WOODY PAIGE
Woody Paige: NCAA should name women's Final Four trophy for Pat Summitt
POSTED: 04/01/2012 01:00:00 AM MDT
UPDATED: 04/01/2012 01:55:29 AM MDT By Woody Paige
The Denver Post
On the 30th anniversary of the women's first NCAA championship, the Final Four has it all at a mile high, rising to basketball's pinnacle and Summitt.
Today, only a few blocks away from where James A. Naismith kept the original 13 rules of the game he conceived in the 1890s, folded and stashed in a desk drawer of his YMCA office, Baylor plays Stanford, and Notre Dame confronts Connecticut in the most heralded and stimulating semifinals in tournament history.
In between games, 20,000 people crammed in The Can will stand in salute of Tennessee farm girl Patricia Head Summitt.
Pat is the winningest, and probably best, ever to coach college basketball — women's basketball and men's basketball.
Pat the Lady Vol, and, more important, Pat the Woman Pioneer, has more victories than any other men's or women's coach (1,098), more women's NCAA titles (eight), more Final Four appearances (18), more former players who became head coaches (45) and more accomplishments overall as a player, a coach, an innovator, an ambassador, a friend and an educator (every player who has completed her eligibility at Tennessee earned a degree).
And Pat has, sadly, Alzheimer's.
A year after John Wooden, the Wizard of Westwood, died at 99, the Empress of Knoxville, only 59, publicly acknowledged last August she had been diagnosed with early-onset dementia.
She continued to coach the Volunteers this season, winning her 16th SEC tournament championship and advancing to the Elite Eight before losing to Baylor last Monday.
A member of the school's athletic department told me Pat was steadfastly determined to come to Denver for The Final Four. On Saturday, Summitt showed up at the arena during — oddly enough — the workout of longtime archrival UConn — and talked with coach Geno Auriemma. Courtside, she signed autographs and accepted well-wishes from the crowd that surrounded her. Nobody is certain if this will be her last trip to the Final Four. She can coach at Tennessee as long as she wants, but how long will she want to?
When Patricia Sue Head, then 22, abruptly was named the Tennessee coach in 1974 and was barely older than her players, there was no NCAA Tournament for women; in fact, there was no officially sanctioned NCAA women's basketball.
In rural northern Tennessee, "Trish" played on a six-girl high school basketball team — with three players on the offensive side of midcourt, the other three playing defense full time.
The young coach's first successful battle was to end the six-player game; her next was to help with the institution of Title IX — which offered equal rights, equal number of sports, equal scholarships for women's college sports. Then she led the effort among coaches to begin an NCAA championship tournament. That first year, 1982, in Norfolk, Va., Tennessee lost in the Final Four to Louisiana Tech.
Pat won her first championship in 1987, produced the first three-peat, won the Final Four in three different decades and last won the title in '07 and '08.
It gets even more incredible. When Tennessee built a massive new basketball arena, the Lady Vols, not the men's Vols, were responsible for filling it, setting women's basketball season and one-game (24,653) attendance records.
Twice, Tennessee administrators asked Summitt to take over as coach of the men's program, but she declined. She was named the women's coach of the century. She was voted to the Basketball Hall of Fame.
As the oldest player (25), she won a silver medal on the first women's Olympic basketball team, and was coach of the 1984 gold medalists. She will be introduced between games today with the other former Olympic coaches.
Baylor coach Kim Mulkey played for Summitt in the Olympics. Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer patterned her program after Summitt's. Auriemma, who could tie Summitt's Final Four achievement with a championship, maintained a war of words toward his adversary for years, but Pat never responded. And Notre Dame coach Muffet McGraw has been Summitt's contemporary for a quarter-century.
In December, Summitt was chosen Sports Illustrated's Sportswoman of the Year.
The two most famous University of Tennessee sports figures are Pat and Peyton, the Broncos' new quarterback.
The last time I talked to Pat, she was dressed as a Volunteers cheerleader. In 2007, the Tennessee men's coach (one of nine during Summitt's span of success), Bruce Pearl, and Pat asked me to address a basketball boosters meeting in Knoxville. Pearl had recently painted his chest orange for a Lady Vols game, and Summitt reciprocated by donning a cheerleaders outfit for a men's game, climbing atop a human pyramid during a timeout and singing "Rocky Top."
"I'm just an ol' country girl. This isn't something I'd normally do, but it's fun," she said to me, then laughingly added, "for one time."
Perhaps tonight, when she stands out above the crowd, it will be fun for her one more time.
The NCAA should honor Pat by naming the award given to the Final Four women's champions "The Summitt Trophy."
All that Pat Summitt has done for women, and for basketball, must not be forgotten.
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