This week, "Around the Rim" pays homage to legendary coach Pat Summitt, who died Tuesday morning, by bringing in writers, coaches and players to reflect on her life and legacy.
Women"s basketball analyst LaChina Robinson welcomes freelance writer and editor Maria Cornelius, who covered Summitt for InsideTennessee.com, as well as espnW"s Mechelle Voepel. Both of whom tell stories of Summitt"s relationship with the media and her impact on women"s basketball.
In the second half of the show, Robinson speaks with former player and current South Carolina assistant coach Nikki McCray, who sheds light on what it meant to play for the late coach, Summitt"s influence and the keys Summitt gave her as she left Tennessee.
Robinson also talks with Vanderbilt assistant coach Carolyn Peck, who began her coaching career at Tennessee. She weighs in on Summitt as a leader, as a role model and the late coach"s relationship with her players.
Le basket-ball pleure la mort de Pat Summitt, entraîneuse légendaire
Eight national championships. Eighteen NCAA Final Fours. 38 years as head coach of the Tennessee Lady Vols. 112 victories in NCAA tournament games. 1,098 total wins.
These are the numbers that define the extraordinary success of legendary women"s college basketball coach Pat Summitt"s career. It included more wins than any Division I college basketball coach - whether for a men"s or women"s team.
But as her foundation"s obituary notes, the number that mattered most to Summitt, who died Tuesday morning of complications from early-onset Alzheimer"s disease, was this one: 161, the number of players she coached during her career as the head coach at the University of Tennessee.
She said as much in her remarkable 2013 book, co-authored with The Washington Post"s Sally Jenkins. Summitt wrote about her life, her battle with Alzheimer"s and coaching the Lady Vols, where she was known for her tough, exacting coaching style. She famously had what she called a "death ray stare" and stratospheric expectations for her teams; she once made players put their unwashed, sweaty clothes back on and play more after a loss where she wasn"t happy with the performance.
"It was supposed to be an elite, demanding environment, and it wasn"t right for everybody," she wrote in "Sum It Up." "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."
She did that through those demanding tactics, which were not just about being tough, or winning games, she said, but about turning young women into selfless, team-driven leaders. In one telling passage in the book, Summitt describes her decision to give Michelle Marciniak, who she called "a headlong, reckless player who needed curbing," the position of starting point guard after the 1994 NCAA tournament. It offers two powerful definitions of leadership and insight into how she thought about molding the elite players she led:
The point guard position in basketball is one of the great tutorials on leadership, and it ought to be taught in classrooms. Anyone can perfect a dribble with muscle memory; very few people are able to organize and direct followers, which is a far more subtle and multifaceted skill. Leadership is really a form of temporary authority that others grant you, and they only follow you if they find you consistently credible. It"s all about perception -- and if teammates find you the least bit inconsistent, moody, unpredictable, indecisive or emotionally unreliable, then they balk and the whole team is destabilized.
In the obituaries and eulogies over Summitt"s death, many will try to define the kind of pioneering force she was for women"s athletics, the record-setter she was, the powerful influence she had on the sport. But perhaps the best way to reflect on the leader she was is to examine how she thought about the leaders she was trying to create -- emotionally mature, consistently credible, selfless young women who put their teammates before themselves.
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. >> Pat Summitts family said Sunday that the last few days have been difficult for the former Tennessee womens basketball coach as her Alzheimers disease progresses.
Amid reports of Summitts failing health, her family issued a statement asking for prayers and saying that the 64-year-old Summitt is surrounded by the people who mean the most to her. It also asked for privacy.
Former Tennessee player Tamika Catchings was flying to Knoxville to visit the coach instead of returning to Indiana with the WNBAs Fever. Other former players and those in the University of Tennessee and the womens basketball communities were issuing support on Twitter through the PRAYFORPAT hashtag.
Summitt stepped down as Tennessees coach in 2012, one year after announcing her diagnosis of early onset dementia, Alzheimers type. She went 1,098-208 with eight national titles. She has the most career wins of any Division I mens or womens basketball coach.
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Since her diagnosis, Summitt has played a leading role in the fight against Alzheimers. She launched the Pat Summitt Foundation, which is dedicated to researching and educating people about the disease while also providing services to patients and caregivers. The Pat Summitt Alzheimers Clinic is scheduled to open at the University of Tennessee medical center in December.
When she fights this disease, what she has taught all of us is how to do it with courage, former Tennessee womens athletic director Joan Cronan said at a 2015 charity event honoring Summitt. Shes done that from Day One. Its been about (how) we can find a cure for this disease, and she has done it facing it straight-on and shes done it giving back as she always has.
Summitt continues to hold a position as head coach emeritus of the Tennessee womens basketball team. She attended nearly every home game and many practices in the first year after stepped down as coach, though she had a less visible role in subsequent seasons. She cut back on public appearances in recent years.
