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.