Photo Gallery
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.
Summitt's year-by-year record
1974-75: 16-8 1975-76: 16-11 1976-77: 28-5 (AIAW semifinals) 1977-78: 27-4 (AIAW regional first round) 1978-79: 30-9 (AIAW semifinals) 1979-80: 33-5 (AIAW runner-up) 1980-81: 25-6 (AIAW runner-up) 1981-82: 22-10 (NCAA semifinals) 1982-83: 25-8 (NCAA regional final) 1983-84: 23-10 (NCAA runner-up) 1984-85: 22-10 (NCAA regional semifinal) 1985-86: 24-10 (NCAA semifinal) 1986-87: 28-6 (NCAA champion) 1987-88: 31-3 (NCAA semifinal) 1988-89: 35-2 (NCAA champion) 1989-90: 27-6 (NCAA regional final) 1990-91: 30-5 (NCAA champion) 1991-92: 28-3 (NCAA regional semifinal) 1992-93: 29-3 (NCAA regional final) 1993-94: 31-2 (NCAA regional semifinal) 1994-95: 34-3 (NCAA runner-up) 1995-96: 32-4 (NCAA champion) 1996-97: 29-10 (NCAA champion) 1997-98: 39-0 (NCAA champion) 1998-99: 31-3 (NCAA regional final) 1999-2000: 33-4 (NCAA runner-up) 2000-01: 31-3 (NCAA regional semifinal) 2001-02: 29-5 (NCAA semifinal) 2002-03: 33-5 (NCAA runner-up) 2003-04: 31-4 (NCAA runner-up) 2004-05: 30-5 (NCAA champion) 2005-06: 31-5 (NCAA regional final) 2006-07: 34-3 (NCAA champion) 2007-08: 36-2 (NCAA champion) 2008-09: 22-11 (NCAA first round) 2009-10: 32-3 (NCAA regional semifinal) 2010-11: 34-3 (NCAA regional final) 2011-12: 27-9 (NCAA regional final)
KNOXVILLE - It's impossible to quantify the width and depth of Pat Summitt's impact.
Perhaps Holly Warlick, the woman who succeeded Summitt as Tennessee's women's basketball coach, put it best Tuesday morning, hours after the coaching icon - who won 1,098 games and eight national championships with the Lady Volunteers - died after a five-year battle with early onset dementia, Alzheimer's type.
"The impact that Pat Summitt's had on my life," Warlick said, "has just been profound."
How many people, in basketball and beyond, can say the same?
"It's a very sad day, but I just reflect back on all the lives she's touched," Warlick continued. "All the texts and the phone calls I've gotten, it simply amazes me the impact Pat has made in so many people's lives - and a lot of people's lives that Pat didn't even know.
"That's the gift God gave her, and she will greatly be missed."
On Tennessee's campus, across the street from where the plaza featuring Summitt's bronze statue morphed into a memorial with flowers, balloons and more, the legendary coach's former players and colleagues mixed smiles and laughs with tears and emotions as they recounted stories and memories.
Donna Thomas, a longtime administrator and former Lady Vols manager, remembered when Summitt woke her at the team hotel after a loss in a tournament in Las Vegas.
"Come with me," Summitt told Thomas. "I have to win at something tonight."
Summitt then won $300 playing blackjack and told Thomas, "OK, I'm good."
Phillip Fulmer, the former Tennessee football coach, watched Summitt evolve from a 22-year-old coach driving her team's van to road games and doing her team's laundry into the icon she became. He recalled the parents of players he was recruiting asking to meet Summitt rather than tour the football facilities and returning the favor to his coaching companion in swaying prep star Kristen "Ace" Clement to pick the Lady Vols.
Fulmer's more recent memory was the two Tennessee-born icons dancing the "Tennessee Waltz" a couple of years ago at the Jasper Highlands, the mountain community just west of Chattanooga where a park is named in Summitt's honor.
"We should have our time to mourn, which everybody is," Fulmer said. "We should have our time to celebrate, which will come soon enough. I know what Pat would say: 'Let's go do something about this.' My mom has Alzheimer's, and I've been involved with Alzheimer's for some period of time in trying to support the research and those kinds of things.
"(Summitt) would say, 'Enough of this. Let's get the funding and let's go defeat this disease.' I was blessed to see her recently, about three or four days ago, and I promise you that's not the way she would want to be remembered."
Since her diagnosis in 2011, Summitt has worked to raise millions through her foundation, whose goal is to create awareness and fund research for a cure to Alzheimer's.
According to former Tennessee women's athletic director Joan Cronan, Summitt viewed her diagnosis as a way to extend her legacy beyond her win-loss record.
"When she was diagnosed with this disease," said Cronan, who worked with Summitt for 33 years, "she looked at me - she didn't give me 'the Stare' - but she looked me directly in the eye and said, 'Joan, I thought I was going to be remembered for winning basketball games, but I hope I'm remembered for making a difference in this disease.'"
Added Fulmer: "We've got to take this fight on, and Pat's the face of that."
Summitt was the face of her program, her university and her sport.
"As a high school player I watched her," former Tennessee point guard Kara Lawson said. "I didn't watch the players - they had some good ones - but I remember watching the games thinking, 'Gosh, I want to play for that lady. I don't know who she is, but I want to play for her.'
"One of Pat's greatest strengths was her ability to read people and hone in on what made them tick and what kind of personality they were. I knew if I went to play for Pat that I would reach my potential. I knew that she would get every ounce out of me. It wasn't a bet; it was a sure thing."
The local and national reaction Tuesday to Summitt's passing, whether it was words of respect, tales of her fiery fury or accounts of her selfless compassion, befitted the path she paved and the legacy she leaves.
"No other coach has ever impacted a sport the way she impacted women's basketball," Tennessee athletic director Dave Hart said, "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."
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.
In her own words: Memorable Pat Summitt quotes
"I won 1,098 games, and eight national championships, and coached in four different decades. But what I see are not the numbers. I see their faces." "Here's how I'm going to beat you. I'm going to outwork you. That's it. That's all there is to it." "You can't always be the most talented person in the room. But you can be the most competitive." "Players don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." "When you grow up on a dairy farm, cows don't take a day off. So you work every day and my dad always said, 'No one can outwork you.'" "We do not win championships with girls. We win with competitors" "If I ain't happy, nobody's happy." "Teamwork is what makes common people capable of uncommon results." "I remember every player - every single one - who wore the Tennessee orange, a shade that our rivals hate, a bold, aggravating color that you can usually find on a roadside crew, 'or in a correctional institution,' as my friend Wendy Larry jokes. But to us the color is a flag of pride, because it identifies us as Lady Vols and therefore as women of an unmistakable type. Fighters. I remember how many of them fought for a better life for themselves. I just met them halfway." "Individual success is a myth. No one succeeds all by herself." "There is nothing wrong with having competitive instincts. They are survival instincts." "Silence is a form of communication, too. Sometimes less is more." "I want to continue to do is to help these young women be successful. You don't just say goodbye at the end of their playing careers and end it there." "The absolute heart of loyalty is to value those people who tell you the truth, not just those people who tell you what you want to hear. In fact, you should value them most. Because they have paid you the compliment of leveling with you and assuming you can handle it." "I'm not sure, when it got right down to it, I would have ever left Tennessee. It's hard to leave home." "You win in life with people." "You can't pick and choose the days that you feel like being responsible. It's not something that disappears when you're tired." "If I'm not leading by example, then I'm not doing the right thing. And I want to always do the right thing." "Most people get excited about games, but I've got to be excited about practice, because that's my classroom." "There is always someone better than you. Whatever it is that you do for a living, chances are, you will run into a situation in which you are not as talented as the person next to you. That's when being a competitor can make a difference in your fortunes." "Admit to and make yourself accountable for mistakes. How can you improve if you're never wrong?" "Discipline helps you finish a job, and finishing is what separates excellent work from average work." "Attitude is a choice. What you think you can do, whether positive or negative, confident or scared, will most likely happen."
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.