Big debt of gratitude goes out from women in sports
She was much more than basketball. So much more. She encouraged women, she empowered them, she showed them that it was OK to be more, it was OK to be strong.
It was OK to pick up a basketball, a baseball bat, a whistle, a pen. It was OK to be a woman and to love sports.
For that, I thank you with all of my heart, Pat Summitt.
When I saw the news of Summitt’s decline on Monday afternoon, I couldn’t shake her from my mind. I only met her once — well after she had changed the basketball landscape. I was in college in Oklahoma and her Lady Vols were in town to play the Sooners.
She already was a legend by then.
She already had changed things for me and so many like me.
Summitt’s stories are everywhere and there are so many great ones.
She bailed hay on a farm in Tennessee as a young woman. I did the same (or tried to anyway) as a girl on my grandparent’s farm in Texas.
She learned basketball by playing alongside her brothers in a barn at their childhood home. I learned basketball by playing and watching with my brother and the other kids from my neighborhood on the southeast side of San Antonio with an old basketball hoop set up in our driveway.
When she was being inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame in 2000, I was graduating high school and heading to college with dreams of becoming a sports writer — dreams that were realistic thanks to women like her.
Summitt was a pioneer for women who play sports, women who coach them, women who write about them, broadcast
them, celebrate them.
She’s a pioneer for women fighting for respect and equal pay in any business.
A story has circulated over the years about how Summitt, who eventually would make $1.25 million annually to coach the Tennessee women’s basketball team, was asked by school officials about her interest in coaching the men’s team. She said she wasn’t, then asked why that was considered a step up.
Over 38 years of coaching, she won 1,098 games — more than anyone else in the college basketball ranks, regardless of gender. She won eight national championships and she changed countless lives.
Summitt started coaching at Tennessee before basketball wasn’t an NCAA-sanctioned sport. She did it all — she coached the team, drove the bus and washed the players uniforms — all for $250 a week in 1974.
In 1976, she coached the Lady Vols to a winning record while completing her master’s degree in physical education. She married in 1980, had a son a decade later. She showed the world that she could, in fact, do it all.
In a society where women fight for value and respect, Summitt stands out. She had career success and a family when many thought the two couldn’t happen simultaneously.
Summitt changed the game — the one on the court as well as the metaphorical one.
She opened doors, she created possibilities and she made strides for women. She is one of the reasons we can watch women’s basketball on television, earn a living playing sports, be taken seriously as experts of the game. She is one of the reasons millions of little girls can dream of having careers in the sports world and it won’t be far-fetched.
The hashtag #ThankYouPat trended Tuesday. The stories on social media are touching. She meant so much to so many. Her legacy and reach is wider than the girl bailing hay in Tennessee could have imagined, I would guess.
When the news of her death hit, I remembered her ESPY speech in 2012. She was given the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage while she publicly battled Alzheimer’s.
She addressed the crowd and said, “It’s time to fight.”
She fought better than anyone. She didn’t just break barriers, she demolished them. She proved to generations of young females that we could do anything and that we could do it all.
She was a coach — a great one. She was a mother. She was a trailblazer. She was a winner. She was a fighter. #ThankYouPat