There's winning, there's Coach K, and then there's Pat Summitt; a whole other level. The legendary Tennessee basketball coach died at age 64 from complications related to early onset dementia. In her 38 years of coaching, Summitt won the most Division I games of any college basketball coach, ever. Her teams dominated the sport for decades, taking home eight national championships. On the day of her passing, President Obama stated that she "started coaching before the NCAA recognized women's basketball as a sport," but by the time she retired, her teams had "cut down nets in sold-out stadiums." She not only defined this game for years, she changed it forever.

Every girl and every woman who plays or has played sports owes Pat Summitt one thing: a very well deserved and earned thank you.

Well before Title IX was taken seriously, well before there were record rating for women's sports on television, well before there was the dominance of the United States Olympic women's basketball team or the sold-out crowds at the NCAA Women's Final Four, or the glorious rivals of Tennessee and UConn, there was Pat Summitt.

She was a young head coach earning a measly $250 a month in the mid 70s who personally loaded the players' uniforms into the washing machines after each game. She drove the Tennessee team van to and from each game. At a point in time, money was so tight, the players slept in sleeping bags on the other team's gym floor. Summit reflected upon this years later saying, "We played, because we loved the game. We didn't think anything about it." Everything was so new in women's sports back then, especially the game itself.

Many adore the United States women's soccer team and our college women's basketball programs, but there still are dark corners of American life where even now, women in basketball uniforms are ridiculed rather than revered.

This makes Summitt's grand cultural success at Tennessee all the more meaningful. She turned a women's sports team into a national brand house in the 1980s and 90s. She did it not by playing by the old, ladylike rules of women's sports, but by defining her own.

She wasn't subtle. She could be mean. She yelled, a lot at that. She took over every room she entered. She stared down anyone who crossed her, and you never forgot that. She showed that a woman could be tough, unrelenting, and powerful, and that she could be rewarded for it.

Mostly, she wanted to win. She won more than anyone else who has ever coached the college game, male or female. She wasn't just a woman's basketball coach, she was a basketball coach that just happened to be a woman.

By every measure, Pat Summitt was a success. She is sadly gone, but everything she worked for lives on.

Every single woman out there has one thing to say: Thank you Coach Summitt.

Your name will forever live on.

“It’s harder to stay on top than it is to make the climb. Continue to seek new goals.” — Pat Summitt