by Pat Summitt
“You’ll run into a burning building, but you won’t deny the high post!” I hollered.
One day Vonda so frustrated me in practice that I grabbed a ball and drop-kicked it into the stands. Sank my toe into it as hard as I could and watched it soar into the upper loges. Then I kicked her out of the gym. “Just get out,” I said. “Go.” But the frustration was mutual. Vonda walked into the locker room—and punched a wall, literally put her fist in it. She was aiming for drywall, but she missed and instead hit concrete and gave herself a boxer’s fracture. That’s who Vonda was; a few years later she would become a heavyweight prizefighter and win a women’s world title.
Knocking heads with stubborn young players was often a necessary part of their evolution. Sometimes it was the only way to convince self-concerned eighteen- to twenty-one-year-olds to set aside their insecurities, cares, motives, and agendas and buy into something as self-sacrificing as the Tennessee program. Usually, I could set my watch by their development. As freshmen and sophomores they were resistant and defensive, unable to bear criticism. Then they’d grow up, and by their junior and senior years they understood we were in it together, and they even got to like the sound of my voice.
But no two players were alike. Some were average adolescents with the usual sensitive feelings; others had truly serious deficits. I was learning that they each had different pressure points—and that was the interesting part of the job. I picked up a saying from the legendary UCLA coach John Wooden: “I don’t treat them all the same, but I treat them all fairly.” I asked all our players to achieve the same standard, but I couldn’t ask all of them in the same way. Some took longer than others, and I’d think, How long do I have to wait before she gets it?
Having Tyler around was good for me, because he smoothed my hard edges and was a reminder to be patient, that each young woman was unique and their development happened at different speeds. Practice would end, and Tyler would sprint over to Vonda because he just had to be with her, and I’d grin at the sight of six-foot-six Vonda picking him up. But by then, Vonda was often in no mood to smile back.
“I don’t know why they can’t separate,” I’d say to Mickie and Holly.
“Pat, first of all, they’re kids,” Mickie would say. “And two, they’re getting yelled at. When you’re the yeller, you can let go of it a little easier.”
“I don’t know why they fight me.”
Raising a son in the midst of a women’s basketball team meant an unconventional childhood, but I tried to give Tyler some choice in that. As soon as he was old enough to understand, I said, “You can come with us, or you can stay at home with the nanny and play. It’s up to you. But if you come along, you have to behave. You have to promise to be good.”
He wanted to come along, and he was good. He rode in the back of the bus, a tiny figure sandwiched between our players. He sat on the end of the bench during games, looking like a miniature assistant coach in khakis, blazer, and a clip-on tie.
I gave him odd jobs to do; he was just four when I handed him my briefcase and he started lugging it for me. When he got a little bigger I put him in charge of the little orange stool that I sat on in our huddles. During time-outs, he would run over and set it up for me, then scamper out of the way. He’d watch Mom give her speech in the huddle, then dart in and carry it back to its place at the end of the bench. As he got older he decided his role was to take care of me; he made sure I had bottled water and cough drops on the bench to soothe my throat, which got so raw from yelling, and rubbed my shoulders when he thought I was stressed.
It wasn’t the most orthodox parenting style; I couldn’t name another head coach who sat his or her child on the bench during games and wove him into the team to such a degree. But I thought it was crucial for Tyler to feel involved in my work, so that basketball was never something that took his mother away from him. Even in the most intense games, I would wander down the bench to speak to him, just to give him a moment of attention. To let him know that he always came first, that he was important to me regardless of the score. “What do you think, Tyman?” I’d say.
I would say something, and I don’t even know if it was right, but she’d nod and go, “Huh. Okay.” And she’d walk back.
—TYLER SUMMITT
Hopefully, Tyler never questioned whether he was my main priority. In 1991, my friend Kim Mulkey called me. She was a young, newly pregnant head coach at Baylor, and she was worried about her ability to be a coach and a mother at the same time. I reassured her. “You will never neglect your children,” I said. “You will neglect your job for your children.” I believe we’ve both gotten it right.
I enrolled Ty in a primary school just off campus, no more than a thousand yards from Thompson-Boling Arena, so I could take him to school and pick him up every afternoon myself. He came to practice with me and would romp around with our student managers on the sideline or climb the bleachers exploring the TV booth. After practice we’d go home and I’d cook—we ate as a family every single night, no matter how late the hour or how tired I was, and R.B. and I did our best not to talk basketball at the table. After the dishes, I’d pop a tape in the video player, and if it wasn’t too late, Tyler would sit on the couch with me. Every now and then he’d look at me and say, “Mama, can we watch something on TV other than basketball?” I’d give him his choice and we’d watch for a while, and then I’d put him to bed and go back to work.
I’d go to sleep listening to her scream at the TV, watching film of practice.
—TYLER SUMMITT
Somehow, he naturally understood to be quiet when I was talking to the players; he’d just stand in the shadows and watch. He was so ever present and accepted by our players, in fact, that I had to teach him a lesson about discretion. While I sat up front on our buses and planes with the coaches, he would travel in the back with the players, doing his little-boy homework while they read their textbooks. He listened to their chatter and, inevitably, he also heard their bitching sessions. Once, when he was about five, he came to me and repeated something they’d said.
“They told you that?” I said.
“Yes.”
“You don’t need to tell me that.”
“Why not?” he said.
Tyler thought he was helping by passing on information. But it made me uneasy to think of my five-year-old as a spy.
“What you talk about with them stays between you and them,” I said. “And when I tell you something, it stays between us. Period.”
There were worse educations for a little boy than to hang around a women’s basketball team, I figured, although when he began learning the words to So So Def All-Stars and dancing hip-hop in the back of the bus, I wondered. One result of being around a bunch of smart-aleck collegians who treated him like an adult was that sometimes I feared he was growing up a little too fast. He was just five when he started eyeing the presents under the Christmas tree, and then gazing at the chimney skeptically.
“Mama, are you Santa Claus?” he asked.
I stared down at him, with my hands on my hips. He came up to my kneecap.
“Do I look like Santa Claus?” I demanded.
It was obviously going to be a peculiar upbringing, and I was curious to see how he would turn out. As soon as Tyler was old enough to discuss it, I asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up.
“A tree cutter,” he announced.
“Why a tree cutter?” I asked him.
It took a while to get to the bottom of it, but it turned out that he hero-worshipped one of our student managers who majored in forestry. It was a passing interest. A few months later, I asked him the same question again, hoping that this time his answer would be astronaut, or president of the United States. But it wasn’t.
He said, “I want to be a manager.”
“You mean like a basketball manager?” I said.
“Yes.”
“Son, there’ll come a time when you need to make some money. If I were you, I’d probably stay a
way from that particular career.”
I advised Tyler that he could be anything he wanted, but I hoped he avoided the same line of work as his mother. I wanted him to be his own man—“Be anything but a coach,” I said. But I’m not quite sure what I expected, given how enmeshed he was with our team.
The fact is I raised my own son almost as if he was another player. Tyler saw very early the repercussions when our team didn’t do something right or misbehaved, and it gave him a healthy respect for my authority. I don’t recall him ever throwing tantrums, or even crying very much. He was a limpid-eyed, sweet-mannered child who, at worst, got a little antic and red cheeked when he was excited, but he never wailed with tears. A good deal of the credit for that goes to a young woman named LaTina Dunn Haynes, who became his nanny when he was just three and remains a part of the family to this day; Tyler was the ring bearer at her wedding.
My philosophy when it came to rules with Tyler was the same as it was for our team: I only had a few, and I was strict about them. He was to say “yes” instead of “yeah,” look people in the eye, and give a firm handshake. I talked to him like a grown-up; I knew kids who were still talking baby talk as teenagers, and it made me cringe. “If you act like an adult, I’ll treat you like an adult,” I said. He cleaned his own room and cleared his plate from the table as soon as he was able, and school-work came first, which wasn’t a problem because he was smarter than his mother. I recall just one poor mark ever—on his first-grade report card. “You’re better than this,” I said sharply, and handed it back to him. From then on it would be mostly straight A’s.
Our family was run the way her team was run. So you do something wrong, there is a consequence. Just like with her players. It was “Hey, you do the right thing the right way, and I won’t yell at you.” How she ran her team, that’s how it was at home.
—TYLER SUMMITT
Like my father, I figured out quickly that you could influence a child with just a look or a tone and save yourself a lot of trouble. Tyler went through a phase when he was attracted to shiny things, and he was always lifting car keys off people’s desks to play with them, and then losing them. Mickie and Holly and I constantly had to hunt for them. I caught him at it one day and leaned down to give him a lecture, with my infamous glare.
He said, “Mama, will you just do one thing before you yell at me?”
“What?” I said.
“Please put your sunglasses on.”
The worst trouble he ever got in was when he went down to our dock to go fishing alone, which he was not supposed to do. I searched for him in a panic for fifteen minutes before I spotted him down by the river, which made me panic even more, because he could have drowned. “ROSS TYLER SUMMITT!” I hollered. I sent his father down to give him a lick for every step back up to the house. There were forty-four of them. He would take a step, and whoosh. He’d take another step, and whoosh. R.B. barely touched him, but it killed his pride.
Disappointing her was worse than any whipping.
—TYLER SUMMITT
There was one way I didn’t imitate my father as a parent: I told Tyler I loved him every single day and kissed him every chance I got. He always knew from my voice and touch that he was the most precious thing in the world to me. My father had never yet hugged me or told me he loved me, or given me a direct sign of affection. I was old enough and secure enough in myself to not fear him anymore, but with age came something else: incomprehension. How could a father be so undemonstrative, and what had it done to me?
R.B. and I took Tyler to Henrietta for every holiday, and as I watched Tyler with my father, I saw that the grandkids got a softer side of Richard Head. Tyler crawled in Daddy’s lap, and they would talk about his hunting beagles. My little nieces would throw their arms around him, saying, “Granddaddy, give me a kiss.”
He’d say, “Awwww, girl.”
My parents were aging, and the years of farmwork accelerated the process. My father had had two knee replacements and a ministroke that left him slightly dimmed. For some reason it also made him more talkative—he even teased with Tyler. During a family visit once we were all sitting at the supper table eating in silence, when all of a sudden Daddy looked at Tyler, and said, “Tyler, would you rather have a hundred-dollar bill, or a cow?”
Tyler looked at me. I said, “I’m not saying anything. You need to figure it out for yourself.” R.B. knew not to say anything either, because he had learned from long experience that when Richard Head spoke, you shut up. I watched Tyler try to puzzle it out. The expression on his angelic face said I don’t need any milk because I got some right in front of me; Granny just filled my glass.
Ty said hesitantly, “The money?”
Daddy’s shoulders shook with laughter, and everybody smiled. I leaned over and told Ty, “A cow is worth about eight hundred dollars.” That was Daddy’s idea of a joke.
Tyler sensed the distance between his grandfather and me, but he didn’t know what it was. I explained to him that Mister Richard had been a lot different when I was growing up, and I told him some stories about the lickings we got.
One day Mom asked me to go find the sugar in the pantry. I went in there and I did a halfhearted look, and I came back and said, “Mom, can you help me?” And she told me a story about how Granddaddy would take her out in the field and say, “I need this done.” And if you couldn’t do it, you’d probably get a whipping. And if you didn’t do it on time, you’d get a whipping. And if you didn’t do it right, you’d get a whipping. I went back and found the sugar. And from there on out I was sweating bullets when she would ask me to do something.
—TYLER SUMMITT
I never wanted my own son to fear me or wonder about my affection for him. I had to get it right with Tyler—because I wasn’t going to get any second chances to raise a child. He would be my one and only.
R.B. and I were finally forced to accept that we would have no more children. We had continued to hope and to try after Tyler, but I suffered two more miscarriages. Finally, the grief not only put me to bed, it caused a marital crisis. I would lose a baby and feel like R.B. almost blamed me for not doing something right. We argued about whether to adopt; I was in favor but he wasn’t and wanted to keep trying for a biological child. Finally, I told R.B. I just couldn’t bear another failure. “I can’t do this anymore,” I said.
The miscarriages really knocked her down. And we had some arguments about that, I will just tell you. I felt like she didn’t go to the next level. She felt like she knew in her heart it wouldn’t have mattered.
—R.B. SUMMITT
But finally we reached a peace. We agreed to be grateful we were blessed with Tyler, our healthy, easy-as-a-breeze boy who gave us so much pleasure. With that acceptance, for the next few years I experienced total contentment, the most completely happy, balanced period of my life.
Motherhood with Tyler so softened and gratified me that people began to remark on it. Trish Roberts was one of them. She came back to visit and after watching me in practice one day, she said wonderingly to Holly, “Pat’s mellowed.”
“Oh, Lord, don’t tell her that,” Holly said. “She’ll tear the doors off.”
Bridgette Gordon noticed it too. She had been playing overseas in Como, Italy, after graduating, but she came back to Knoxville in the summers to work at our annual basketball camps. She was sitting in our locker room during a break in the summer of ’94 when one of our new freshmen, Abby Conklin, came in. Abby said, “Pat, I didn’t have time to get my workout in today.”
“That’s okay,” I said.
Bridgette’s head almost spun in a full circle. “Excuse me?” she said. “It’s okay?”
“She can make it up later,” I said.
I said, “Wow.” That’s when I knew Tyler had softened her up for real.
—BRIDGETTE GORDON
There were still times when players mistook my tough love for all toughness, and no love. The problem with running a team like a family is that it raises
the emotional pitch: the investment is deeper, but you can also be disappointed and hurt by each other. One thing that all families do is fight, and they don’t always fight fair.
I didn’t always fight fair with Michelle Marciniak, I’ll admit. All coaches are emotional manipulators at heart, and I was the very best of them. I’d become an excellent actress, learned to use all shades of my voice and eyes to get the reactions we needed from players. I could be warm or withholding depending on what served the team, and usually what looked like temper on my part was calculated.
Pat was so in tune with the players, with when to push and when to let up, when to put an arm around someone. She would seem so competitive and high-strung and demanding—and the whole time she knew exactly what she was doing. She was very much in control. She had this innate clock or measuring stick and knew how far she could go with them.
—MICKIE DEMOSS
I punched every button with Michelle, who was Tyler’s second great love. Believe it or not, after the recruiting visit that ended with Tyler’s birth, Michelle didn’t come to Tennessee. She thought Notre Dame offered her a less crowded stage, and it was a mistake; she was instantly unhappy and began dropping me notes. “Hey, Pat, I’m following you guys,” she’d write. She eventually transferred and had to sit out a year under NCAA rules, so she didn’t see the court for us until the 1993–1994 season. But when she did, it was the start of a highly charged years-long clash.
I loved Michelle, but she was a headlong, reckless player who needed curbing, which created constant tension between us. In some ways we were a profound mismatch. I was all about structure, fundamentals, and discipline. Michelle was all about freelancing and risk taking. She played on pure impulse, and the press nicknamed her “Spinderella” for her showy whirls to the basket, which the crowds loved. But sometimes her gambles were scatterbrained and costly. I tried to explain, calmly at first, that it was a form of self-absorption.