The first thing peers of Pat Summitt tend to bring up isn’t her eight national titles or all the WNBA stars she developed. They all start with her role in placing women’s athletics at the forefront of public attention.
Coaches and players don’t limit her description to basketball coach, but one of the most crucial figures in sports. Summitt made people respect women. Duquesne women’s basketball coach Dan Burt said that in addition to her skills as a tactician and coach, Summitt knew how to be a salesman.
“When she started, [women’s] basketball wasn’t even in the paper,” he said. “And when she finished, we were on national television and national media.”
Summitt died Tuesday at 64 after a five-year battle with early onset dementia, Alzheimer’s type. Coaches and players throughout sports praised the legendary coach who won 1,098 games and eight national titles as coach at Tennessee.
Pitt women’s basketball coach Suzie McConnell-Serio always will remember a phone conversation she had in 2007 with Summitt. McConnell-Serio was entering her first year as coach of Duquesne, and it was the time of the year for scheduling. She and Summitt discussed the game of basketball and a former Tennessee player who joined McConnell-Serio’s staff, but McConnell-Serio was worried it might be about something else.
“In the back of my mind I was thinking, ‘There’s no way we’re playing Tennessee next year,’ ” she said.
Summitt actually was calling to inform McConnell-Serio of her induction into the 2008 class of the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame. Yet there’s something to the fact she was so adamant about not playing Summitt’s Tennessee team.
When Summitt took over at Tennessee in 1974, it wasn’t the dream women’s basketball program. McConnell-Serio didn’t look all that much at Tennessee before choosing Penn State in 1984. By the time McKeesport native and WNBA star Swin Cash was picking a school as an All-American in the late 1990s, Tennessee was a contender before she chose Connecticut.
“She was headstrong,” Cash said. “She was determined. She understood the platform that she had and she used it to the best of her abilities to not only help the University of Tennessee and its players, but all women.”
Former Robert Morris coach Sal Buscaglia said Summitt was the one who got the ball rolling on gender equality in sports. There’s still a long way to go, he said, but women’s athletics wouldn’t be where they are now if it wasn’t for her.
Burt talks about how program success can often be judged by the players who return to be a part of it. Summitt created a culture of people coming back to Tennessee.
“I think when you know her, and you spend time with her, you get to see a different side of her than just that intense, focused coach on the sideline,” McConnell-Serio said. “She’s very genuine. She is family oriented. I think that’s the way she treated her players.”
Even after Cash chose Connecticut, Summitt would reach out to her when they crossed paths. She would check on Cash, ask how her family was doing and toss in a nugget or two of encouragement.
But Alzheimer’s took the coach away from the game she helped drive to popularity. Burt said one of the first things he did when he was hired at Duquesne was call Tennessee to see if they’d come play Duquesne at Consol Energy Center.
It was a long, protracted negotiation that never led to a game. Burt found out later it was because Summitt had been diagnosed with early onset dementia.
And while Summitt is gone, her legacy returns to Burt’s metric for measuring a program. Summitt coached at Tennessee for nearly 40 years, and now she has a large coaching tree passing her legacy along.
“She has touched the lives of so many,” McConnell-Serio said. “And now, a lot of them are coaches and they’re teaching the game and instilling the lessons they learned from her.”
Brody Miller: bmiller@post-gazette.com and Twitter @byBrodyMiller.
First Published: June 29, 2016, 4:00 a.m.