The world lost a legend this week.
I can’t remember the exact moment or day I first learned about Pat Summitt, but I wish it had been earlier. Since my family didn’t have any ESPN channels, my childhood exposure to women’s college basketball was minimal.
By the time I got to high school in 2009, Pat Summitt was in the tail end of her career at the University of Tennessee, though no one knew that yet. In 2011, she was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s and was forced to retire earlier than she had planned. At the same time, the University of Connecticut’s program was rising in the spotlight.
In retrospect, it feels like an unfortunately missed opportunity. Those 38 years that Pat Summitt coached in Knoxville were historic. With eight national championships and 1,098 victories to her name, Pat Summitt has won the most Division I college basketball games ever, men’s or women’s.
I was too young to really experience it while it was happening and had to learn about it after the fact. I knew the Lady Volunteers consistently put together dominating teams, but I didn’t know much about the woman who started that program and turned it into what I knew.
Even though I wasn’t a dedicated Lady Vols fan and didn’t really know about Pat Summitt any more than I knew about Muffet McGraw, the head coach at Notre Dame, my life was impacted greatly by what she did in Knoxville.
Pat Summitt became the women’s basketball head coach at the University of Tennessee when she was 22 years old. She started soon after Title IX went into effect, and she did not stand for inferior conditions for her players simply because they were women. She helped put women’s college basketball on the map and made the world take notice.
She inspired young girls everywhere to strive for greatness, to work harder than everyone else and to not accept the lie when someone said that girls weren’t supposed to play basketball.
I was one of those girls.
It’s hard to put my love and appreciation for Pat Summitt into words, mostly because I assume that everyone else understands how great she was. I may not have grown up looking up to her, but I grew up looking up to the young women she coached and inspired. In time, I learned about her, and I began to look up to Pat Summitt, too.
Last month I read her memoir, “Sum It Up.” The book went beyond her wins and championships. It focused on her interactions with players, the way she coached to build the Lady Vols program and how she used basketball to show women that they are capable of doing anything they set their mind to. She cared about so much more than just basketball.
Pat Summitt wanted girls and women to know that they were just as capable as boys and men. Instead of simply saying that, she used basketball to show them. She was the definition of a leader. She had found the perfect balance of encouraging and pushing her players, all while leading by example.
After hearing about her passing, I was devastated. I couldn’t believe this woman I looked up to so much was just gone. I’d never met her, and didn’t really follow her career until the end, but the level of respect I have for her is immense.
At the end of the day, I will always be grateful for Pat Summitt’s determination and success. She helped forge the path for women’s sports, especially college basketball, and while women’s sports are still unfortunately not equal to men’s sports, they’re a lot closer because of Pat Summitt.
But we’re not there yet, and to make Pat Summitt proud, we better keep going. As we move forward, people will continue the work that she started; we’ll just be one legend short.
