| Pat Summitt: Coach of the University of Tennessee Lady Volunteers Basketball Team
"She's good enough to coach a men's team."
That is what most of the media says about Pat Summit, and they mean it as a compliment, as if being good enough to coach a men's team is the highest accolate for the female coach whose teams have won 880 games for her (as of March 23, 2005) and made her the winningest coach in NCAA Division I history, with many more years of her career left to go.
This is not the same situation as with golfer Annika Sorenson. In an individual sport such as golf, to be able to 'play with the men' is an accomplishment. But as a coach of student athletes, it's all about recruiting players, ensuring they keep their grades up (not quite the done thing in men's college basketball...), and winning and losing on the court.
Any good coach can coach any team- if the players are not preconditioned to have no respect for the gender of the coach in question. (It is not only male athletes who may feel this way. Not so very long ago a woman's volleyball team voted unanimously to have a male coach because they did not want a woman "telling them what to do.")
Pat Summitt became coach of the Lady Volunteers at age 22. At the time, there were no scholarships for players, and she posted signs around campus calling for students to try out for the team. She drove the bus that took athletes to games, she washed their uniforms, she taped their angles. She spoke to civic groups with six to twelve people in the audience.
And it was from this humble beginning that Pat Summitt built the powerhouse that is the Lady Vols today. By recruiting a winning team from the very beginning, by bringing success to the team, she literally brought respect and legitimacy to the woman's game.
Summitt was born on June 14, 1952 in Henrietta, Tennessee. She was the fourth of five children and the first girl. Her father was a "no-nonsense disciplinarian," she competed with her older brothers and grew up on a family farm that required a tremendous amount of hard work. "In the Head family, good work was expected, not praised. Excuses weren't accepted and laziness wasn't tolerated."
She graduated from Cheatham County High School in Ashland City, Tennessee. In 1974, she received her B.S. in physical education from UT-Martin, and led the Lady Pacers to a 64-29 record over four years.
At the age of 22 she became the head coach at the University of Tennessee. She said in a recent interview, about her first two seasons:
"It was extreme. We were in Alumni Gym. We didn't charge admission. Probably the worst part for the players was that I had to be the trainer and tape their ankles. Jackie Watson tells me she still has scars on her feet. That was challenging in itself. I look back on those years and think about how those were some fun times. At the time, we didn't know that things should be any different than what they were. We thought this was it, and I do not think I had the vision of what things were to come. As I look at it now, it is just incredible with the growth of our program and women's basketball."
View Pat Summitt's website.
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