Patricia Susan Summitt was an American women’s college basketball head coach who accrued 1,098 career wins. She served as the head coach of the University of Tennessee Lady Vols basketball team from 1974 to 2012. Summitt won a silver medal at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal as a member of the United States women’s national basketball team. She returned to the Olympics in 1984 as a head coach, guiding the U.S. women’s basketball team to a gold medal. She retired from coaching at age 59 following a diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.
About Pat Summitt in brief
Patricia Susan Summitt was an American women’s college basketball head coach who accrued 1,098 career wins. She served as the head coach of the University of Tennessee Lady Vols basketball team from 1974 to 2012. Summitt won a silver medal at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal as a member of the United States women’s national basketball team. She returned to the Olympics in 1984 as a head coach, guiding the U.S. women’s basketball team to a gold medal. In 2009, the Sporting News placed her at number 11 on its list of the 50 Greatest Coaches of All Time in all sports. In 2013, she was inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame. She retired from coaching at age 59 following a diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama and received the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the 2012 ESPY Awards. She won eight NCAA Division I basketball championships during her 38 years as head coach. She is the only woman on the list of coaches who have won more than 1,000 games in college and professional basketball. She also won the NCAA Women’s Basketball Coach of the Century award in 2000 and was named the Naismith Basketball Coachof the Century in 2000. She died in 2012 at the age of 59 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s Disease. Her funeral was held in Knoxville, Tennessee, where she was born on June 14, 1952. She had four siblings: older brothers Tommy, Charles, and Kenneth, and a younger sister, Linda. Her family moved to nearby Henrietta so she could play basketball in Cheatham County, because Clarksville did not have a girls team.
In 1970, with the passage of Title IX still two years away, there were no athletic scholarships for women. From there, Summitt went to University of Tennesee at Martin, and won All-American honors playing for UT–Martin’s first women’s Basketball coach, Nadine Gearin. She later co-captained the United. States women’s national basketballteam as a player at the inaugural women’s tournament in the 1976 summer Olympics. In 1984, she coached the U,S. women’s team to an Olympic gold medal, becoming the first U. S. Olympian to win a basketball medal and coach a medal-winning team. Her first game for Tennessee on Dec. 7, 1974 against Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, was her first win almost a month later. In her second season, she won the Tennessee College Women’s Sports Federation District Championship for the third straight year. In the 1976–77 season Summitt directed the Lady VolS to a 16–11 record while earning her master’s degree in physical education and training. She coached her first game against Middle Tennessee State on Jan. 10, 1975, when the Lady. Vols defeated the Georgia Georgia Bulldogs, 69–32. During Summitt’s first year as coach, four of her players were only a year younger than she was and all were from Tennessee high schools, which until 1980 employed a six-person game where offensive and defensive players never crossed mid-court.
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