Sum It Up: A Thousand and Ninety-Eight Victories, a Couple of Irrelevant Losses, and a Life in Perspective

by Pat Summitt

  I settled in my seat and thought about R.B. I had called him just before we left the terminal. I said, “Well, my water broke, and I’m on my way back.”

  “Oh boy,” he said. “Okay.”

  I knew the thing to do was to be calm. I remember looking at my office-mate and grinning, and saying, “Well, are you still in Pennsylvania?” I think she said, “Yes, Mickie tried to get us killed going back to the airport,” and we laughed, and I said, “Well, what do you need me to do?”

  —R.B. SUMMITT

  R.B. said, “Do you think you need an ambulance?”

  “That might not be a bad idea,” I said.

  I explained to our pilots, Dave Curry and Steve Rogers, that I was in labor, and I asked if they had any wine on board; I had read in one of my pregnancy books that a glass of red wine could slow contractions.

  “No,” Dave said, “but there is a bottle of bourbon on board.”

  “Well, give me that,” I said.

  He brought me a plastic cup full of it, but I took one whiff and turned my head away. I couldn’t possibly drink it. “Here,” I said, and handed it to Mickie.

  She belted a big swallow. Tossed it right down.

  The pilots asked for an emergency takeoff and got clearance. As the wheels went up I fished around in my briefcase and handed Mickie an emergency pamphlet I carried on how to deliver a baby. She accepted it, with a look of stark terror, and began reading—and downed another belt of bourbon.

  We were airborne when the contractions began again, and this time the spasms were so bad I couldn’t sit in my seat. I got down on my hands and knees in the narrow aisle, moaning. Mickie rubbed my back, but my moaning got louder and turned into a wail. Mickie jabbered at me nervously about Ruthie Bolton, the great Auburn player who came from a family of twenty-one children.

  “It’s okay, Pat; just think about Ruthie Bolton’s mother. She had twenty-one children. If she had twenty-one, you can have one.”

  I said, “Mickie, you have to calm down.”

  Then a contraction struck and I wailed again, and the noise made its way to the cockpit, where our pilots were growing nervous. They radioed ahead and asked for an emergency landing at the closest airport, which was Roanoke, Virginia. Steve came to the back of the plane, where I was still on all fours.

  Steve whispered to Mickie that they wanted to land the plane and get me to a hospital. After he returned to the cockpit, Mickie said, “Pat, they want to put us down in Virginia and get you an ambulance.”

  Now, I had no intention of giving birth to my baby in Virginia. Virginia was the school that had knocked us out of the NCAA tournament, and caused me so much pain. As far as I was concerned at that moment, it was a hateful state with absolutely nothing to recommend it. My baby wasn’t going to be born anywhere but Tennessee. My home was in Tennessee, and my husband was in Tennessee. R.B. was going to be present at the birth of our son—it had taken us ten years to bring Tyler into the world, and I didn’t want him to miss it. He hadn’t wanted me to make the trip in the first place, and I owed it to him to get home if I possibly could. I did not want to face him if our son was born in Virginia.

  Between breaths and clenched teeth, I said, “Mickie, you go tell them that if they land this plane in Virginia, they’re going to have a madwoman on their hands.”

  Our pilot Steve had actually helped deliver two of his children with a midwife, but that was in a bathtub, not in an airplane flying in turbulence. He decided he didn’t want to try it, and he hit the throttle, hard. I found out later we burned nine hundred gallons of fuel in an hour, flew so fast that the plane would have black exhaust streaks along the sides when we landed.

  R.B. was waiting for me on the ground with an ambulance, and I thought he was going to climb over the seat and drive it himself. We got to St. Mary’s Hospital at about 7:30 P.M., and by then it had gone out over radio scanners that the UT plane had requested an ambulance for Coach Summitt, so it was all over Knoxville that I was in labor. We checked in under the name Patricia Smith for privacy, which led to a scene when Holly came to the hospital and tried to find us. Mickie had called and left a message on her answering machine to tell her what was happening.

  Mickie’s voice said, so nice and calm and steady, “Holly, uhhhhhh, Pat has gone into labor.” She was so calm I knew something was wrong. I was running around like I was the daddy.

  —HOLLY WARLICK

  When Holly arrived at the hospital, an administrator wouldn’t tell her what room I was in. Holly said, “Well, I will find her,” and she charged up the stairs and ran around the maternity ward, yelling, “Pat? PAT? Where’s Pat Summitt?” We heard her voice out in the hall, and R.B. went and got her. She walked into my room carrying a bottle of champagne in a brown paper bag.

  Dr. Brabson arrived to examine me and explained that Tyler was in the “posterior” position, meaning that he was turned in the womb toward my stomach, which was why I felt the contractions in my back. He didn’t want to do a Cesarean, because he felt that with some patience he could turn Tyler around, but it would be a while before I gave birth, and I’d be in some distress. I said, “I’ve got to have an epidural.” I was over being brave. An attendant came in to give it to me and said, “This is going to hurt.”

  I replied, “Just hurry up and do it. Because after this, nothing is ever going to hurt again.”

  Tyler didn’t appear for four more impatient hours. I watched some TV and visited with the nurses who all came in to chat. In the meanwhile, Dr. Brabson kept going out and delivering other babies. He’d come back to my room and say, “Another boy!” Finally I said, “Don’t you leave this room again.”

  When it was time to deliver, a nurse asked R.B. and me if we wanted any other family in there with us. We hadn’t planned on it, but we looked at Mickie and Holly and said, “Stay.” At that moment, they felt as close as sisters.

  I thought I was a tough coach until I met my delivery room nurse. She talked to me like I talked to our players. “We’re gonna have this baby now,” she ordered me. When I cried out, she said, “Come on, aren’t you tougher than that?” Mickie and Holly burst out laughing; they said the nurse sounded just like I did in practice.

  My son was born at 12:18 A.M. on September 21, 1990. R.B. was right by me, and we locked hands while I pushed. He was saying, “You’re doing great, you’re doing great.” Mickie couldn’t bear to watch; her nerves were too shot from the plane ride, so she turned away to the window. But Holly stood right next to Dr. Brabson and saw every second of Tyler’s delivery, and she would say later that it was a greater moment in her life than any championship we ever won.

  First his head emerged, and then his little arm popped out. Then the doctor lifted him and laid him in my arms.

  He was born and before the nurse even started cleaning him up, Pat said, “Hey, Tyler.” His head turned right around, and they made eye contact. It was obvious that he knew that voice. And there was a bond right there that words can’t describe, for all of us.

  —R.B. SUMMITT

  When Tyler’s little face and eyes rolled toward me, I knew that he had heard every word I’d said to him for the last nine months. After the nurse cleaned him up, Mickie and Holly huddled around me to peer at him. That’s when Mickie said, “He’s got kind of a cone head.” I started giggling, because in fact his head was pointy. Holly said, “Mickie, you need to shut up!”

  I was exhausted, but before I fell asleep I made four calls. I dialed my mother, and then my mother-in-law, and my sister, and I told them about Tyler’s arrival, and how much I loved them all. Then I dialed one more number. It answered on the first ring.

  I was up. I was waiting to hear from them, a nervous wreck. Pat called me right after she had Tyler. It was around one A.M. and she was exhausted, but she said, “Michelle, I wanted to let you know I have a little baby boy, Ross Tyler Summitt.”

  —MICHELLE MARCINIAK

  Our players were conditioning on the track at six the next morning when they
heard Tyler had arrived. After they finished their four-hundred-meter sprints, they all trooped over to the hospital and sat around on my bed. I remember a forward named Lisa Harrison sitting at the foot of it, holding Tyler in her arms. It was obvious that he was going to be our own gender diversification program when he pulled his first trick by wetting all over Joan Cronan. I was changing him when Joan leaned over to take a closer look, and he just let it go like a fire hose over the front of her nice red dress.

  We all burst out laughing, including Joan, who said, “I’m not used to being around boys.”

  The kids hoped that Tyler would sweeten me up and keep me at home for a while. But I was right back to work a little more than a week after Tyler was born; I just carried him with me to the gym in his portable car seat. I didn’t have a choice: it was September, our players were back on campus, and the 1990–1991 season was just a couple of months away. I was lucky that my job wasn’t a nine-to-five affair; my hours were flexible, and I could sleep in every morning while our players were in class and take my infant son to the office with me. I felt great; I was full of love and excitement, and the fatigue of middle-of-the-night feedings was nothing a catnap couldn’t cure. Ty attended his first Lady Vols practice when he was eight days old, sitting on the sidelines out of the way.

  I loved everything about being a mother; there were no hard parts for me. I’d had so many miscarriages, lost so many children, that anything to do with an infant seemed wonderful to me. I took Ty everywhere; he was always in my arms, and no new mother ever had more help than I did. I had a wonderful nanny, Vanessa Best Hodges, but our whole team and staff also cared for Tyler; he had a dozen older sisters and stand-in babysitters. Mickie and Holly carried him around constantly and teasingly called him their “sack of taters.” Then there was my devoted longtime secretary, Katie Wynn; our first-rate medical trainer, Jenny Moshak; and an expert media director, Debby Jennings, all of whom felt more like family than staff and were always there to help haul his diaper bag and stroller or be in charge of his bottles and toys.

  I don’t know that I consciously set out to create a “family model” of success at Tennessee, but that’s what we grew into once I became a mother. Partly it was by necessity. I relied on others for so much help with Tyler on the job—to sterilize his bottles, feed him, change him, tend to him, and play with him—that it didn’t make sense to treat my staff like employees, or our players like mere students. We were all collaborators in this ambitious ongoing project that was Tennessee basketball, and then here came Ty, who was this fascinating addition and new facet to the experiment.

  When Tyler came along, he had a tremendous impact. Family had always been important to her, but Tyler took that to a whole new level. Ty was so good for her with the players, because behind all that demandingness was an unconditional love, and that’s a difficult balance, but she struck it.

  —BILLIE MOORE

  He was an ideal baby boy, so blond he was towheaded, with large, swimming blue eyes, and a placid temperament, and everyone doted on him. The players loved to see him arrive with our nanny at practice, because that meant I might go a little easier on them and cut practice short. As soon as we finished, I’d sweep him up into my arms.

  Ty was around so much that when he was just six months old, he learned to imitate me while I was coaching. He was in his high chair one day, gazing back at R.B. and me with those solemn blue eyes, when suddenly he raised his arm up and pointed like I did when I called out a play. We just died laughing.

  We loved it when Ty would show up because we knew practice was about to be over. I just remember this fierce competitor, someone who didn’t allow you to cut corners and who gave us the discipline to win, but then you saw this gentle side of her when Ty would come around; she would just melt. I remember she would reach out and scoop him up and he would have the biggest smile, and it really touched us. Even as tough as she was on us, we knew there was this other side of her. And I remember her sharing Ty with us. We would fly commercial and we would pass Ty around. Maybe I would have him, or someone else would. She allowed us to be a part of his early development.

  —NIKKI CALDWELL

  I brought Tyler to every game; he was attached to my hip in the locker room, where I would feed him and hold him until right before tip-off. I even carried him on my shoulder while I was giving our team their pregame talk. Then right before game time, I’d hand him off to Vanessa or R.B. We put cotton in his ears to block out the crowd noise, and he would lie in R.B.’s arms up in the stands and, believe it or not, usually fall asleep.

  Ty’s sleeping, in fact, became another one of our superstitions: R.B. swore that if we were in a tight game and Ty dozed off, we always won. He’d look down and see Ty’s eyes shut, and sit back relieved, sure that we were going to be okay. It got so everybody took it as a good sign. We’d be in a tough spot, and Joan would look over at R.B. and ask, “Is Tyler asleep?”

  I could hardly get our players to put him down. They handled him constantly, especially our senior leader Daedra Charles, who acted like Ty was partly her son. Daedra was always leaving lipstick marks on his forehead, until it became yet another superstition: Daedra had to kiss Tyler before the tip-off of every game for good luck.

  I was lucky to have Daedra Charles on our team at the same time I was trying to adjust to coaching with a new baby. She was such a strong, mature leader of our team that I could actually delegate responsibility for team discipline to her—she became my partner-enforcer on the floor, and you didn’t want to mess with Daedra. She was a muscled six-three center from Detroit, Michigan, whom we called “Train,” which was short for “Night Train,” because she was so forceful around the basket. Take a basketball out of her hands and she emanated sweetness, with deep brown almond eyes and a triangular face with high cheekbones that framed a brilliant smile. But on and off the court she meant serious business.

  She hadn’t started out that way. Daedra’s ACT test score coming out of high school didn’t meet the minimum NCAA eligibility requirement, which meant she had to sit out her freshman year while she got squared away and more serious academically. When other schools gave up on recruiting her, I said to her, “We want you regardless. It doesn’t matter to me if you had trouble on your test scores; I’m recruiting you because I want to help you be a better person and also a basketball player.” That was just the foot we started off on, and Daedra felt an extra measure of loyalty because of it.

  That spoke to me. It wasn’t all about “I want you to play ball.” It was, “I care about you as a person and an individual and want you to have both, to be successful at both.” And they never gave up on me.

  —DAEDRA CHARLES

  Daedra also had to get her fitness up to our level before she could play. In the summer before she came to school, I called once a week and reminded her that when she got to Tennessee she’d have to pass a conditioning test, a three-mile cross-country run through some woods near campus. “Are you running your three miles every day?” I’d ask. “Yes, ma’am, I am,” she’d say.

  Well, she got to Knoxville and the day of the three-mile run came. Our team took off running, but Daedra only made it one mile before she dropped to the side of the path and stopped, panting. I pulled up next to her, and I said, “Now, Train, you told me you’d been working out and running three miles a day!”

  “Yes, ma’am, I have been,” she said.

  “Tell me what you were doing.”

  “Well, I ran a mile and a half in the morning. And a mile and a half at night.”

  I glared at her—I couldn’t believe it. I ordered her back to the starting line, and told her I’d deal with her later, and then ran to catch up with the rest of the team.

  For the next several weeks I made Daedra get up early in the morning and run three miles. She protested that the trees gave her asthma. “Is that a willow?” she asked one morning. When I said yes, she started gasping and she said, “I’m allergic.”

  “I will get it cut rig
ht down,” I said sarcastically.

  It was child abuse. I should have called Child Protective Services.

  —DAEDRA CHARLES

  But Daedra grew into our most conscientious leader, and by her senior season in 1990–1991 she was running the team. I hardly had to say a word, because by the time I saw a problem, Daedra had already solved it. I’d bring it up, and she’d say, “We took care of it.” Or she would come into my office and say, “I need to tell you about a team issue in confidence, and this is what I think you should do about it.” I found myself following her advice.

  It was like having an oldest child you could depend on to babysit all the others. The result was a season in which I could just teach and didn’t have to worry about motivating the Lady Vols. There was a big difference: motivating is a lot harder than teaching, because you have to give more of yourself, constantly rack your brain to think about how to start somebody’s engine, what to say or do that might get them going. On almost every team there were a couple of players who drove me crazy because they weren’t motivated; we’d have ten kids busting it in practice, and one or two trying to cut corners. But everybody followed Daedra’s lead: they saw how hard our senior star busted it and didn’t dare go less than all out, for fear of what she might say.