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

by Pat Summitt

  For many of them it might have been the very first time that someone had been absolutely unrelenting in holding them to incredibly high standards. And that can be very uncomfortable, even excruciating, if it hasn’t happened to you before.

  —DEAN LOCKWOOD

  I’m proud that we grew the game of women’s basketball from an intramural played in pinafores into a sport played on national television, in domes, in front of sellout crowds of twenty-five thousand. I’m proud that even after all the years, we still did things we didn’t have to do: be generous to our competitors, help younger coaches, stand and talk to fans, sign autographs, grant open access to our program.

  I’m proud of the intense loyalty among our former players, seventy-four of whom became teachers or coaches in their own right. I’m proud that our players always come back to visit Tennessee, that my home is a place they return to when things are difficult in their lives, when they’re injured or struggling personally, and that we’re glued together by so much trust and affection.

  This is the culture and atmosphere she has created. Two summers ago it was myself and Mickie and Pat on the road recruiting at a summer tournament, and there are a lot of Lady Vols in coaching, and we all got together and she had taken us all to dinner. I was driving, and I said, “Coach, you always pay for us, and you don’t have to do that. Thank you.” She leaned up and she said, “One thing I want you all to do for me is always pay it forward. The best gift you can ever give me is to keep the Tennessee Lady Vols sisterhood and legacy when I am dead and gone.” This was before her diagnosis.

  —KYRA ELZY

  But for all that, the Lady Vols sisterhood will forgive me when I say that there is one thing I am prouder of than all else, than the eight titles, 1,098 victories, lifetime achievements, medals, halls of fame, all-Americans, Olympic teams, and graduation rates.

  My greatest achievement is my son. He is the greenest and most beautiful branch on the Summitt coaching tree. Let me describe him to you: He is six foot one and shaped, if I may say, like one of those beautiful statues I once saw at the Parthenon. He has a shelf of reddish-blond hair and steady, deep blue eyes, and his default disposition is set on thoughtfulness. He is devout, with an iron self-control, and determined.

  He is also, as it turns out, talented. In the summer of 2011, I watched him coach a summer league team of thirteen- and fourteen-year-old boys and realized he had something. “Good job,” I said to him afterward, “and tell your guys to stay off the sideline on the press break.”

  In the spring of 2012, as I was deciding to retire, Tyler coached a team of seventeen-and-under girls to a club league championship. But on the day of a critical playoff game, he found himself in the following predicament: he had just five available players, because the rest of the team was off taking college entrance exams.

  Ty had a firm policy that his players had to arrive an hour before game time, and if they were late, they were benched for the first two minutes of the game. That day, one of his star players, young Brianna Tate, walked in fifteen minutes late. Ty just ignored her, got his clipboard, and called the team into the huddle. He began to draw.

  “This is a diamond and one,” he said. Then he erased the one player outside the diamond.

  “Now this is a diamond,” he said. “Bri’s sitting on the bench to start the game.”

  They stared at him, openmouthed. When the teams took the court, the ref looked at Ty, as if to say, “Where’s your other player?” Pretty soon everyone in the gym was staring at him, including the opposing coach.

  The ref said, “Uh, I’m waiting on you.”

  Ty said, “I’m ready.”

  The ref looked at Ty and he looked at Brianna on the bench, and he said, “Ohhh. Okaaaaay.”

  He threw the jump ball and Ty sat there for two minutes watching his kids play four-on-five. It felt like two years. Finally he put Brianna in the game—and she fouled out. He finished the game like he started it, with four players—and won by six points.

  That’s my boy.

  If Tyler has a single pronounced quality, it’s serenity. It comes from his faith, which we had never talked about much, until the diagnosis. Although we went to church regularly together since he was a little boy, we’d never discussed the subject as adults. I discovered that my son’s mind is focused firmly on what really matters, and that has helped him lead us through the ordeal of the past two years.

  Tyler and I accept my diagnosis with the sure knowledge that none of us have a perfect life here on earth. Whether it’s managing arthritis, losing a parent, breaking a marriage, dislocating a shoulder, or being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, we’re not here to be completely satisfied. Nor are we in command—not even of our own bodies. We borrow, we don’t own. I know that everything I’ve been given came as gifts from God, and he has a way of reminding us, “This is my work.”

  God’s plan is a mystery to me. I just know that I was given certain work to do, and I know that the world is a creation masterpiece in which he doesn’t play one note or use one color. It’s not all primary chords—there are sharps and flats. Where I am concerned, he is playing on the black keys, and I’m resigned to that.

  Twice a month, I pay a visit to Dr. Dougherty in the neurology department at the University of Tennessee Medical Center, to have my memory and blood tested. The idea is to track my progress, or decline, depending on what the case may be.

  The routine is always the same. LaTina and I drive to the hospital and take a winding, circuitous backdoor route to neurology, for the sake of privacy. Once there, I sit in a small room in a reclining chair while my friendly nurse Ruth wraps a piece of elastic around my arm and takes my blood, and we tease each other.

  “Y’all just love stickin’ me, don’t you?”

  “We do. We draw straws.”

  Then Dr. Dougherty arrives to examine me. All my doctors remain concerned about the rheumatoid medication, which conflicts with the Alzheimer’s drugs. They would like to draw me off it, but when they do, the arthritis flares up until I’m almost bedridden. He examines my hands, which tend to swell.

  “No shortness of breath?” he asks.

  “No. Except when you come in here.”

  “Your hands are a little cold.”

  “Cold hands, warm heart.”

  Then the fun begins. Dr. Dougherty’s son Andrew, a nice young neuropathologist, draws up a chair, and for the next twenty minutes he quizzes me from a clipboard. The questions test my memory function, problem-solving skills, and mental reactions. Every now and then he poses a trick question—something so ludicrous I assume the idea is to test whether I know an absurdity when I hear it. To see if I’m still in my right mind. Those questions tick me off.

  Andrew shows me a clock with no numbers. “Can you point to where the six would be on a clock? Where the twelve is? The three? The nine?”

  I point.

  “Now I’m going to say three words and I want you to repeat them. Police, house, stamp.”

  “Police, house, stamp.”

  “Great. Now I’d like you to name as many animals as you can think of.”

  “Dog, cat, horse. Pig. How many more do I need?”

  “Just a few.”

  “Mule.”

  “What about the water. What’s in the water?”

  Blank.

  “Do you know what year you’re in?”

  “Yep, 2012.”

  “Name the months.”

  “September, October, November …”

  “What day is it?”

  “Wednesday.”

  “What about the month?”

  Pause.

  “June.”

  “Okay, we are finished with that one.”

  “Hallelujah.”

  “Can you copy this cube for me?”

  I draw a cube.

  “Perfect. Repeat these words: face, velvet, church, daisy, and red.”

  “Face velvet church daisy and red.”

  “Great. Okay, subtract
7 from 100.”

  “This is the one I don’t like.”

  “Repeat the following: ‘I only know that John is the one to help today.’ ”

  “I only know that John is the one to help today.”

  “Perfect. ‘The cat always hid under the couch when dogs were in the room.’ ”

  “ ‘The cat always hid when the dogs were under the couch.’ No, that’s not it.”

  “How are a train and a bike similar?”

  “You ride ’em.”

  “What about a watch and a ruler.”

  “A watch tells time and a ruler tells inches.”

  “Do you remember any of those words we repeated earlier?”

  “Face, velvet …”

  Pause.

  “I’ll give you a hint, it’s a color and it starts with an r, and it’s Alabama’s school color.”

  “Crimson Tide! Red.”

  “These are just for fun. Can you tell me how many camels are in California?”

  Now, what did he take me for? If there was even one camel in California, it had no business being there. Camels. I mean, what kind of question is that?

  He showed me an empty square. “If this was a football field …”

  I stopped him. “I don’t play football,” I said. “You need to change that to a basketball court.”

  “Okay, it’s a basketball court. If someone threw your keys on it, where would you look? Show me with a pen.”

  I drew a jump circle and started diagramming. “I’d start at center court,” I said. “And if not there, I’d start working the corners.”

  “How would a boat and a bicycle be alike?”

  “Travel.”

  “An orange and a banana?”

  “Fruit.”

  “What state are we currently in?”

  “Tennessee.”

  “What place are we in?”

  “UT Hospital.”

  “Do you know what floor we are on?”

  “Heavens no.”

  “Can you spell world?”

  “W-o-r-l-d.”

  “Okay, can you spell it backwards.”

  “Awwww. I knew that was coming. D … o … w … r … l.”

  “What about those three objects we talked about before.”

  “Honestly? I forgot about them.”

  “Write a sentence for me, any sentence.”

  Last came a series of questions about my emotional state. These are the questions that test my attitude. I’m told that apathy, depression, and a sense of worthlessness can go with Alzheimer’s. I’ve had my moments with all those—what person with the diagnosis wouldn’t? But as of this writing, I’ve always found my way through the dark and back into the light.

  “Are you satisfied with life?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you feel a drop in interest?”

  “No.”

  “Do you often get bored?”

  “No.”

  “Are you in good spirits most of the time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you afraid something bad is going to happen?”

  “No.”

  “Do you worry about the future?”

  “No.”

  “Do you feel you have more problems than most people?”

  “No.”

  “Do you get downhearted or blue?”

  “No.”

  “Do you worry a lot about the past?”

  “No.”

  “Do you get upset over little things?”

  “No.”

  “Do you feel your situation is helpless?”

  “No.”

  I don’t feel helpless, and I don’t feel hopeless. Why? Because the truth is, nothing is certain with Alzheimer’s, and everything is possible. I know that dementia is highly unpredictable and has a wide range. I know that at the moment I still have a good quality of life. I know that the people at Mayo, and Brigham and Women’s, and the Banner Institute are working daily on a cure. I’m interested to see where a combination of faith and science will take me.

  Above all, I know that Alzheimer’s has brought me to a point that I was going to arrive at someday anyway. With or without this diagnosis, I was going to experience diminishment. We all do. It’s our fate.

  No, I can’t size up a court of ten players anymore, see the clock out of one eye and the shifting schemes of opposing players with the other, and order up a countermove by hollering “Five!” or “Motion!”

  But I can suggest that people with mild to moderate stages of dementia have far more abilities than incapacities. I can suggest that just because certain circuits of memory or swiftness of synapses may fail, thought and awareness and consciousness do not.

  I can prove that just because Alzheimer’s might prevent my mind from working the way it used to, and sometimes my tongue arrives at a roadblock and I can’t find a word, that doesn’t mean I’ve lost my feelings, or the primal urge to express them.

  I can make myself useful, keep working in some capacity every day for as long as I’m able. Someday, I suppose I’ll give up, and sit in the rocking chair. But I’ll probably be rocking fast, because I don’t know what I’ll do without a job.

  I can write a book. As of this writing—the fall of 2012—my memory is still sound enough. Which is not to deny that, despite my best effort, I’ve felt serious effects of the disease. Some days it’s as though my mind is buried in a cloud bank. Other days the cloud recedes. There are places in these pages where friends had to take over the storytelling.

  But what better way to kick a memory-wasting disease in the teeth—to keep my mind sharp and my heart engaged and my life in perspective—than with a memoir?

  Shortly before Tyler left home to begin his own adult life, he planted a vegetable garden for me. It’s on a ridge just by the house, overlooking the Little River. Every morning I walk my dogs to the top of our property, where you can see just around the bend of the river toward the Smoky Mountains. On the clear days you can gaze far into the distance, four ghostly ridges away. Standing there, I know something with a certainty. God doesn’t take things away to be cruel. He takes things away to make room for other things. He takes things away to lighten us. He takes things away so we can fly.

  Where Some of Them Are Now

  NICKY ANOSIKE graduated in May of 2008 with a triple major in political science, legal studies, and sociology. She won a Boyd McWhorter postgraduate scholarship award, the highest honor an athlete in the Southeastern Conference can win, volunteered at East Tennessee Children’s Hospital, and qualified for the Teach for America program, with the intention of going into education. However, based on her performance in the NCAA tournament, she was a second-round draft choice of the Minnesota Lynx of the WNBA and made the league’s All Rookie team in her first season. In February of 2012, she was traded to the Los Angeles Sparks, where she plays alongside her close friend Candace Parker.

  DIANE BRADY is a high school math teacher.

  NIYA BUTTS got her bachelor’s degree in social work with a minor in psychology from Tennessee in 1999, and she obtained her master’s degree in education from Tennessee Tech in 2002. After understudying with Mickie DeMoss at Kentucky for five years, where she was promoted to associate head coach in 2007, Niya was named head coach at the University of Arizona in 2008. She took over a team that had won just twelve games; in 2011, her Wildcats won twenty-one.

  TASHA BUTTS graduated from Tennessee with a major in sports management and a minor in business in 2004. After a brief career in the WNBA, she returned to Tennessee as a graduate assistant, then joined Nikki Caldwell’s staff at UCLA and LSU, where she is widely regarded as one of the fastest-rising young talents in coaching.

  NIKKI CALDWELL, in just three seasons as head coach at UCLA, built a 71-25 record and finished runner-up in the Pac-10 twice to Final Four teams from Stanford. In 2011, she moved to LSU, where she went 23-10 in her first season, at the conclusion of which her first child, Justice, was born.

  TAMIKA CATCHING
S went on to win championships at every level of her career. She is the winner of two Olympic gold medals, was the 2011 WNBA Most Valuable Player of the Year, and led the Indiana Fever to the 2012 WNBA championship. She is also the founder of Catch the Stars, a foundation that seeks to promote literacy, fitness, and mentoring for youth.

  DAEDRA CHARLES-FURLOW played basketball professionally overseas in Italy, Japan, Turkey, and France from 1991 to 1996 and was the eighth overall pick by the Los Angeles Sparks in the 1997 WNBA draft. She was also a member of three USA national teams. From 2003 to 2006, Daedra was an assistant coach at the University of Detroit Mercy, before moving to Auburn University, and then Tennessee, where she became director of character development in 2010 while also battling breast cancer. In 2012, she was named head coach at Knoxville’s West High School. She has a son, Anthonee.

  BECKY CLARK received her doctorate in psychology and counsels abuse victims as a clinical social worker in New York. In 2005, Becky revealed to us that her deafness was a result of being beaten as a child by an alcoholic stepfather. She came back to Knoxville for a fund-raiser for victims of child abuse and went public with her experiences. In addition to her work as a child advocate, she runs marathons.

  SHELLEY SEXTON COLLIER is the assistant athletic director and head women’s basketball coach at the Webb School in Knoxville, where she has won two state championships. She lives in Knoxville and is the mother of four “nice” girls. Almost every morning, Shelley comes to my house and we power walk together.

  ABBY CONKLIN recently got an advanced degree in graphic design and opened her own San Francisco graphic art and signage firm, A52, named after her Tennessee jersey number. Abby also received her master’s in organization and leadership from the University of San Francisco and spent a decade as a high school and collegiate basketball coach before making her career change to graphic art.

  KYRA ELZY received her bachelor’s degree in psychology in 1999 and a master’s degree in cultural studies in education in 2001. After finishing her superb playing career and earning her degrees with consistent dean’s list performances, Kyra entered the coaching profession. As an assistant at Kentucky, she was considered one of the top recruiters in the nation and helped UK advance to three consecutive NCAA tournaments, including two NCAA Elite Eight appearances, in 2010 and 2012. In the fall of 2012, she returned to Tennessee as Holly Warlick’s associate head coach.