by Pat Summitt
“Why is this happening to me?” I asked my doctors. They had no easy answer: any number of possible factors could cause recurrent miscarriage, and sometimes an underlying cause was never found. I underwent a laparoscopy test, fairly new at the time. When I woke up, the doctor told me, “Everything looks fine.”
R.B. came in beaming, hugged me, and took hold of my hand. I caught him off guard by bursting into tears. “What’s wrong?” he said.
“I was so worried that we couldn’t have children,” I said, “and I didn’t want to disappoint you.”
I was concerned that stress could be the cause: pressure in coaching was ever present, almost a state of being. But the doctors told me there was no evidence linking recurrent miscarriage and work stress; it wasn’t the job’s fault. Nevertheless, we took a brief hiatus from trying to have a child in the summer of 1984, because I was under especially intense strain: I had gone straight from the Final Four to preparing for the Olympics in Los Angeles, where the USA team was heavily favored. If we didn’t deliver a gold medal in women’s basketball, it would be because I screwed it up. “I’ve got to do this,” I told R.B. I’d never live it down if we lost.
The Olympics were exhilarating and distracting, and a solace for the personal losses of those years. For forgetting all your troubles there is nothing like watching human beings literally seem to fly. The ’84 Olympics had a lot of those, and the basketball tournament featured two in particular for the United States in Cheryl Miller and Michael Jordan. Being around those gliding, magical artists and meeting and working with other elites once again took me to a whole new level as a professional.
My male counterpart was Bobby Knight, the Indiana University coach known for his disciplined teams, his incandescent temper, and his penchant for saying the outrageous. I learned a lot from Bobby, with whom I became great friends, once I got past an early encounter. We met for the first time at a huge press event in Indianapolis to introduce us as the USA head coaches. I was walking ahead of Bobby down a hallway, when he said, “You know, you got a great ass.”
I laughed. Then, with a smile still on my face, I said, “Don’t ever say anything like that to me again.” Bobby just grinned back largely—he had a wonderful smile—and shrugged it off. So did I. Underneath it all I knew he respected me, and he was just being a provocateur. A few years later when his son Patrick wanted to be a coach, Bobby sent him to Knoxville to observe our practices for a couple of days, telling him there was no one better to learn from.
They did go on and become friends in a big way. I probably wouldn’t have handled it. But she laughed at it.
—NANCY DARSCH
Bobby and I bonded over the pressure and honor we felt as Olympic coaches. It was compounded for me by the fact that I was young for the job, only thirty-two, still relatively unproven, and I was also the only female coach in the entire Olympic tournament. Although it was a great compliment, it came with an unwritten statement: “You better win.” It was widely acknowledged that the United States had the most dominant player in the world in Cheryl Miller, and anything other than a victory would be viewed as an underachievement. Not a day went by that I didn’t think about the fact that I’d never won a collegiate championship, yet I was expected to deliver a gold medal.
The stress was relentless, and it aged me. You know how a president grays throughout his term? That was how I aged in the summer of ’84. It made me more demanding than ever, especially on the two Tennesseans who were on our squad, Lea Henry and Cindy Noble, who became my targets and outlets when I needed to vent. Fortunately I had a great complement in the late great Kay Yow, whose style was the exact opposite of mine. Kay was the head coach at North Carolina State, where for thirty-four years she turned out players of distinction and won over 700 games despite hardly ever raising her voice, which was as soft as flannel.
Kay’s gentleness was not only good for the players; it was good for me. Where I made demands, she questioned and suggested. I became a better coach just by listening to her, and she gave me one of the great lessons of my career in the week before the Opening Ceremonies. We were walking back to our condo from practice, after I’d been particularly hard on Lea and Cindy.
Kay very calmly and sweetly said, “You know, Pat, how much better do you think Lea Henry and Cindy Noble are going to get at this point?”
She was saying ease up—it’s enough. I had reached the point of diminishing returns. “I think they are both trying really hard to please you, but how much more can they possibly do?” she said. “I just wonder if you’ve really thought about that.”
I said, suddenly self-conscious, “Kay, that’s a good point.”
That squad didn’t need much pushing from me. They were a women’s Dream Team: in addition to Miller, we had the towering Anne Donovan from Old Dominion; a fire-eyed little guard from Louisiana Tech named Kim Mulkey; the great versatile future Hall of Famer Teresa Edwards; our captain, Lynette Woodard, of Kansas; and Pam McGee of USC. There were a lot of epic performances at the Los Angeles Games from athletes like Carl Lewis and Mary Lou Retton. But one of them came from us: we swept the competition, going 6-0, winning every game by almost 33 points. After we beat South Korea by a score of 89–55 in the gold medal game, making it a talent show in front of a packed home crowd in the Forum, the squad shocked me by lifting me up and carrying me to center court. In the photos you can see my white high heels.
They picked her up and threw her in the air. It was a wondeful moment—it’s better than getting Gatorade thrown on you. And it showed the respect and love they had for her.
—NANCY DARSCH
Our performance was so sensational that it created rumors that I might retire. The talk was that now I had won a gold medal, I would seize the chance to go out on top. Bobby Knight told me, “After this you need to go back home and have kids.” He couldn’t know what a sensitive topic it was, or that my father shared his opinion. My father insisted it would never get better than this: I’d finished second in the NCAAs and won a gold medal in the same year, and how could I ever top that? It was time to do something else. “You need to retire and start your family,” he said.
In retrospect, I think both he and my mother worried about what the stress of the job was doing to me, and whether it contributed to my miscarriages. I had gotten thin during the Olympics, and there were circles under my eyes. My father also understood that part of what drove me professionally was the inability to ever please him enough to get a compliment from him. Telling me to retire was his way of saying, “You’ve done well. You can stop striving for my approval now.” But, of course, Daddy couldn’t say what he really meant.
He could never really say or admit, “I was flat-out wrong.” But he had his way of conceding. He couldn’t say, “Trish, I am so pleased with you, and I love you so much, and you don’t have to do any more. I think you ought to hang it up and enjoy the fruits of these labors.” He couldn’t say that. He just said, “You ought to retire.” Period.
—R.B. SUMMITT
“Dad, I can have a family and still coach,” I said.
I knew what I wanted professionally, and understood what it would take to get there, but I was trying too hard to make it happen. Which was the way I did everything. Even snow-ski.
The first time I tried to ski I was in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, one winter with my sister-in-law. She advised me to start on the beginners’ slope, but do I look like someone who goes to the bunny hill? Instead I took the ski lift all the way to the top, and during the ride I watched the skiers beneath me for a quick how- to lesson. I got so caught up in studying them that I didn’t get off the lift—just sat in the chair as it turned the corner and headed back down the slope.
Now, I certainly wasn’t going to ride the lift all the way back down the mountain and have people think I didn’t have the sense to get off. So I decided to jump. I was about twelve feet up when I dropped out of the chair. I landed face-first in the snow, knocking the wind out of me. I lay there for a momen
t and thought, Maybe nobody saw me. Then a voice came over the public address system.
“ARE YOU HURT?” the voice said. “DO YOU NEED ASSISTANCE?”
I didn’t answer. I thought, Well, at least they don’t know who I am.
But then the voice spoke again. It boomed, “COACH SUMMITT? ARE YOU OKAY? DO YOU NEED HELP?”
I just waved.
It wasn’t in my nature to ask for help with anything. For years I’d managed the Tennessee program almost single-handedly, and when I did delegate, it was only to my closest associate, Nancy Darsch. But in 1985 I had no choice but to seek help, because Nancy left us; after seven years as my right hand, and also my eyes, a brilliant scout and tactician who helped us to five Final Fours in seven years, she took the head coaching job at Ohio State.
Fortunately, thanks to a new NCAA rule expanding coaching staffs, I was allowed to replace Nancy with not one but two assistants. I also had help in our athletic director, Joan Cronan, a velvet-gloved, hair-sprayed force who had arrived in 1983 and was turning us into the most prominent women’s athletic program in the country. Joan had the air of a gracious Louisiana hostess, unless you messed up; then you found yourself quietly disinvited from the party. She was a superb fund-raiser who slowly but surely built our budget, and she told me to go after the best assistants money could buy.
I started out looking for a couple of good hires, but what I got instead were Mickie DeMoss and Holly Warlick, who over the next twenty-eight years would be my mainstays, coconspirators, partners in mischief, emotional counselors, equalizers, truth tellers, comforters, and favorite dinner companions. We were a combination of floor show and secret society.
I’d known Mickie Faye DeMoss for some time. She was a comical, fierce little person who had built a reputation as the best recruiter in the business at Auburn University, as well as a great bench coach. She was a renowned storyteller who liked to spin tales of growing up in Tallulah, Louisiana, where her mother, Wilma, owned a combination bar and grocery store called the Delta Lounge. She got her frankness and wit from Wilma, a five-foot firecracker whom I came to adore. Wilma was a whiskey-sipping, sharp social observer with a way of jabbing the pretense out of people, especially when she was into her beloved Crown Royal blend. She had her own vocabulary and a set of sayings that we repeated constantly.
“If you’ll just keep your mouth shut, nobody will know you’re a fool,” she’d say.
When somebody talked too much, she’d say, “Sounds like a duck with a whistle up its butt.”
When she was putting on her makeup, she’d sigh and say, “You can’t ruin ruin.”
If she decided someone didn’t know what they were talking about, she said, “They don’t know sheep shit from cotton seed.”
But when Wilma got really, really angry, she’d say, “Makes my butt want a dip of snuff.”
Mickie and Wilma were devoted to each other, though it wasn’t the most conventional mother-daughter relationship. Mickie was badly pigeon-toed as a little girl and had to wear leg braces, and Wilma was afraid that Mickie was too sensitive about it. Mickie claims that Wilma’s way of toughening her up was to set her on the bar of the Delta Lounge and make her dance the jitterbug in her braces, while singing, “Goin’ to Kansas City!” until everybody applauded. “Buddy, I danced until sparks flew,” Mickie says. The result of this unusual exercise in child rearing was one of the feistier people I’d ever met.
When Mickie came to Tennessee for the job interview, I asked, “Do you think you can bring in the players to get us over the hump, to take us to the next level so we can win a national championship?” Her answer was pure Mickie.
“That’s not the question,” she said, bridling. “I’ll get you the players. Do you think you have what it takes as a head coach to win it?”
I just glared at her. “Oh, I have what it takes.”
I thought, “Did I really just say that?” But that was the level of confidence I had in my ability, and that’s the level of confidence she had in her ability to win a championship. So you put those two together, we had a winning combo.
—MICKIE DEMOSS
Holly Warlick had grown up into an engaging, endlessly good-natured adult, though with the same competitive edge she’d had as a player. Hiring her was a no-brainer. After she left Tennessee, she’d gotten her master’s degree at Virginia Tech and migrated to Nebraska as an assistant coach. I called her and said I wanted to hire a former player, someone who could teach our philosophy, but also “offer personal testimony that it was possible to live through playing for me.” I asked if she would be interested.
She said, “I can be there in fifteen hours, unless you need me in eight.”
The first week Holly was on the job, I realized that life at work was never going to be the same. She and Mickie shared an office next to mine, and one day I walked into it to see that Holly had found a picture of me, in a little green skirt and little green sweater, and blown it up and mounted it on the wall. She had also signed it: “To Holly and Mickie, keep up the great work! Love, Pat.” I just about died laughing and didn’t stop for the next two decades.
They were capable of outrageous stunts and were always doing things to keep us loose. That first season together we took a road trip to Los Angeles, where Mickie managed to talk her way onto the game show The Price Is Right by telling the screeners that she was a professional mud wrestler. “Come on down!” the host shouted. Mickie proceeded to win the Grand Showcase, with the help of one of our players, Jennifer Tuggle, who was a math major. She got a trip to New Zealand, motor scooters, a bedroom and living room set, a grandfather clock, stereo equipment, a washer-dryer, and other fabulous prizes too numerous to mention.
Together, Mickie, Holly, and I had that quality known as good chemistry. For some reason, we struck the right balance of laughter and serious purpose—once they got used to my hard-driving pace.
Among Holly’s first assignments was a road trip with me to Birmingham for a Southeastern Conference meeting. I had a new car, a beautiful turbocharged Datsun 280z, champagne colored with a glass T-top. Holly strapped herself into the passenger seat and I hit the gas. The velocity slammed her back in her seat.
I looked over at the speedometer going through Chattanooga and the needle was totally buried. I didn’t say a word because I was still in the player-coach relationship. But I’m thinking, Holy——, we’re gonna get killed. I held the newspaper up in front of my face like I was reading, ’cause I thought, We’re gonna get killed, and I don’t want to see my death.
—HOLLY WARLICK
When we got to the outskirts of Birmingham, I pulled over and handed her the keys and said, “You drive, I have to put on my makeup.” Holly got behind the wheel.
“Now be careful,” I said.
Holly answered, “At least you’ll see the needle.”
Mickie and Holly eventually convinced me to slow down and realize that sometimes less was more. But back then I was inclined to think more was more, and the 1985–1986 Lady Vols felt my excesses. We were a young team, with eight players who were either freshmen or sophomores, and I resorted to some radical means to teach them good habits and high standards.
That season we lost ten games, including a bitter upset to our in-state rival Vanderbilt. We had never lost to Vandy before, and I didn’t take it well, and I didn’t intend for anyone else to take it well either. As we trooped back onto the team bus, R.B. said, “Where are we eating?”
“Eat? We’re not eating,” I said. “We might choke on it.”
I think she hated losing more than she liked winning. Losing was like death. I mean it was miserable. She instilled a great fear of losing, and it was a real motivator.
—SHELLEY SEXTON COLLIER
We got back to campus at about two A.M., and the kids filed off the bus ready to trudge back to their dorms. But I said, “Where do you think you’re going?” They froze, afraid to answer. I said, “Everybody in my office. We’re going over this game.”
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nbsp; The whole team, including Mickie and Holly, jammed into my little office in Stokely. The players sat on the floor with their knees up to their chests. I passed out paper and pencils and loaded the game film into a video player. I told them to watch themselves, and to make a note every time they didn’t run the floor hard.
I was petrified, and I didn’t even play that night. I was writing down things like “My shoe was untied.” Anything that might make her happy.
—KATHY SPINKS GRIZZELL
When the tape ended, it was close to four A.M. I said, “You have exactly two minutes to get to the locker room and put your gear on. I’ll see you on the court.”
When they went into the locker room, they found a pile of fuming, sweaty uniforms in the middle of the floor. They could just put those back on, I said. “I’m not making the managers do extra laundry,” I said. “Why should they pay for your mistakes?”
I told them to get out their lists and made them run a thirty-second suicide for every instance in which they hadn’t sprinted the floor—and some of their lists were fifteen items long. They ran until they couldn’t feel their legs. It was about six A.M. when we finally finished. “Y’all go get some breakfast, and get your bitching out of your system,” I said. “And you better not miss your 7:50 classes.”
I made the newspapers for that one; someone saw all the lights on in the gym at 4:30 A.M. After the story ran, the university president, Dr. Joe Johnson, called me and suggested that perhaps wind sprints at 4:30 A.M. didn’t enhance student life. I had to agree.
But I didn’t punish our players just to make myself feel better; those workouts had a purpose. I was trying to teach them a lesson about commitment. I measured our performance by two things: effort and execution. I was willing to coach execution for as long, and as forgivingly, as our players needed me to. I was a taskmaster, but a patient one, when it came to execution. But I wasn’t patient or forgiving about effort. Lack of effort was tantamount to a lack of respect for our teammates and coaching staff and for me. With a lack of effort, one lackadaisical player compromised the efforts of all of us.