later to accommodate the public.
KNOXVILLE — There’s an obvious reason the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame is located here.
It’s because Pat Summitt coached nearby for nearly four decades.
The legendary former Tennessee’s women’s basketball coach passed away on Tuesday morning following a five-year battle with early onset dementia, Alzheimer’s type, and a career that revolutionized women’s sports and especially women’s basketball.
“She was the defining figure of the game of women’s basketball,” Connecticut women’s coach Geno Auriemma told ESPN on Tuesday morning.
“Lots of people coach the game. But very few get to define the game.”
By winning eight national championships and a combined 32 conference regular-season and tournament titles and graduating 100 percent of the players she coached in her 38 season with the Lady Vols, Summitt set the standard in college coaching.
She took over Tennessee’s program in 1974 as a 22-year old coach, and her early years leading the Lady Vols included driving the team van to games and doing the team’s laundry herself.
Bob Kesling, now the voice of Tennessee’s football and men’s basketball games, was just starting his broadcasting career in 1979, when he had the opportunity to call the Lady Vols’ games on the radio.
He made $15 per game — minus the gas money required to drive to road games — and recalled when it was a success if Tennessee drew 100 fans to games at Stokely Athletics Center.
“It showed you how far she took the program,” Kesling said, “from a day when she was out handing out tickets, basically, just to get people to come to the games, then selling out Thompson-Boling Arena.”
Kesling particularly remembers at game at LSU in 1979, when the women’s game preceded the men’s game as part of a doubleheader. The men’s game was the SEC’s televised game of the week. In those days, that was a big deal.
When the women’s game went into overtime, the officials told Summitt and LSU coach Jinks Coleman they had two options: Play the overtime right away with a five-minute running clock or play it normally after the men’s game ended. They chose the former, and Tennessee lost 85-80 in overtime.
“I’ll never forget Pat’s reaction on the plane,” Kesling recalled. “She was just livid, not about the fact that they lost. She was upset about that, but she was mad because her team, her players and her sport was disrespected.
“I think that was a motivating factor for Pat to make sure that women’s basketball wasn’t treated any more as a stepchild or a secondhand citizen. She talked about that game for years after that, and it never happened again.
“I think it was a real milestone in her career in terms of fighting for her sport and fighting for her players.”
That fight continued throughout her career, as Summitt pushed for her players to receive the same treatment as the men’s team, whether it was the condition of the locker rooms or per diem for meals.
When Thompson-Boling Arena opened, she pushed for the Lady Vols to play there instead of Stokely, and she encouraged other coaches to demand equality with their programs as she did with hers.
“What separates Pat is the fact that without Pat Summitt, women’s athletic in general would not be where they are, in my opinion, and certainly women’s basketball would not be enjoying the success it enjoys it and the visibility that it enjoys now,” Tennessee athletic director Dave Hart said.
“Pat Summitt took women’s basketball and by herself elevated it to an incredible level. No other coach has ever impacted a sport the way she impacted women’s basketball. But she impacted people well beyond sports.
“She didn’t request excellence. She demanded it. And every player she touched, every person she touched took a little bit of that with them having known her.”
The Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame opened in June 1999, shortly after Tennessee won three straight national championships (1996-98) and went 39-0 in 1998.
She was part of the inaugural class and was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame a year later — the first time Summitt was eligible for the ballot.
“She was always exemplified being tough, but then showing love. And that’s hard to do,” said Holly Warlick, the current Lady Vols coach who played and coached for Summitt. “That’s hard to teach and be demanding and tough, then turn around and put your arm around them and tell them you love them.
“I know what she’s meant to the Lady Vols. She put this program on the map, and this is what she built. I think she afforded a lot of people the opportunity to say, ‘One day I want to coach, and one day I want to be like Pat Summitt.’
“You’ve got a lot of people out there that are coaching and doing things to impact young kids, and I can’t help but think Pat was a model for a lot of people to use to help build and start their program.”
President Barack Obama on Pat Summitt
Nobody walked off a college basketball court victorious more times than Tennessee’s Pat Summitt. For four decades, she outworked her rivals, made winning an attitude, loved her players like family, and became a role model to millions of Americans, including our two daughters. Her unparalleled success includes never recording a losing season in 38 years of coaching, but also, and more importantly, a 100 percent graduation rate among her players who completed their athletic eligibility. Her legacy, however, is measured much more by the generations of young women and men who admired Pat’s intense competitiveness and character, and as a result found in themselves the confidence to practice hard, play harder, and live with courage on and off the court. As Pat once said in recalling her achievements, “What I see are not the numbers. I see their faces.” Pat learned early on that everyone should be treated the same. When she would play basketball against her older brothers in the family barn, they didn’t treat her any differently and certainly didn’t go easy on her. Later, her Hall of Fame career would tell the story of the historic progress toward equality in American athletics that she helped advance. Pat started playing college hoops before Title IX and started coaching before the NCAA recognized women’s basketball as a sport. When she took the helm at Tennessee as a 22-year-old, she had to wash her players’ uniforms; by the time Pat stepped down as the Lady Vols’ head coach, her teams wore eight championship rings and had cut down nets in sold-out stadiums. Pat was a patriot who earned Olympic medals for America as a player and a coach, and I was honored to award her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She was a proud Tennessean who, when she went into labor while on a recruiting visit, demanded the pilot return to Knoxville so her son could be born in her home state. And she was an inspiring fighter. Even after Alzheimer’s started to soften her memory, and she began a public and brave fight against that terrible disease, Pat had the grace and perspective to remind us that “God doesn’t take things away to be cruel. He takes things away to lighten us. He takes things away so we can fly.” Michelle and I send our condolences to Pat Summitt’s family – which includes her former players and fans on Rocky Top and across America.
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.