Background

Pat Summitt was born Patricia Sue Head on June 14, 1952 in Clarksville, Tennessee, United States; the daughter of James Richard Head, a self-employed businessman, and Hazel Albright Head, a homemaker. She had four siblings - brothers Tommy, Charles, and Kenneth, and a sister, Linda.

Education

Summit's family ran a farm. She participated in all the chores necessary on a farm and learned how to hold her own against her older brothers. She also learned basketball from them. Most evenings, after completing their chores, she and her brothers would climb the twenty-foot barn ladder to the top of the hayloft and play two-on-two basketball. She loved the game but, once she reached high school, she found out that her school district did not offer girls' basketball. Her father, supportive of her talent, moved the family across the county line to a school district that had girls' basketball.

Summit graduated from Cheatham County High in Ashland, in 1970. She then attended the University of Tennessee-Martin, earning a bachelor's degree in physical education in 1974. As a college student, she played with the Lady Pacers, the university's women's basketball team. As a junior, she played in the United States World University Games, held in the Soviet Union, winning the silver medal. She hoped to play on the United States Olympic team, but those hopes were nearly dashed when, during her senior year, she suffered a knee injury. An orthopedic surgeon told Summitt that she would not be able to play basketball again. But Summitt would not give up.

In 1975, Pat received a Master of Science degree from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

Career

After graduation, Summitt was offered a job as the women's basketball assistant coach for her alma mater. After the head coach quit, Summitt, just twenty-two years old, was made head coach. She had never coached a game before and had no assistant coach. But she pushed her fear aside and threw herself into this new challenge. In addition to coaching, she also taught physical education courses. At the same time, she worked on healing her knee and training herself for her Olympic dream. She worked out twice a day, losing twenty-seven pounds. Within a year, her knee was well enough for her to compete in the 1975 Pan American Games. The United States team won the gold medal. She was then named to the United States Olympic team and selected co-captain. The team claimed the silver medal in Montreal.

Summitt returned to her duties as head coach of the University of Tennessee-Martin's Lady Volunteers (often called simply the Lady Vols), guiding the team to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Final Four. The Lady Vols finished 16-8 that season. She continued to play herself throughout the rest of the 1970s, playing in the World Championships and the Pan American Games. She looked forward to the 1980 Olympics in Moscow but was forced to sit this Olympics out since the United States boycotted the 1980 games in protest of the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. But in 1984 Summitt went to the Olympics once again, this time as a coach. The United States team won the gold medal, securing its place in history as the first United States women's basketball team to take home the gold.

Her coaching success continued at the University of Tennessee, where she won the NCAA championships in 1987 and 1989. In the 1990s, the Lady Vols won four NCAA championships: 1991, 1996, 1997, and 1998. The team became the first women's basketball team ever to win three NCAA titles in a row.

In the 2000s, Pat worked as a consultant to the WNBA, advising on player selection. In 1999, she also worked as a commentator on the ESPN sports network.

In January 2003, Summitt became the first women's basketball coach to pass the 800-win mark. Her record at that time stood at an astonishing 800 wins to only 161 losses in 29 seasons. By then she also had six national championships to her credit.

In 2005, she earned her 880th victory, breaking Dean Smith's record. Four years later, she became the first NCAA basketball coach to register 1,000 career wins.

In 2011, Summitt was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Although she continued coaching for one more season, many of her duties were handled by her assistants. Summitt stepped down as head coach in April 2012, but she remained a part of the Lady Vols' coaching staff in an advisory role under the title "head coach emeritus." Summitt finished her coaching career with 1,098 wins in 1,306 games coached in AIAW and NCAA Division I play.

In addition to collegiate basketball, Summitt released several self-help books, such as Reach for the Summit and Raise the Roof (each with Sally Jenkins).

Achievements

• 

  Pat Summitt was considered one of the best college-level coaches. She achieved 1,098 career wins, the most in college basketball history upon her retirement.
  
  Summitt was recognized with numerous awards. She was named coach of the year three times by the Southeastern Conference (SEC) - 1993, 1995, and 1998. She became the first women's college basketball coach to grace the cover of Sports Illustrated in 1997. The following year, she was named both the Naismith Coach of the Year and the Sporting News Coach of the Year. In 1999, she was inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame. Summitt was subsequently inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2000, only the fourth women's basketball coach to be inducted. Also in 2000, she was named the Naismith Coach of the Century.
  
  In January 2003, Summitt became the first female coach to win eight hundred games. The following season, she coached her one-thousandth game.
  
  In 2009, Pat was placed at number 11 on the Sporting News list of the 50 Greatest Coaches of All Time in all sports. She was the only woman on the list. In 2012, Summitt was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by then-President Barack Obama. She also received the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the 2012 ESPY Awards. In 2013, she was inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Sum It Up: A Thousand and Ninety-Eight Victories, a Couple of Irrelevant Losses, and a Life in Perspective

    (Pat Summitt, the all-time winningest coach in NCAA basket...)

    2013
  • Reach for the Summit

    (In Reach for the Summit, Pat presented her formula for su...)

    1998
  • Raise the Roof: The Inspiring Inside Story of the Tennessee Lady Vols' Historic 1997-1998 Threepeat Season

    ("It wasn't a team. It was a tent revival." So says Pat Su...)

    1998

Religion

Summitt was raised in a Methodist church in rural Tennessee.

Views

Pat Summitt created a foundation to raise money for Alzheimer's research and worked to raise awareness of the disease. After her death, the Pat Summitt Alzheimer's Clinic was opened at the University of Tennessee Medical Center, with funds from her Foundation.

Quotations: "The willingness to experiment with change may be the most essential ingredient to success at anything."

"Attitude is a choice. Think positive thoughts daily. Believe in yourself."

"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."

"It's harder to stay on top than it is to make the climb. Continue to seek new goals."

"You can't always be the most talented person in the room. But you can be the most competitive."

"Teamwork is what makes common people capable of uncommon results."

"It is what it is. But, it will be what you make it."

"Attitude is a choice. What you think you can do, whether positive or negative, confident or scared, will most likely happen."

"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."

"Most people get excited about games, but I've got to be excited about practice, because that's my classroom."

"You spend more of the game preparing to win in the final seconds. And that is what separates winners from losers."

"I hate to sound this way but, 'Why me? Why me with dementia?'"

"No one feels strong when she examines her own weakness. But in facing weakness, you learn how much there is in you, and you find real strength."

"If I was renowned as a tough coach, I also wanted to be a caring one."

"The greatest strength of any human being is to recognize his or her own weaknesses. When you identify your weaknesses, you can begin to remedy them - or at least figure out how to work around them."

"There is an old saying: a champion is someone who is willing to be uncomfortable."

"Teamwork doesn't come naturally. It must be taught."

"Success is a project that's always under construction."

"There is nothing wrong with having competitive instincts. They are survival instincts."

"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."

"If I'm not leading by example, then I'm not doing the right thing. And I want to always do the right thing."

"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.'"

"Nine-tenths of discipline is having the patience to do things right."

"You're wondering what a bale of hay has to do with success. Well, there's a trick to loading hay. You have to use your knee. What you do is, you put your right knee behind it and half kick it up in the air. That way you get some lift on it. ... My point is, there are certain ways to make a hard job easier."

"Success lulls you. It makes the most ambitious of us complacent and sloppy. In a way, you have to cultivate a kind of amnesia and forget all of your previous prosperity."

"I think I can help others just by my example."

"We do not win championships with girls. We win with competitors."

"Losing strengthens you. It reveals your weaknesses so you can fix them."

"In the absence of feedback, people will fill in the blanks with a negative. They will assume you don't care about them or don't like them."

Membership

Pat Summitt was a member of Chi Omega Sorority.

Personality

Pat Summitt was widely recognized as one of the toughest coaches in college basketball history. She was best known for giving her players an icy stare in response to poor play, known as "The Summitt Stare."

Physical Characteristics: Pat Summitt was 5 ft 10 in (1.8 m) tall.

In 2011, Summitt was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease.

Quotes from others about the person

• Tamika Catchings: "She was the epitome of what being great is all about."

Interests

• cooking

• Sport & Clubs

  golf, running, water-skiing, boating

Connections

In 1980, Pat Summitt married Ross Barnes Summitt II. The couple had one son - Ross Tyler Summitt. Summitt filed for divorce from her husband in 2007.

Father:

James Richard Head

(October 12, 1922 - October 23, 2005)

Mother:

Hazel Albright Head

(October 13, 1925 - January 23, 2019)

ex-spouse:

Ross Barnes Summitt II

Son:

Ross Tyler Summitt

(born September 21, 1990)

Ross Tyler Summitt is a former American college basketball player and coach. He was the head coach for the Louisiana Tech Lady Techsters from 2014 to 2016.

Friend:

Peyton Manning

(born March 24, 1976)

Peyton Manning is a former American football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 18 seasons.

References

• The Final Season: The Perseverance of Pat Summitt With 1,098 wins and eight national championships, Lady Vol Coach Pat Summitt has left a remarkable legacy of perseverance, leadership, and passion for the game - but her victories on the court aren't the only legacy she has left in her wake.
  2016
• Pat Summitt I'm Not! The retired Army officer had played and coached basketball in the Army, so he thought that he could easily adapt what he knew to coach his daughter's basketball teams. Little did he know how hard it would be to transfer his skills.
  2012