Pat Summitt dead at age 64

canderson

Mr. Brightside
SoSH Member
Jul 16, 2005
39,431
Harrisburg, Pa.
After battling Alzheimer's legendary Tennessee women's coach - and a coach who really changed college athletics - has passed away. May she rest in peace.

ESPN has a pretty good story up on just show legendary Summit was.

On a side note my grandmother suffered from Alzheimer's and then dementia. It's beyond awful. I hope upon hope they find some remedy to slow it/stop it from attacking so many.
 

Dehere

Member
SoSH Member
Apr 25, 2010
3,143
Wow, only 64? Shows how successful she was at a young age. She's been a name for so long I would have guessed her to be ten years older. What a giant.
 

KingChre

New Member
Jul 31, 2009
130
After battling Alzheimer's legendary Tennessee women's coach - and a coach who really changed college athletics - has passed away. May she rest in peace.

ESPN has a pretty good story up on just show legendary Summit was.

On a side note my grandmother suffered from Alzheimer's and then dementia. It's beyond awful. I hope upon hope they find some remedy to slow it/stop it from attacking so many.
I also lost my grandmother to Alzheimer's. In following this story, I couldn't help but think that Pat's passing is both a blessing for her and her family. What a terrible, awful disease that needs as much funding as possible.
 

garlan5

Member
SoSH Member
May 13, 2009
2,684
Virginia
My Grandmother also suffers from this. She's been dealing with it for a few years and it is very rapid moving disease. With that said I too was surprised by Summitts passing. Maybe because I thought she was older or because I thought she had been in the public eye recently. I guess that wasn't the case. I also didn't realize she was diagnosed in 2011.seems like 2 years ago. My ignorance.
 

JoePoulson

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Gold Supporter
SoSH Member
Feb 28, 2006
2,755
Orlando, FL
Watching her dominating UT teams in the 90's was a lot of fun, along with her budding rivalry with Geno. The Razorbacks made the Final Four in 1998, only to get waxed by the (eventual) 39-0, three-time champ Volunteers, with one of their all-time teams. I was out of college by then, but was still living in Arkansas. Obviously the Hogs weren't supposed to be there as a #9 seed (and #1 Stanford lost, at home, to #16 Hawaii in the opener), but it was a fun ride and we knew no one was beating that UT team.

She's the reason I'm a fan of women's basketball. Not a HUGE fan, mind you. But I know a lot about it, I enjoy watching it (occasionally), and I respect the hell out of those women...all thanks to Pat Summitt. She's a legend, and I'm glad her suffering is over.
 

luckysox

Indiana Jones
SoSH Member
Apr 21, 2009
8,075
S.E. Pennsylvania
It's hard to put into words how much impact Pat Summitt had on women's and girl's basketball, and therefore how much impact she had on me. I grew up with Pat Summitt as the be-all and end-all of Women's Hoops. At AAU tournaments, high school leagues, state summer games and different camps around the country, if you were a 14, 15 or 16 year old with a little talent and a lot of work ethic, Pat and UT were the ultimate dream. Now, I was a relatively short, relatively slow kid who could maybe shoot a little, and to play for Pat you needed to be a lot more than I ever could be. But I still cared about Pat Summitt and dreamed about getting tossed out of the gym by her. I dreamed about getting a hug from her at the end of a national Title game. I took hundreds of shots in my driveway pretending to be under her watchful eye. She was the light and the way for girls who played basketball who wanted to become women who played basketball. And what a role model. She was the main cog in a slow machine that leveled the playing field. Between 1992 and 1996, even my crappy little D-I team (Hofstra) started to treat their women's program better, and I attribute much of that slow change to Pat and the success of the Tennessee program. Our lockers got upgraded after my freshman year and the locker room went from something that resembled a small jail cell to a classy, legitimate space that allowed us some comfort. It was still small, but it felt like the Ritz to us. And we worked even harder after it was completed. We wanted to make sure we deserved it. In my sophomore year, we were allowed to use the formerly men's only weight room, and our Coach fought to get us court time that was not always scheduled around the men's team. And she won. We worked our asses off in those spaces because we had something to live up to, something even bigger than ourselves. Like Pat, we were working for ourselves, and for those who would come after us. We started flying to some away games (like Maine, which, if you've ever driven to Bangor in the winter, from Long Island, you might understand the need for the plane), and entered more legitimate tournaments in places that were more than 2 hours away. What it all added up to was respect. We began to get respect. We worked our asses off, just as hard as the men's team, and we felt like we deserved the same treatment. I attribute these changes, in large part, to Pat Summitt. Her whole deal was, "We will work harder than anyone else, and we don't need your help or your pity, but we damn well deserve the respect that comes with the hard work." The "We" meant the UT women's team, but it also meant all women's programs, all female athletes. It meant UCONN and Virginia and NC State, sure, but it also meant Hofstra and BU and Ithaca College and the community college next door. It meant the high school in East Bumble Squat, PA and it meant Christ the King in NYC. Pat Summitt's "WE" was all of us. She worked like she did for all of us. And she inspired us to work that hard for the next in line. I'll always be grateful to have grown up in a basketball world when Pat Summitt was Queen. I owe a significant portion of my young life and the dreams that came with it, to her. And I promise you that almost every single woman of my generation who played college basketball will say the same thing.

I cried for Pat today, and for this world without her. I cried for her family and her players, all of them. And I cried for the young girls on the courts right now all over this country that will never live in a basketball world with Pat Summitt as Queen. She was a once-in-a-lifetime human being, and the world is a lesser place today.
 
Dec 21, 2015
1,410
A legend, the only real peer to Geno - he's probably bawling his eyes out right now. It looked like she was still mostly with-it in 2013 and 2014, so thankfully she didn't suffer all that long, and it seemed like she could understand and appreciate the tributes they gave her once she resigned.

40 consecutive years of 20+ wins, including all 32 under Summitt. Eight national titles. And has probably done more to advance the cause, quality and equality of women's athletics than just about anyone else.
 
Dec 21, 2015
1,410
Geno:

"From a competitive standpoint, it was the one program, the one game that you... each year you kinda measured yourself and your team. 'Hey, when we play that game, we'll know if we're good enough to win a national championship or not,” Auriemma told ESPN. “From a personal standpoint I think you can see how difficult it was back then for a woman to try to do something that really no one had ever done before, and no one thought you could do it. Trying to juggle being a mom and being a coach and being a representative for the game. From all the different aspects of looking at what her career was, there were a lot of things that she was the first. There were other people that did it, but nobody did it better or did it longer.

.... The game of women's basketball was pretty much defined, and other people have defined it for very, very short periods of time, but from the time I got to Virginia in 1981 to when Pat stopped coaching, she was the defining figure of the game of women's basketball. Lots of people coach the game, but very few get to define the game."
 

soxfan121

JAG
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Dec 22, 2002
23,043
It's hard to put into words how much impact Pat Summitt had on women's and girl's basketball, and therefore how much impact she had on me. I grew up with Pat Summitt as the be-all and end-all of Women's Hoops. At AAU tournaments, high school leagues, state summer games and different camps around the country, if you were a 14, 15 or 16 year old with a little talent and a lot of work ethic, Pat and UT were the ultimate dream. Now, I was a relatively short, relatively slow kid who could maybe shoot a little, and to play for Pat you needed to be a lot more than I ever could be. But I still cared about Pat Summitt and dreamed about getting tossed out of the gym by her. I dreamed about getting a hug from her at the end of a national Title game. I took hundreds of shots in my driveway pretending to be under her watchful eye. She was the light and the way for girls who played basketball who wanted to become women who played basketball. And what a role model. She was the main cog in a slow machine that leveled the playing field. Between 1992 and 1996, even my crappy little D-I team (Hofstra) started to treat their women's program better, and I attribute much of that slow change to Pat and the success of the Tennessee program. Our lockers got upgraded after my freshman year and the locker room went from something that resembled a small jail cell to a classy, legitimate space that allowed us some comfort. It was still small, but it felt like the Ritz to us. And we worked even harder after it was completed. We wanted to make sure we deserved it. In my sophomore year, we were allowed to use the formerly men's only weight room, and our Coach fought to get us court time that was not always scheduled around the men's team. And she won. We worked our asses off in those spaces because we had something to live up to, something even bigger than ourselves. Like Pat, we were working for ourselves, and for those who would come after us. We started flying to some away games (like Maine, which, if you've ever driven to Bangor in the winter, from Long Island, you might understand the need for the plane), and entered more legitimate tournaments in places that were more than 2 hours away. What it all added up to was respect. We began to get respect. We worked our asses off, just as hard as the men's team, and we felt like we deserved the same treatment. I attribute these changes, in large part, to Pat Summitt. Her whole deal was, "We will work harder than anyone else, and we don't need your help or your pity, but we damn well deserve the respect that comes with the hard work." The "We" meant the UT women's team, but it also meant all women's programs, all female athletes. It meant UCONN and Virginia and NC State, sure, but it also meant Hofstra and BU and Ithaca College and the community college next door. It meant the high school in East Bumble Squat, PA and it meant Christ the King in NYC. Pat Summitt's "WE" was all of us. She worked like she did for all of us. And she inspired us to work that hard for the next in line. I'll always be grateful to have grown up in a basketball world when Pat Summitt was Queen. I owe a significant portion of my young life and the dreams that came with it, to her. And I promise you that almost every single woman of my generation who played college basketball will say the same thing.

I cried for Pat today, and for this world without her. I cried for her family and her players, all of them. And I cried for the young girls on the courts right now all over this country that will never live in a basketball world with Pat Summitt as Queen. She was a once-in-a-lifetime human being, and the world is a lesser place today.
This post is why there should be a Post Hall of Fame. I got choked up and shed a tear for Pat, and for you, while reading this. Thank you.
 

tims4wins

PN23's replacement
SoSH Member
Jul 15, 2005
37,059
Hingham, MA
Funny, I was reading an article on ESPN and it had basically the same sentiment. So it's not just a one-off, it seems like all hoops-playing girls felt this way. A sampling:

We grew up wanting to impress Pat Summitt.

Pretty much all of us: every young basketball player, at every summer camp, at every tournament, in every nook and cranny of this entire country -- even those of us, or perhaps especially those of us, who would never be good enough to actually play for the Tennessee Lady Vols.

It mattered little that achieving this goal -- impressing Summitt -- was unlikely. The theoretical was motivation enough: Had we played hard enough that Pat Summitt would have been impressed, had she somehow been there?

We held ourselves to her lofty standards, imagining those watchful blue eyes upon us, in cavernous field houses, at random tournaments, in small towns and big cities, all across the country.
 

Kremlin Watcher

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SoSH Member
Sep 20, 2005
5,233
Orleans, MA
We snark a lot at how much college coaches get paid and the outsize influence so many of them have at their respective schools (the highest-paid public employee in most of the 50 states is a college coach), but they truly do impact a huge number of young lives in such an important way. What an amazing life.
 

Coachster

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 3, 2009
8,945
New Hampshire
Luckysox, thank you for the terrific post.

I've been coaching women's college athletics for 29 years. I'm not a basketball coach (my sport is way down on the pecking order) but I'm aware Summitt made a difference for all of us.

Well said.
 

luckysox

Indiana Jones
SoSH Member
Apr 21, 2009
8,075
S.E. Pennsylvania
Funny, I was reading an article on ESPN and it had basically the same sentiment. So it's not just a one-off, it seems like all hoops-playing girls felt this way. A sampling:
That was a great article by Kate Fagan, and thank you for the heads up - I stay away from ESPN most days. I just read it, and encourage all of you to do so: http://espn.go.com/womens-college-basketball/story/_/id/16519567/pat-summitt-inspired-generation-basketball-players and, yeah, that's how every former teammate with whom I played and with whom I am still connected expressed themselves today. I learned the news this morning by checking my Facebook feed and seeing 4 or 5 posts in a row from old high school teammates and college teammates. There were even some from people who I would have NEVER thought would admit to Pat Summitt influencing their lives, and yet there they were. It's a legitimately sad feeling, even though we didn't know her, we didn't play for her. But she was ours, and we were hers in some way, and she knew that. She cared about it. And she did right by all of us.
 

canderson

Mr. Brightside
SoSH Member
Jul 16, 2005
39,431
Harrisburg, Pa.
It's hard to put into words how much impact Pat Summitt had on women's and girl's basketball, and therefore how much impact she had on me. I grew up with Pat Summitt as the be-all and end-all of Women's Hoops. At AAU tournaments, high school leagues, state summer games and different camps around the country, if you were a 14, 15 or 16 year old with a little talent and a lot of work ethic, Pat and UT were the ultimate dream. Now, I was a relatively short, relatively slow kid who could maybe shoot a little, and to play for Pat you needed to be a lot more than I ever could be. But I still cared about Pat Summitt and dreamed about getting tossed out of the gym by her. I dreamed about getting a hug from her at the end of a national Title game. I took hundreds of shots in my driveway pretending to be under her watchful eye. She was the light and the way for girls who played basketball who wanted to become women who played basketball. And what a role model. She was the main cog in a slow machine that leveled the playing field. Between 1992 and 1996, even my crappy little D-I team (Hofstra) started to treat their women's program better, and I attribute much of that slow change to Pat and the success of the Tennessee program. Our lockers got upgraded after my freshman year and the locker room went from something that resembled a small jail cell to a classy, legitimate space that allowed us some comfort. It was still small, but it felt like the Ritz to us. And we worked even harder after it was completed. We wanted to make sure we deserved it. In my sophomore year, we were allowed to use the formerly men's only weight room, and our Coach fought to get us court time that was not always scheduled around the men's team. And she won. We worked our asses off in those spaces because we had something to live up to, something even bigger than ourselves. Like Pat, we were working for ourselves, and for those who would come after us. We started flying to some away games (like Maine, which, if you've ever driven to Bangor in the winter, from Long Island, you might understand the need for the plane), and entered more legitimate tournaments in places that were more than 2 hours away. What it all added up to was respect. We began to get respect. We worked our asses off, just as hard as the men's team, and we felt like we deserved the same treatment. I attribute these changes, in large part, to Pat Summitt. Her whole deal was, "We will work harder than anyone else, and we don't need your help or your pity, but we damn well deserve the respect that comes with the hard work." The "We" meant the UT women's team, but it also meant all women's programs, all female athletes. It meant UCONN and Virginia and NC State, sure, but it also meant Hofstra and BU and Ithaca College and the community college next door. It meant the high school in East Bumble Squat, PA and it meant Christ the King in NYC. Pat Summitt's "WE" was all of us. She worked like she did for all of us. And she inspired us to work that hard for the next in line. I'll always be grateful to have grown up in a basketball world when Pat Summitt was Queen. I owe a significant portion of my young life and the dreams that came with it, to her. And I promise you that almost every single woman of my generation who played college basketball will say the same thing.

I cried for Pat today, and for this world without her. I cried for her family and her players, all of them. And I cried for the young girls on the courts right now all over this country that will never live in a basketball world with Pat Summitt as Queen. She was a once-in-a-lifetime human being, and the world is a lesser place today.
Thank you - such an amazing post.

I went to SFA, which was for many years one of the top 5 women's college basketball programs. Because of that I got to meet her and see how much she spread the sport. She is a Mount Rushmore of collegiate coaches.
 

RG33

Certain Class of Poster
SoSH Member
Nov 28, 2005
7,199
CA
It's hard to put into words how much impact Pat Summitt had on women's and girl's basketball, and therefore how much impact she had on me. I grew up with Pat Summitt as the be-all and end-all of Women's Hoops. At AAU tournaments, high school leagues, state summer games and different camps around the country, if you were a 14, 15 or 16 year old with a little talent and a lot of work ethic, Pat and UT were the ultimate dream. Now, I was a relatively short, relatively slow kid who could maybe shoot a little, and to play for Pat you needed to be a lot more than I ever could be. But I still cared about Pat Summitt and dreamed about getting tossed out of the gym by her. I dreamed about getting a hug from her at the end of a national Title game. I took hundreds of shots in my driveway pretending to be under her watchful eye. She was the light and the way for girls who played basketball who wanted to become women who played basketball. And what a role model. She was the main cog in a slow machine that leveled the playing field. Between 1992 and 1996, even my crappy little D-I team (Hofstra) started to treat their women's program better, and I attribute much of that slow change to Pat and the success of the Tennessee program. Our lockers got upgraded after my freshman year and the locker room went from something that resembled a small jail cell to a classy, legitimate space that allowed us some comfort. It was still small, but it felt like the Ritz to us. And we worked even harder after it was completed. We wanted to make sure we deserved it. In my sophomore year, we were allowed to use the formerly men's only weight room, and our Coach fought to get us court time that was not always scheduled around the men's team. And she won. We worked our asses off in those spaces because we had something to live up to, something even bigger than ourselves. Like Pat, we were working for ourselves, and for those who would come after us. We started flying to some away games (like Maine, which, if you've ever driven to Bangor in the winter, from Long Island, you might understand the need for the plane), and entered more legitimate tournaments in places that were more than 2 hours away. What it all added up to was respect. We began to get respect. We worked our asses off, just as hard as the men's team, and we felt like we deserved the same treatment. I attribute these changes, in large part, to Pat Summitt. Her whole deal was, "We will work harder than anyone else, and we don't need your help or your pity, but we damn well deserve the respect that comes with the hard work." The "We" meant the UT women's team, but it also meant all women's programs, all female athletes. It meant UCONN and Virginia and NC State, sure, but it also meant Hofstra and BU and Ithaca College and the community college next door. It meant the high school in East Bumble Squat, PA and it meant Christ the King in NYC. Pat Summitt's "WE" was all of us. She worked like she did for all of us. And she inspired us to work that hard for the next in line. I'll always be grateful to have grown up in a basketball world when Pat Summitt was Queen. I owe a significant portion of my young life and the dreams that came with it, to her. And I promise you that almost every single woman of my generation who played college basketball will say the same thing.

I cried for Pat today, and for this world without her. I cried for her family and her players, all of them. And I cried for the young girls on the courts right now all over this country that will never live in a basketball world with Pat Summitt as Queen. She was a once-in-a-lifetime human being, and the world is a lesser place today.
As others have said, amazing post LuckySox. Thanks for sharing. Really put things in a new light for me with regards to Coach Summit.
 

luckysox

Indiana Jones
SoSH Member
Apr 21, 2009
8,075
S.E. Pennsylvania
Thank you - such an amazing post.

I went to SFA, which was for many years one of the top 5 women's college basketball programs. Because of that I got to meet her and see how much she spread the sport. She is a Mount Rushmore of collegiate coaches.
I have a book somewhere in this house, a big coffee table book that I got in high school and the name of which I cannot remember, that is about the dawning of the "new age" of women's basketball, back when Pat was at her best. Muffett McGrraw from Notre Dame is in there, as is a young Geno, and Tara Vanderveer from Stanford and Debi Ryan from Virginia - and many more, including Gary Blair from SFA. It's mostly snippets of text about coaches and players and the changing game, with tons and tons of really good pictures. It was my first introduction to SFA, and there are several pictures of players diving for balls, or with ice all over their legs in their hotel rooms - that kind of stuff. I remember thinking that it all looked so glorious. A few years later, I was the moron with ice all over my body. I only say moron because my body has betrayed me since those days, and in many ways because of those days. But I was right...it was glorious, even for a lowly bench player on a partial scholarship. I would not trade the memories for anything. Yet another thing I can thank Pat Summitt for - I love reliving those days.

Thanks for the kind words, folks.
 

luckysox

Indiana Jones
SoSH Member
Apr 21, 2009
8,075
S.E. Pennsylvania
I've heard this one a few times. I often wonder just what Bruce Pearl thought. There are probably quite a few men's team coaches out there who we be...displeased. I was always under the impression, though, that Pat and Bruce were pretty close while he was there and that he really did look up to her. I imagine the locker room afterwards was pretty funny.