Roy Exum: Pat Summitt’s Dash

  • Tuesday, June 28, 2016
  • Roy Exum
Roy Exum
Roy Exum

In 1996 a woman named Linda Ellis wrote one of life’s most beautiful poems. Called “The Dash,” its first two verses read like this:

“I read of a man who stood to speak at the funeral of a friend.
He referred to the dates on the tombstone from the beginning…to the end.

“He noted that first came the date of birth and spoke the following date with tears,
but he said what mattered most of all was the dash between those years.”

And so we come to Pat Summitt, quite arguably “The First Lady” of the University of Tennessee from now until eternity, and I can think of no American – living or dead – who ever had a greater “dash” than the girl who was born as Patricia Sue Head on a Clarksville dairy farm some 64 years ago.

Pat, one of the greatest coaches in the history of sport, died early Tuesday from complications related to Alzheimer’s disease, which was diagnosed four years ago. She coached women’s basketball at the University of Tennessee for 38 glorious years, never having a losing season in a run where her Lady Vols won eight national titles.

I never got to know Pat really well until Leroy Fanning and I went to Birmingham back in the early ‘90s and talked the Southeastern Conference into letting Chattanooga host the tournament for seven of the next eight glorious years. Leroy was the top women’s basketball referee back then but I held the aces since everybody on the selection committee had become a personal friend long before.

There were four of five other Southern cities trying to get the tournament but both Leroy and I knew we were the unanimous pick even before we went in the room to pitch Chattanooga. I remember standing in that room and telling the committee, “Just so happens my family owns a newspaper and I’ll give you every page every day if you’ll come … and I’ll guarantee we’ll wake up the South about what a great game women’s basketball is.”

The truth was that I might have been to five or six women’s games in my life but Pat soon heard of my brag and called to say, “We’ll bring the game ... you just promote it,” and, brother, from that minute on it was off to the races. After the third year every session was a sellout and I really believe the tournament would still be here if we had a bigger arena. The SEC loved Chattanooga and we almost got the baseball tournament but that is a story for another day.

Pat immediately recognized we did it up big and she knew what our success would mean to the other SEC women’s programs that didn’t have the swag of the Vols, or like Vanderbilt developed once Jim Foster became coach. We treated the worst teams like royalty and the more a huge crowd of us tried to do, the more fun the tournament became because Florida, Georgia, LSU and the rest realized Chattanooga was something special.

Pat was really impressed and one afternoon I asked her for a favor; would she mind going up in the nose-bleed seats of UTC Arena and telling me about what made her into the legend she already was? “Are you kidding me,” she asked as she grabbed my arm and away we went. I was hardly ready for what she would tell me.

When Pat was growing up, she had four older brothers and her dad, who was 6-foot-4, was evermore an extreme disciplinarian. From the time she could walk she had a list of chores before and after school and said that her dad didn’t spare the strap on her older brothers and he would let her have it too. “It didn’t matter that I was a girl, either,” she shook her head with no humor.

“I grew up with hard work … hard love, actually … and – in a curious way – it all worked out in the end.” Pat’s best-selling book, "Reach for the Summit," included this about her dad. “To a great extent, he made me who I am," Summitt wrote. "His peculiar combination of love and discipline was hard to take, but in the end I was grateful for it. He gave me strength. If you saw the two of us together today, you would see two people who have reached a peace. We finally understand each other.”

The above speaks volumes in today’s world of violent whippings and child abuse, but that Pat endured it and made a peace about it adds a boldness to her life’s “dash” few would ever expected. It is also the defining reason Summitt, who was an All-American at UT-Martin, would never quit, would never get used to losing, and demanded her players reach their full potential. I doubt any coach carries the loyalty and the love her players feel for her. That, too, is a huge factor in her “dash.”

Her family actually moved from Clarksville to Cheatham County so Pat could play high school basketball. But as we talked, you could sense the great odds she overcame to be successful from a rough beginning. Women’s basketball held little, if any, allure when she started coaching and she said many a night she would stick her head out the window of the van carrying her players trying to stay awake.

She hired on as an assistant at Tennessee but the head coach soon quit and, at 22, her climb to the Summit began in an inch-by-inch way that is worthy of a full-length movie. Heck, she was just a year or two older than her players. When she came out publicly about her early-onset disease following a secret visit to Mayo Clinic, she defied any and every one of us that “there will be no pity party.”

The numbers you already know. Pat won 16 Southeastern Conference regular season titles with the Lady Vols, as well as 16 tournament titles. Her Lady Vols made an appearance in every NCAA Tournament from 1982 until her retirement in 2012 (30 straight years), advanced to the Sweet 16 every year except 2009, and appeared 18 times in the Final Four.

Her Lady Vols won eight national titles, this from a beginning where the team actually sold donuts to get enough money for one set of uniforms. And her trademark glare from the bench was as legendary, and as renowned, as the dozens of pictures showing her grin as she cut down another net after a title game.

In the last few days it has offended me that it seems like there is “a death watch” for Pat but instead I now realize how unbelievably respected and admired she is to deserve such tribute. Think about this – she is the most famous lady in Tennessee history (yes, I am including Dolly Parton and Dinah Shore) and the biggest winner the entire state has ever known.

This Friday will be a “Wear Your Orange Day” in honor of the outstanding and profound champion. There will never be another like Pat Summitt. What a “dash” she leaves and, one thing is for sure, it is so gloriously heavy not a one of the rest of us could even pick it up.

royexum@aol.com

Pat Summitt
Pat Summitt
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