I Remember Pat Summitt

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Pat Head Summitt passed away on June 28, 2016, a little more than four years after she stepped away from a thirty-eight-year run as head coach of the University of Tennessee Lady Vols. Pat was just 64 at the time, having battled Alzheimer s disease for at least five years. Expressions of grief as well as memories and testimonials about Pat were immediate, passionate, and plentiful. It was on a level befitting a head of state. President Barack Obama, Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, and two-time-Super -winning quarterback Peyton Manning, a UT alum and longtime Summitt friend, were among those publicly expressing their personalized sympathies. Summitt's career coaching numbers were off-the-chart stellar. They included an NCAA record (male or female) 1,098 career victories, eight national championships, and sixteen Southeastern Conference regular-season titles and sixteen SEC Tournament championships. What those numbers don't tell, though, are the countless friends and fans that Summitt met along the way, and the thousands of lives she touched in an inspirational manner that extended well beyond the basketball court. I Remember Pat Summitt is more verbal scrapbook than it is biography; it s an oral history of her life told by dozens who knew her well at different points in her life, to include many of her former players and coaching peers. In their own words, they talk openly and candidly about Pat, taking readers on the hall of famer s journey from her teenage Trish years in rural Cheatham County, Tennessee, to her days as a basketball All American at Tennessee-Martin, to her exploits as a player and as a coach on the international stage, to her nearly four decades coaching in Knoxville, helping to elevate women s basketball from an athletic-department afterthought to the pinnacle of the sports world. The book also goes inside her battle with Alzheimer's, in which she bravely and relentlessly put a public face on an insidious disease that ravages many. Included in the book is a foreword from basketball superstar Nancy Lady Magic Lieberman, who was a teammate of Pat s on the 1976 U.S. women s Olympic basketball team and a player under Pat when Summitt was an assistant coach for the 1980 U.S. women s Olympic team.