Catch a Star

by Tamika Catchings

  After we grabbed another rebound, Chamique scored on a layup. We were up by six.

  Like many other teams we’d played, LA Tech seemed to expect that once we had grabbed a rebound we’d stop, collect ourselves, and calmly walk the ball back to our end. Not tonight. Pat wanted us to play fast, and every rebound we grabbed was followed by a sprint the other way.

  In one sequence, I ran the ball down to the baseline, Chamique trailed me, and I fed it to her for a layup. In the next sequence, Chamique returned the favor—as she was contested for the ball off to the side of the basket, she came up with it and shot it over the rim to me on the other side, where I grabbed it and popped it in for two. It was like playing volleyball.

  For the next few minutes, we may have played the best basketball we’d played all year. Our defense was relentless, forcing steals, grabbing rebounds. We were flying up and down the court, passing the ball back and forth, sometimes scoring without the ball ever hitting the floor.

  By halftime, we’d scored fifty-five points—more points in a half than had ever before been scored in college basketball.

  Back in the locker room, despite our record-setting performance, Pat was still coaching. Worried about a letdown, she sounded the alarm against letting Louisiana Tech back in it. A quick run at the start of the second half, and they could perhaps get some confidence. After all, that’s what we had done in the North Carolina game.

  Sure enough, LA Tech scored the first seven points of the second half. Pat called a quick time-out and started yelling at us. “Are you going to let them back in it? Or are you going to play some defense?”

  I was thinking, We’re the best team who just finished playing the best half of all time. And yet we’re getting yelled at in this game too. I still didn’t like getting yelled at.

  Coming back out, I grabbed a rebound and spotted Ace at the other end. I passed long to her, and she made a layup. Mique dropped a jumper in, and then I stole the ball and ran it the length of the floor for a layup. We had weathered the initial storm.

  But Louisiana Tech wouldn’t go away. At the twelve-minute mark they scored from three-point land, then on a foul, retained the ball and made another basket. Five points in one trip down the floor.

  On our next possession, Kellie nailed a three from far out to answer. And then, after we got the rebound on the other end, Kellie got the ball again and lined up from way, way out, and dropped another three-pointer.

  Everything they did to climb back into the game, we responded to.

  With two minutes left, we were up by eighteen. Pat started substituting to allow some of the other players on the team to have an appearance in the game. Kyra Elzy, who had a torn ACL early in the year and didn’t see much playing time, got in. Laurie Milligan, our lone senior, had appeared in the previous three seasons’ final championship games. This year she’d had knee surgery. Pat made sure she got into this championship game too, setting a record. Coach Pat took care of her players. She took care of her “family.”

  At the end, we won, and we won big, 93–75.

  We won the NCAA championship.

  The crowd, so many of them Tennessee fans, erupted. Pat smiled big. You could see the pressure of the season roll off her shoulders. I saw Coach Brown out of the corner of my eye. Amanda Wilson had finished with just four points and five rebounds. That was a team effort, of course, but I’d kind of made sure of it.

  Coach Brown came up to me with a big grin on his face. “I’m proud of you,” he said.

  I looked at him and it dawned on me. “You said all that on purpose, didn’t you? I can’t believe you did that!”

  He just laughed. He knew he’d motivated me to have one of my best games ever.

  Hugs and congratulations were exchanged all around. The media took over on the court, announcing the players and coaches and making presentations. Chamique won player of the game, and rightly so.

  It was a huge accomplishment for Pat. Her third NCAA championship in a row. Never been done before in the modern era. All year, our line had been “Forget about history.” We weren’t ever playing under the burden of winning number three. We were just intent on winning this season and being the best team we could be. But now that we had done it, it was time to remember history.

  Three championship wins in a row for Pat Summitt. Remarkable.

  It was a long endurance race for our team, but we’d established ourselves as one of the premiere women’s college teams of all time. We went 39–0, a record. We’d played one of the toughest schedules, including a dozen nationally ranked teams. And we’d done it with a squad of four freshmen, all of us still finding ourselves as college students, young women, and basketball players.

  At the time I didn’t fully understand what the significance of this was for the team or for me. Our championship run had drawn the attention of the nation. It had raised the level of recognition for women’s basketball. As one of the commentators said after the game, “Everywhere you go, the excitement of this perfect team gets everyone involved. People want to talk about Tennessee. People are talking about women’s basketball, women’s college basketball. It’s reached a new level of excitement.”

  I’d come into Tennessee for the purpose of being with the best players and playing for the best coach. Already, in one glorious season, we had become the best in the sport.

  11

  God

  I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

  Philippians 4:13 NKJV

  We came back to school after a summer that, for each of us, was a kind of celebrity tour in our hometowns.

  Since the championship, the Lady Vols had become a national treasure, and the focus on us was intense. Fortunately, a lot of this attention was absorbed by Pat, who rightly deserved it, yet felt out of place in it. The famous photographer Annie Leibovitz came to photograph her. The magazine GQ did a big feature article, and Pat didn’t know the magazine, referring to it as “QT.” Coach, along with Mique and Kellie Jolly, appeared on The Rosie O’Donnell Show.

  Later Chamique would label us “the Beatles of basketball.”

  Commentators made much of the fact that the following year Tennessee was not losing any of its top starters to graduation. Mique and Kellie Jolly would be seniors, LaShonda Stephens and Niya Butts would be juniors. And then we Fab 4, along with Kyra Elzy, would be returning as sophomores. “The Meeks” would be together another year.

  It was kind of foreordained that we would be the favorite to win it all once again. We would see.

  Knoxville is gorgeous in the fall. The colors are brilliant and deep, a mosaic of autumn dotted all over the hills and mountains. A half-hour drive puts you in the middle of the Smoky Mountains near Gatlinburg. Just another ninety minutes away is Asheville, North Carolina. The best times for fall color in the area were the last two weeks of October. We were well into practices then, but not yet into the tough schedule of real games. I loved when I had time to get away and just drive. Almost like being able to escape to my own “colorful” world where no one could find me.

  I think sometimes people see me as a driven, no-nonsense person, and maybe they miss the deeper things inside me. I don’t know, but maybe because of my hearing loss, through the years the world outside has been more distant for me than for other people, and maybe I’ve developed more of a private, inner life instead. I think deeply, feel deeply, but those things don’t often come out visibly to other people.

  When I could get away from basketball and classes, most of the time I would drive out to a small lake about twenty minutes from campus. It was a special place to me, a place apart, so far from everyone, quiet and hushed except for the music of nature. There, I would find my way to one of my private spots and sit, sometimes for hours, just looking across the water and thinking and sometimes praying. I would often write my ideas and thoughts, hurts and dreams in a notebook. I’d write about my life, about what was going on, about other people. Eventually my deepest feelings would rush out, often in
the form of poetry.

  I keep a lot bottled up inside myself. That probably goes back to my childhood, I know. Those feelings are often stuffed down inside, but they do come out eventually, and often onto the pages of my notebooks.

  Pat Summitt was not only a disciplinarian on the court; she was one off the court too. It mattered that her players did well in college. She checked on how each of us was doing in classes and emphasized the importance of studying hard and doing well.

  Pat never needed to worry about me academically. I loved school. I loved learning. Still do. I love discovering new things, learning about new areas of knowledge. Sure, sometimes a subject doesn’t interest me, and I’ll move on from that. But many of my classes were interesting, and I found that in most subjects, I enjoyed my studies. In many areas of life, I just love to learn.

  My major was in sports management. I also had a minor in business. I’ve always been interested in how competitive sports works. The business of it. I’ve always been fascinated by the process of running a team, finding talent, bringing in people to an organization, and making different pieces fit.

  Even back then, as a sophomore at Tennessee, I watched Pat Summitt, not just as a basketball coach but as a woman who created an organization of talent and standards that succeeded at the highest levels. Watching her, I became interested in how you build a team, how you design an organization for success.

  Frankly, though we were a team of great talent, if we’d had another coach and another organization, I don’t know if we’d have made it 39–0 and be wearing NCAA Championship rings. Certainly there was something in Pat’s soul and passion that got us there, but also there was a lot of smart, strategic team- and organization-building. I wanted to learn that.

  I wanted someday to do that.

  We came out of the gate in the fall of 1999 with an exhibition game against a team from Sweden. We won by forty points, and then went on to play Portland, whom we also beat handily.

  I don’t know, maybe we had started to take everything for granted. The coaches didn’t have a good feeling going into the next game against Purdue. Neither did I. We just weren’t together. Over the summer, Pat had gotten two new recruits, the six five Michelle Snow, a center who could dunk the ball, and Shalon Pillow, a potential dynamo on the court. But teams always incorporate new freshmen without too much disruption—and Pat had made it work just fine with the Fab 4 of us freshmen the year before. Playing together wasn’t our only problem.

  Our other problem was complacency, a lack of passion . . . no sense of urgency.

  Purdue beat us 78–68.

  Later, Pat would say it was the best thing that could happen to us. The loss served as a reminder that we weren’t invincible. A caution that we needed to work for what we wanted to achieve. This loss could motivate us for the rest of the season.

  Maybe, but I didn’t like it. I hate to lose.

  I think it was November 1999 when I was driving around town and passed a billboard that attracted my attention. It read, “Who’s Your Daddy?”

  It was an ad for a guest speaker at a church, the sermon title for Wednesday Night Bible Study.

  I thought this was an extremely appropriate message for me and my dormmates to hear. We were all at different points in our relationship with our fathers, and I still had my struggles because of my parents’ divorce. That sermon seemed targeted right at us.1

  I went back to the dorm and told the girls about it. “Maybe we should check it out.” They all agreed. And so we went to church that Wednesday.

  A lot of African Americans grow up in church. We have an upbringing that teaches us about God and Jesus. In a way it’s real to us as kids, but in another way we don’t really understand how important it is to life. And once we get away from home, we get away from church, and we get away from God.

  The guest speaker was Ken Freeman, and he was on the stage at Grace Baptist Church in Knoxville. His sermon was so powerful. One of his statements was, “No matter where you are, even though your earthly father may not be with you, your heavenly Father is always there.” For the four of us sitting there, the message became very personal. For one thing, it was a call for some of us to return to God. For another thing, it soothed a deep hurt for us to realize that God himself could fill the hole in our souls left by the daddies in our lives who had been absent at times.

  For me, and I think for others, it was like we heard God saying, “Where have you been? You’ve let basketball dominate your life, haven’t you? How about some time for me, your Father in heaven? I’m here to fill that hole in your life.”

  It was an aha moment, deeply emotional, and personally motivating to us all. After the sermon, there was an altar call. It didn’t take long for us to feel that call. Every one of the four of us went down front for prayer and to give our lives back to Christ.

  That was the night I believe I truly got saved, the night I made a decision to dedicate my life to him.

  I realized that I’d made basketball the most important thing in my life. I knew deep down that I needed God to be in charge. This changed my perspective and my life, although I’d need to be reminded again and again how I’d taken the ball of my life, run with it on my own, and taken my own shots for my own glory. I knew I needed to acknowledge that God was the one truly in control. Not easy for a stubborn girl from Duncanville, Texas. But I let go of my life.

  And let God into my life.

  After the Purdue loss that year, we finally pulled it together. We won our next twenty-four games, including a win over archrival UConn in Connecticut in early January.

  You’d think that was a good thing.

  But we faced injuries along the way. Tree went down in the UCLA game, hyperextending her knee, and she wasn’t the same for the rest of the season. And even though we were winning, something was off, I could tell. We weren’t winning as impressively as we had the year before.

  We lost again. End of the season, right before the SEC tournament, against Louisiana State University by three points. As in the earlier loss, we weren’t playing together. It was a lot of one-on-one, individuals trying to do it all. I was probably part of the problem.

  We went on to win the SEC tournament, which landed us at 28–2 for the season. Yes, it’s a terrific record, but in a way it wasn’t about the record of wins and losses. We weren’t really competing against the rest of the country. We were competing against ourselves. Were we playing as good as we possibly could? The answer was no.

  I think that’s the story of life as well. Am I as an individual doing all I can do with what God has given me? We aren’t competing against the people around us. It doesn’t matter if we get the gold ring at the end of the season. It matters only if we’ve done the work and performed at the level God has given us opportunity to attain.

  We play for an audience of one—God. Or at least we should.

  We entered the NCAA tournament as favorites to win a fourth straight championship. Our first game against sixteenth seed Appalachian State was a blowout—we won by nearly sixty points. Number one seeds versus number sixteen seeds sometimes don’t seem fair, but plenty of sixteenth-seeded Cinderella teams win because the top-ranked teams fall asleep on the court. Our path through the tournament went through Boston College and Virginia Tech. Again, no problem for us. Some said we were playing at a WNBA level.

  We landed in the regional against Duke in Greensboro. The winner would go to the Final Four in San Jose. Duke is usually a formidable team, and yet when we had played them earlier in the season, we won by fourteen. So the question was, would we come with our A-game?

  After the first six minutes, the score was 8–6, Duke ahead. I felt like we came out strong enough, contesting shots and playing good defense, but our shots just weren’t falling.

  At the half, Duke led by eleven points. Chamique had scored only one point. I’d picked up two fouls. Kellie Jolly kept us in the game with some great shooting and terrific ball handling.

  We came out in the second
half and scored the first seven points. After a dogfight struggle, we cut the Duke lead to two. We were rebounding better the second half, but our shots still weren’t falling as they normally did. On one play, Semeka shot from outside, and missed. But Chamique grabbed the long rebound and shot a 15-foot jumper. And missed. But I grabbed that rebound right under the basket and put the ball back up. And missed. Only I grabbed my own rebound, and put the ball right back up. And I missed. Four shots. No points. It was that kind of game.

  Chamique was our top scorer and team leader and naturally she tried to take the responsibility on herself. There’s something to be said for shooting yourself into a rhythm, but there’s also a point where you have to understand you might just not have it that night and you need to pass it off to others. In any case, Chamique kept trying to shoot herself into a rhythm. And her shots just didn’t connect.

  With about eight minutes to go, Kellie Jolly slid in for a layup and cut the Duke lead to one.

  But Duke had weathered our comeback storm. Their big center, Van Gorp, had been pulled out of the game with four fouls but came back in with a few minutes to go. They scored a couple of threes from outside.

  Our deficit climbed to seven points.

  We were desperate. With about a half minute left, I launched a three and it fell in. But Duke scored again, and then Chamique fouled out. After winning three championships at Tennessee, she would go home empty her senior year.

  Later, people would look back at the game, and there’d be so much analysis of what went wrong. But ultimately we knew we’d just blown it. Hard as we played, we didn’t play smart. And all the expectations, hopes, and dreams we had for ourselves and for a four-peat were left in pieces on the basketball court in Greensboro.

  The loss marked the end of Pat Summitt’s run of consecutive NCAA championship titles. It marked the last games at Tennessee for Chamique and Kellie.