Pat Summitt

She learned the game on a dairy farm in Clarksville, Tennessee, on a hoop her father put up in the barn, starting at six. Clarksville had no girls' team, so when she reached high school the family moved to the next county over so she could play at Cheatham County. All three of her brothers went to college on athletic scholarships. There were none for women in 1970, two years before Title IX, so her parents paid her way to the University of Tennessee at Martin, where she made All-American for a program still on its first coach. In 1976 she co-captained the United States at the first Olympic women's basketball tournament and came home with a silver medal. She was 24.

She got the Tennessee job in 1974 because the previous coach quit and she was standing there. She was 22, four of her players were within a year of her age, the pay was 250 dollars a month, and she washed the uniforms herself, uniforms the program had bought the year before with the proceeds of a doughnut sale. She drove the van to road games and once slept with her team on mats on an opposing gym floor. Thirty-eight seasons later she had 1,098 wins against 208 losses, eight national championships, 18 Final Fours, 16 regular-season conference titles and 16 conference tournament titles, no losing season, and no year in which the team missed the tournament. Every player who finished her eligibility at Tennessee left with a degree.

The Summitt Stare was a real coaching instrument, and she used it for decades, though late on she said she had stopped shouting as much as she once did. Tennessee twice asked whether she would rather coach the men, once in the 1990s and again in 2001. She said no both times. What the job cost is harder to itemize. She scheduled top-10 opponents more than 250 times. She filed for divorce in 2007. In May 2011, at 58, she was told she had early-onset Alzheimer's disease. She coached one more season while her assistant ran most of it and columnists in Knoxville and Nashville wrote that it was time, then stepped down in April 2012 as head coach emeritus, a title that under NCAA rules let her attend practice but not sit on the bench.

She died on June 28, 2016, at 64, in a Knoxville senior living facility, and left everything she had to her son. The foundation she started paid for an Alzheimer's clinic that now carries her name at the University of Tennessee Medical Center, and the NCAA created an award in her name the year after. There are statues on the Knoxville campus and in Clarksville, and her old high school gym carries her name. The win record went in December 2020, when Tara VanDerveer of Stanford passed 1,098. Nobody has worked out how to measure the other thing, which is the distance between the program she inherited, financed by a doughnut sale, and the one she left.

Pat Summitt's life against the full span of the corpus.

• The Tennessee Lady Volunteers program company
  Taken over at 22 for 250 dollars a month, and run for 38 seasons 1974
• The 1984 United States Olympic women's basketball team mission
  Gold in Los Angeles, making her the first American to win a basketball medal and then coach one 1984
• Reach for the Summit book
  Her Definite Dozen system, written with Sally Jenkins 1998
• Raise the Roof book
  On the undefeated 1997-98 championship season, with Sally Jenkins —
• The Pat Summitt Foundation company
  Founded after her diagnosis to fund Alzheimer's research 2011
• Sum It Up book
  The memoir of her life and her diagnosis, with Sally Jenkins —

• 1970 aged ~18 Enters the University of Tennessee at Martin, with her parents paying There were no athletic scholarships for women. All three of her brothers had one.
• December 7, 1974 aged 22 Coaches her first Tennessee game and loses to Mercer, 84 to 83 She was 22, and four of her players were within a year of her age.
• January 10, 1975 aged 22 First win, 69 to 32 over Middle Tennessee State
• 1976 aged ~24 Co-captains the United States to silver at the first Olympic women's tournament
• 1984 aged ~32 Coaches the United States to Olympic gold in Los Angeles
• 1987 aged ~35 Wins the first of eight NCAA championships Three of them came in a row, from 1996 to 1998.
• 2005 aged ~53 Her 880th win passes Dean Smith for the most in NCAA basketball history
• August 2011 aged 59 Announces she has early-onset Alzheimer's disease She had been diagnosed three months earlier, at 58, and said there would be no pity party.
• April 18, 2012 aged 59 Steps down after 38 seasons She said her assistant Holly Warlick had been doing the bulk of it and deserved the job.

• John Wooden 1910–2010
  UCLA basketball coach whose ten NCAA titles in twelve seasons remain the sport's benchmark dynasty. passed his Final Four record
• Billie Jean King b. 1943
  Tennis champion and advocate for gender equality who defeated Bobby Riggs in the famous Battle of the Sexes. fought the same fight off the court
• Wilma Rudolph 1940–1994
  Sprinter who overcame childhood illness to win three Olympic gold medals and become an international symbol of Black women's athletic excellence. the earlier athlete out of Clarksville
• Vince Lombardi 1913–1970
  Coach whose Green Bay teams, championship record, and leadership mythology became embedded in American sports culture. the other coach turned into a standard
• Serena Williams b. 1981
  Tennis champion with 23 Grand Slam singles titles, widely considered one of the greatest athletes ever. inherited the audience she built