The ‘Pat-Geno Embrace’ a reminder about real life
The memory is more than four years old now. So many days and games have passed. And yet the clarity — both the images of the day and what it provided us since — should remind us all at least this much: Sports are about win or lose, not life or death.
It was an afternoon in Denver, the day before the women's basketball Final Four, inside Pepsi Center. The events of the day, one of the participating teams practicing for the fans, suddenly became irrelevant. She walked into the arena. He walked over to her. No words were necessary. They simply embraced. And the festering rivalry between them never felt more inconsequential.
Pat Summitt, the game's matriarch, at the time battling early onset dementia, embracing Geno Auriemma, the game's new czar. Funny how when the conversation is really about life and death, win or lose doesn't mean so much anymore. Pat Summitt, 64, died Tuesday. But in one act one Saturday four
years ago, Summitt and Auriemma taught us all that there's still some room left in sports for humanity.
We don't often have the time, patience, or opportunity to ponder the "what does it all mean?" question. But one heartfelt embrace provided a rare, inspiring, legitimate occasion.
I wrote much of what follows the day of The Embrace. It's as true today as it was then.
For many of us in Connecticut, the emergence of women's basketball has only changed everything. It's changed how we watched sports. How we view women. How we spend our money. What we look forward to. How we went from comparative sporting hermits to traveling the country.
Women's basketball has engendered relationships of both genders. It has created lifelong friendships. It has changed our culture. It has changed lives.
And the two people most responsible for the glorious, residual effect hugged each other in perhaps unwitting celebration of changing so many lives.
"Pat Summitt, to me, has impacted every woman of my generation," ESPN analyst Doris Burke said at the time. "Not just college athletes. Women across the board."
That Final Four, in 2012, coincided with the 40th anniversary of Title IX. No other piece of legislation is more responsible for a cultural shift that has delivered women deeper into the mainstream. And no other woman represents Helen Reddy's "I Am Woman" ideal better than Summitt did. She was Pat. Hear her roar. "Title IX is one small piece that has helped change how society views women," Burke said. "Pat Summitt changed the view. I feel indebted to her."
Burke is not alone. And that's why our powerlessness in watching Summitt endure the disease produced such overwhelming sadness.
It has been through much soul searching that the answer to making some sense of Summitt's illness is this: to keep trumpeting the virtues of women's basketball and to learn more about her disease. Take, for example, the message of Damien Barling, husband of ex-Tennessee great Kara Lawson and now an alumnus of the New York Marathon. He ran it for the Alzheimer's Association, raising awareness and raising funds for the disease.
"There are a whole lot more people affected by it than I could have ever imagined," Barling said at the time. "When people donated, it's often been 'in memory of my mother' or grandmother. We've found it incredible how widespread it is.
"It's the seventh leading cause of death, but the most underfunded disease of all those. It gets associated with older people and I think people don't care about it as much. Cancer freaks people out more, for instance, because young people can, and do, get it."
Barling tells a great story about Summitt, suggesting that there was some Julia Sugarbaker off the court, despite that penetrating stare on it.
The Barlings lived "maybe 100 yards from Pat's front door" once. Barling said he was more nervous meeting Summitt than any member of his wife's family.
"The first time I met her I stood up and said, 'Hello Miss Summitt.'" Barling said. "She said, 'Oh, no, honey. It's Pat.'"
Summitt and Auriemma have carried the game. They carried the day that memorable Saturday, too, sharing an embrace all fans of the game would like to have shared.
All of us who enjoy women's basketball, all of us whose lives have been changed by it, lost a de facto family member on Tuesday. Rest in peace, Pat Summitt. And thanks for the education. This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro.