Sum It Up: A Thousand and Ninety-Eight Victories, a Couple of Irrelevant Losses, and a Life in Perspective

by Pat Summitt

  Our kids never backed down, but to beat them we needed to make a bunch of rainbows from the outside, and instead we were cold shooting. We went 1 for 9 from the three-point line in the first half and trailed by 15. We could never make it up. I felt helpless—as helpless as I had the last time I’d faced a player so big, in Uljana Semjonova and the Soviets in the ’76 Olympics.

  Final score: 77–58. I had no profound last words for our team in the locker room, just affectionate ones. With everyone in the room sobbing, I told them to get their heads up and look at me. It was hard to make eye contact because they had huge tears rolling down their faces, but they lifted their heads. I told them I loved them and was proud of the way they took the court and battled.

  “Think about the good things that happened, and what’s to come,” I urged them.

  There were so many emotions in the room that it made me quake, and my voice trembled as I spoke. “I’ll never forget you,” I said.

  Holly and the players then left to go to the press conference, and I walked into a small coaches’ room off the main locker room. I sat down with Tyler. He rubbed my back and shoulders like he always did after a loss, ever since he was a little boy. “It was the Griner Factor,” I told him. “She was just too much. We just couldn’t get past them.”

  It was a defeat, yes. But then you ask yourself, Were we really the best team? And you say no. Or sometimes yes. You beat yourself up a little. You always think there was something else you could have done, or should have done, for the players. You don’t think it’s them. You think it’s you.

  I sat there, wishing I could have helped them more. It was a long and lonely half hour, waiting for them to finish with the press. Fortunately, at that moment a wonderful reporter from the New York Times named Jere Longman came into our locker room. Jere’s father had suffered from Alzheimer’s, and he asked to speak to me personally, not as a reporter. I gratefully motioned him into the room; his request touched me. Jere was just going to say a word or two and shake my hand, but it turned into more than that. I invited him to sit down, and we chatted for a moment, and then Jere spoke of his father and began to cry. I put my arms around him, and that finally brought me to tears too. Jere and I consoled each other, and I was grateful for that moment with him, and for the company.

  But then I dried my tears. I was sad it was over, but I didn’t want to be unduly so. The game had been so good to me, and to be too disconsolate would have been … ungrateful. When I looked back on it I wouldn’t remember the losses, but rather the laughter like streamers, and the curative companionship of those kids.

  Every ending is a potential point of renewal. It’s over, and you start again, an endless cycle of seasons. We flew back to Knoxville that night, and I walked back in the house and tossed my keys on the counter, and patted my dogs. Then I went to the wine rack and pulled out a bottle of my favorite Caymus cabernet. I lifted a glass, and thought about Uljana Semjonova, and myself when I was young, at my original starting point.

  My short-term factual memory can be like water; events are a brief disturbance on the surface and then it closes back up again, as if nothing ever touched it. But it’s a strange fact that my long-term memory remains strong, perhaps because it recorded events when my mind was unaffected. My emotional memory is intact too, perhaps because feelings are recorded and stored in a different place than facts. The things that happened deeper in the past, and deeper in the breast, are still there for me, under the water.

  I won 1,098 games, and eight national championships, and coached in four different decades. But what I see are not the numbers. I see their faces.

  “Pat should get a tattoo!” The kids laughed. “What kind should she get?”

  “A heart. She should get a heart.”

  Little did they know. They are the tattoos.

  On the Saturday before Easter, Tyler and I drove to Henrietta to see my mother, who at eighty-six still cooks every holiday meal for our family. Ty was at the wheel, and he had his mother’s touch on the gas pedal. We got pulled over for speeding. The officer came to the window on my side of the car. When he saw who it was, he said, “Well, I’m not giving you a ticket. I just want to know how you’re doing. Furthermore, I want to know if you’re coming back next year.”

  “Oh, I’ll be back,” I said.

  But I wouldn’t be back as head coach. During that drive, Tyler and I finally had the talk that I had been tamping down in my subconscious while we competed in the tournament: my role needed to change. I’d always said that no player was bigger than the program, and the same held true for me. I didn’t want to be bigger than Tennessee. While continuing to work was good for me, the Lady Vols weren’t my personal health clinic.

  What made it easier to reach a decision was the secure knowledge that I could pass on the job to someone I loved, Holly Warlick. A full year earlier, just weeks after I received the final confirmation of my diagnosis, Holly and I spent some vacation time together down in Destin, Florida. We ran our dogs on the beach and talked about the Alzheimer’s, and Holly told me she hoped to be my successor. I told her then I would support her. While former players are like daughters and it’s impossible to name a favorite, Holly’s loyalty and devotion to Tennessee were unmatched and made her the right choice, as did her resilient, low-ego temperament. A few years earlier she had turned down a head coaching job at Clemson to stay with us, and working in my shadow wouldn’t bother her.

  But the lingering issue for me was the word retirement. I didn’t want to retire, I told Tyler; I thought I still had strengths and insights to contribute. “I don’t want some meaningless office and title with nothing to do,” I said. The prospect of just sitting around was unacceptable. What was most important to me, I said, was to be able to still connect with players and to remain involved with basketball. Ty asked if it wouldn’t embarrass me to be with the team in a smaller capacity. I said, “Absolutely not.”

  Ty quietly began to look into the possibility of handing my coaching duties over to Holly while I took on another role that allowed me to still be an adviser to the team. Our friend Bob Barnett flew to Knoxville and once again met with Chancellor Cheek, Joan Cronan, and other university administrators, who, as always, treated me with surpassing generosity and consideration. They fashioned a new job for me: I could become “head coach emeritus,” continue as an active staffer in a variety of capacities, working with players on everything from motivation to academic issues. NCAA rules would limit some of my activities, but I could observe practices, participate in the locker room on game days, and recruit on campus.

  It was an almost ideal outcome. I wasn’t stepping down; I was stepping aside, and it gave me the latitude and flexibility to mentor players as much as my health would allow. Bob came up with a wonderful phrase for it. “Retirement with a small r,” he said.

  We scheduled a press conference for the morning of April 19, 2012, at which I would officially pass the torch to Holly. As I got dressed that morning, Holly called. “I’m going to need you,” she said. “I can’t do this without you.” I told her, “I will be there for you.” After we hung up, I pulled on a chalk gray pin-striped suit and got my game face on as I rehearsed my prepared statement. Camera crews were coming in from all over the country—ESPN and CNN were going live—and it was suggested that I not make any unrehearsed remarks. But I balked. “I want to take questions,” I told Tyler firmly.

  I put my lipstick on, shrugged into my jacket, and slipped a whistle into my pocket. The house was full of close friends, and we all struggled not to cry. LaTina failed completely. I didn’t want to lose control of my emotions in the press conference, but I couldn’t make any promises. I’ll play that one by ear, I told myself.

  I drove to Thompson-Boling Arena and went to the locker room, where our team and staff had gathered. Our players had mixed waves of emotions, I knew: reluctant to let me go, but thrilled for Holly.

  Izzy Harrison said, “I just want to know you’ll still be here.”


  “I’m still gonna be here—and y’all may not like it,” I said, to laughter.

  The press conference was a spectacular, upbeat success. It was impossible to feel gloomy when at my side younger people were beaming. Holly was about to start her own career as a head coach, and I wanted this day to be a celebration for her. I stood up and pulled the whistle from my pocket, hung it around her neck, and embraced her.

  Then I sat back down next to my son, who was also beaming, because a day earlier he had received a piece of extraordinary news that made me swell with pride. At the age of just twenty-one, Tyler had been offered a job as an assistant women’s basketball coach at Marquette University, after dazzling head coach Terri Mitchell during a job interview. I urged him to accept, though it meant Tyler would move to Milwaukee. I wanted him to have the same passion and deep satisfaction that I had enjoyed for so many years, and the knowledge that he was embarking on his career was a huge consolation for the end of mine.

  There can be strength in surrender—and I felt it that day. I said, “It’s never a good time, but you have to find the time that you think is the right time, and that is now.” I fielded several questions from the press without a mishap. When I finally stepped down from the podium, I felt proud, and sure of myself. I was rewarded when Sports Illustrated described my attitude that morning as “wicked sharp, funny, and self-deprecating.”

  I didn’t regret the decision to coach publicly with Alzheimer’s. Far from it—I hoped the audience might see the disease in a new light: as something that could be managed, lived with in a purposeful way. The great stigma of it was in thinking that it robbed us of all dignity and value. Sometimes, I thought, we strip people of their capacities faster than the disease itself does. But now that my retirement “with a small r” was announced, I felt relieved. No longer did I have to worry about other people’s expectations regarding my illness. If nothing else, maybe I could live this thing out the way I wanted to.

  The decision to step aside was made immeasurably easier by the good people at the Banner Institute, whose attitudes and advice I had borrowed heavily from. Tyler and I spent long hours on the phone with Dr. Tariot talking through the transition. It was Dr. Tariot who urged us to think in terms of “a strategy for gradually adapting your role,” rather than an abrupt giving up. He has led numerous other professionals through the delicate transition from a hands-on CEO to the next stage, candidly yet positively. “You have broad shoulders,” he said to me at one point, “and you can make this transition with a systematic game plan that plays to your strengths.”

  I believe we did that. The day after my “retirement with a small r” press conference, I put my sweats and sneakers back on and went back to practice with the Lady Vols. As of this writing, I’ve missed only two workouts. Holly tells me I don’t have to show up every single day, especially at the six A.M. sessions, but I tell her, “I don’t want to be a sissy.” My office is three doors down from Holly, who has moved into my old one. She says it’s too big for her, and she keeps a Pat Summitt bobble-head on her shelf to help fill it up. She also tells me, “I don’t care what disease you have, I’m going to pick that brain for as long as I can.” But she doesn’t need much help from me; she is thoroughly equipped for the job and has assembled a first-rate staff that includes Dean Lockwood and Jolette Law, a longtime friend of ours who worked for Vivian Stringer and served as a head coach at Illinois. But best of all, at her right hand is Kyra Elzy, who has grown into one of the most impressive young assistants in the game, sure to be a head coach herself one day.

  Our team is young, but on the rise. Holly’s motto for them is “Same heart, same pride, same fight,” which I love. The kids, who include my last recruiting class, tell me they want to represent everything Tennessee has ever been about: hard work, defense, rebounding, and doing all the little things right.

  “We want to be throwback players,” Taber Spani tells me.

  To which I reply, grinning, “You better be careful what you wish for.”

  How to sum it up? Perhaps with the realization that makes me happiest: my Tennessee legacy is not some flat, dry record on a piece of paper, but a beautiful tree with living branches.

  It’s a legacy that feels constantly renewed, every time I see a former player. They come back to stay the night with me, and we reminisce, and the best part is when we meet as adults, and we settle old issues. Shanna Zolman and I reconciled when she came back to Knoxville in the midst of her own divorce. She spent a few months in the pool house, and every morning we walked together. One evening she said, “Coach, everybody asks me what you mean to me, and what it was like to play for you. And I’ve never told you to your face how much I love and respect you, and what you did for me. You are my second mother.”

  It meant the world to me, because there was always that doubt, when things were hard with players, that I had broken down more than built up. To this day, not all of them felt wonderful about their experience at Tennessee. But Mickie always says, “If they all loved it, we were doing something wrong.” It was supposed to be an elite, demanding environment, and it wasn’t right for everybody. But it was right for the 161 players who wore the orange, and the real legacy wasn’t the victories, but knowing that they were made of something stronger when they left.

  When you think you can’t give any more, she’s pushing you to give twice as much—and you don’t think you have anything more to give. You feel like she’s asking you to be this perfect person, and you just don’t feel like that’s going to happen. And then you realize, my gosh, she got you there. She got you to that point, better than you thought you would be.

  —KELLIE JOLLY

  Not long after I was diagnosed, I heard the following story from Abby Conklin, who after graduating in 1997 had become a coach and then a graphic artist out in San Francisco. Although I always cared about Abby, we’d never been extremely close, but she came back to visit after she learned I had Alzheimer’s. For all the years and distance, we understood each other.

  In the summer of 2011, Abby was dealing with a medical crisis of her own. First, her father, Harlo, collapsed with a heart attack and had to be resuscitated with chest compressions. He was still recovering from quadruple bypass surgery when her mother was diagnosed with colon cancer. Abby went home to Indiana to spend time with them. As she walked through the door, she saw a home health care nurse changing her mother’s colostomy bag.

  At about midnight that night, when Abby was alone with her parents, the bag tore. Her mother called out to her, “The damn bag’s leaking.” Her father stalked around the room upset almost to the point of panic.

  “I’ll change it,” Abby said. “It’ll be okay.”

  “You don’t know how.”

  Inside Abby was reeling. She had never changed so much as a baby’s diaper, and she wasn’t sure she could face it. But Abby said she heard a voice in her head that sounded like mine. It said, “Abby! Are you gonna let a bag scare you? You can do this.”

  And so my moment of truth came and I had to deal with this bag of crap. And the whole time I’m thinking, You’re a Lady Vol, you rise to the occasion. And I just think had I not been a Lady Vol, with all that training, I couldn’t have gotten through it. And my mom said to me, “I knew you would figure it out.”

  —ABBY CONKLIN

  Stories like that suggest that I chose the right line of work.

  People often ask what I’m proudest of in my career. The answer is easy: I’m proudest of them. I’m proud that our former players get teased that they’re like a cult, because you can recognize them from the way they carry themselves and walk, with their heads high, their shoulders back. I’m proud that so many shy, nonaggressive girls left our program assertive women, with an air of confidence and self-respect. Shelley Sexton Collier’s husband once teased her that at player reunions, “You all stand up straighter when Pat comes in the room.” Shelley just stared at him and shot back, “So do you.”

  You either learn to be that way, or
you are already that way, or you just quit and leave, or don’t come in the first place. It was no secret that’s how she is, those are the expectations, and if you aren’t made of what it takes to be part of the Lady Vols program, you don’t last. She wasn’t willing to just pamper somebody along. She would try to develop you, but she wasn’t going to compromise what she wanted the personality of that program to be.

  —JILL RANKIN SCHNEIDER

  I’m proud that for thirty-eight years we graduated 100 percent of our players. Don’t get me wrong, we are very proud of the championships—they got more difficult every year to win, and we treasure them—but one thing we could do from year to year without fail was to make sure that we were about an education first, and basketball second. Our graduation rate was no accident; it was well planned and we did it with purpose and with a will; there were times when we literally picked kids up in our cars and hauled them back to campus.

  Her attention to the value of education was right up front; it wasn’t third or fourth or fifth. And it was there from the get-go. A lot of coaches don’t do that—not many. I’d hate to make the list.

  —LIN DUNN

  I’m proud that for thirty-eight years we did our best never to cut corners or to sacrifice principles. I’m proud that we stood the test of time, and that appreciation grew in our players, once they graduated, for how we went about our business, and that they understood that we were hard on them because we wanted them to be more.