Because of our names—Chamique, Semeka, and Tamika—the three of us quickly became labeled in the media as “the Meeks.” Former star player and then basketball commentator Nancy Lieberman would, on ESPN, call us “the Meeka Club.” Since Chamique was a junior and would graduate sooner, we “Meeks” would be together for only two years, but in that short time we’d make our identity known.
The freshman class Coach Summitt had recruited that year consisted of me and Semeka, Teresa Geter, a towering center, and Kristen “Ace” Clement, a point guard from Philly.
Pat Summitt had had her eye on all four of us for years. This particular year, four of Coach Summitt’s prime recruits had all said yes to Tennessee. It was an unprecedented recruiting class, exceeding even Coach’s own dreams. Some in the media were already calling us the “best recruiting class in college basketball ever.”
Teresa Geter had ruled South Carolina basketball the previous four years. She was a center-forward and stood taller than the rest of us at about six four. We called her “Tree.” Kristen Clement had been a standout in Philadelphia, breaking Wilt Chamberlain’s high school scoring record. Something like 2,200 points. Crazy-good numbers. Her brother had given her the nickname “Ace” and it stuck.
Ace and I would be roommates and begin a friendship that lasts to this day.
So the four of us freshmen—me, Semeka, Tree, and Ace—settled into our rooms at Humes Hall, where we’d live together for the next year, a year that would bond us in ways that we would not yet imagine could be possible.
But we weren’t thinking about that. We were already itching to play some hoops.
I don’t remember if it was our first night there, but it was pretty close to it. We freshmen, dubbed the Fab 4 by the media, found ourselves at the HPER Athletic Center on the court with our upperclassmen teammates. This included Chamique Holdsclaw, Kellie Jolly, Kyra Elzy, and a few others.
It was meant to be a friendly, casual shoot-around. At least it started that way.
Someone suggested we play a pickup game against each other. And then someone else suggested it be the upperclassmen against the freshmen. And suddenly there was an edge to the competition. There was a lot to prove.
Apparently, there had also been talk swirling about Chamique and me. Some people had suggested there would inevitably be competition, jealousy, and turf wars, and that the team couldn’t hold us both.
This wasn’t the first time I’d met Chamique. In my junior year of high school, I’d visited the campus of the University of Tennessee. It was part of any college-bound kid’s normal process. It was also an opportunity for the school to recruit possible players. Chamique was active in that recruiting process, writing letters and telling potential recruits about her experience of the school and what it was like playing there. At one point, Chamique and I had time to talk about more personal issues, including our family situations. We had things in common besides basketball.
So I never understood why people thought Chamique and I would be at odds. People who said that never really knew me. And they probably didn’t know Chamique. Jealousy and turf wars, no way.
Competition, yes. Of course. Not for bragging rights, but just because we relished the challenge of playing against the best.
And so we played that night. The upperclassmen were going to show the freshmen what college basketball was all about. But we freshmen were bound and determined to show them why we were there.
We played man-to-man. I was assigned to play Chamique. At first, we freshmen were overwhelmed. After all, these upperclassmen had played together for a couple of years. We were playing against the best.
Although we started slowly, we soon picked up the pace. We became more competitive. Semeka taunted the others about letting the freshmen show them up. More trash talk and hard play followed.
Chamique and I played hard against each other and enjoyed it. Chamique was obviously a great player, but I did well enough against her. I’d fly around her for a layup, but then she’d pull up and nail a pinpoint three.
We played for maybe an hour—hard, tough basketball, friendly but fierce, a game to demonstrate ourselves to each other. In the end, we knew our upperclassmen teammates were awfully good. The upperclassmen, on the other hand, got their heads turned by us freshmen and learned firsthand why all four of us had been high school all-stars.
As for the game itself, I don’t remember who won. But I think in the end it was Tennessee.
In 1997, Coach Pat Summitt was a living legend in women’s basketball1 and on her way to staking a respected place among the elite coaches of both the women’s and the men’s games.
She had played for University of Tennessee-Martin in the early seventies,2 and set records there that still stand. In 1974, the same year she graduated, she was named coach of the Tennessee Lady Vols at a grand salary of $250 a month.3 In those first years of coaching, her players were only a year or two younger than she was.
She built the Tennessee women’s basketball program from scratch (at one point funding new uniforms by means of a doughnut sale), and by the time I got there more than two decades later, she had amassed six SEC titles, two SEC Coach of the Year awards, and had led the U.S. team to gold in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. From 1977 to 1980 she compiled a 30–2 record as coach of United States teams involved in international competition.
And, oh yes, her Tennessee Lady Vols had already won the NCCA Championship five times. And that included championships each of the two years before I came.
No pressure.
At five eleven, Summitt stood an inch or so under many of her players, including me, but when she spoke, most of us felt like she was seven feet tall. I easily recalled my experience of watching her on TV when I was young, and I quickly realized she was exactly that same person. She really did have blue eyes the color of lasers; they could bore holes through steel—and through freshmen basketball players. It was Niya Butts, freshman forward on the 1996–1997 championship team, who, after a halftime lecture from Summitt, would comment, “I don’t think she blinks when she talks.”4
Pat Summitt’s sheer will to win seemed always coiled up in her athletic body, and it would unleash at a moment’s notice. She would put up with cold shooting and the occasional messed-up pass on the offensive end. But if you didn’t get back down the court to play good defense, that’s when she’d call a time-out and the yelling would begin. Her eyes would grow to the size of Frisbees and those laser blues of hers would begin drilling holes in you.
One of Pat Summitt’s mottos was “To be the best you have to play the best.” It led her from the beginning to build up Tennessee’s level of competition, including creating the rivalry with UConn that began in 1995.
Yes, she was Pat Summitt.
Leader.
Lady Vol.
Legend.
And during my first practice at the University of Tennessee, she was the force of nature I would dare to defy.
In high school, I’d never really been told I was doing anything wrong in my basketball technique. I was successful, and I suppose the coaches thought what I was doing was working. They probably thought, If she ain’t broke, don’t fix her. And my game was pretty good—successful enough to get me the phone call from Pat Summitt and a ticket to play for the best program in college basketball.
When I got to Tennessee, I kind of thought I had it down, this basketball thing. I was there because I was already good and accomplished in the sport.
And so, when I walked into basketball practice in Tennessee’s Thompson-Boling Arena for the first time, I guess I was expecting the playing technique I’d brought with me would be perfectly fine.
One of the things I wasn’t used to was open practice. Especially for the first practice of the year, Coach would open it up to spectators. So when we walked onto the court to run drills, there was an audience—season ticket holders, alumnae, students, faculty, media. And because of the success of the Lady Vols in previous years, there was public intere
st in this new 1997 version of the team. A hundred or so onlookers watched our practice.
We lined up for one of the defensive drills. Two lines facing each other on the right side of the basket, one offense and one defense. One from each line would peel off against each other, one-on-one, the offensive player cutting toward the basket in a zigzag, with the player from the other line defending.
So when I was up, I defended in my usual way—straight up, super-aggressive, going after the ball. The offensive player zigzagged and I kept pace.
I heard a whistle blow. “Stop!”
We stopped the drill and looked over. It was Pat, her laser eyes bearing down on me.
“Bend your knees,” she said to me. “Arms out. Move with the player.”
She came over and positioned me, pushing me down so my knees were bent and lifting my arms so they were straight out. “Slide,” she said, “with the player.”
I don’t remember if I said anything. I wasn’t used to being singled out and corrected. With a big gulp I whispered “Okay.” I got through and went to the back of the line.
When I was back at the front of the line, I positioned myself on defense. We did it again. Pat blew her whistle again.
“Stop!”
And again, Pat was looking straight at me. “I just told you,” she said with a little more impatient edge in her voice. “Bend your knees. Arms out. Move with the player. Use your wing span.” Blinking back tears, I got through it and went to the back of the line.
I was getting frustrated. What I was doing was giving me a good chance of stealing the ball. I was being aggressive on defense, doing what I knew to be successful for years in high school. Pat was forcing me to do it another way I thought was not going to be nearly as successful.
As I got back up to the front of the line, I looked up. Pat was at the area behind the basket, talking with a few people.
I was bound and determined to get through this drill so we could hopefully move on to the next one—especially since she wasn’t looking. And so once again I did it my way.
But I swear Pat had eyes in the back of her head. Just as I was in my defensive stance, the Tamika Catchings stance, she turned to watch.
I did it again. And again Pat blew her whistle.
“Stop!”
Now she was really steamed. “Catch!” she yelled. “How many times do I have to tell you?”
And this time I yelled back, “But it doesn’t work that way!”
And suddenly there was silence. The spectators, the team, everyone just stopped. Everyone was looking for the battle starting to unfold. You could literally hear a pin drop.
It was one of those moments. Just one moment, but it felt like five minutes. No one dared to talk back to Coach Summitt. While I faced the stare-down, in my mind I was kicking and screaming at myself. I couldn’t believe I lost my cool—on the first day of practice.
Finally, Pat motioned for the drill to start back up, but called me underneath the basket to talk to her.
In her cool demeanor, with her eyes piercing through my body, she asked low so only I could hear, “Do I need to send you back to Duncanville, Texas?” It came across as less of a question, and more like a threat.
I’m thinking, I can’t believe I talked back to her like that. “No, ma’am,” I replied. If I get sent back home, Mom’s gonna kill me!
Coach continued: “Am I gonna have to handle you with lace gloves?” She drew out the words “lace gloves” in a derisive tone. She had a thing against the word girl—the use of the word to mean a female who couldn’t compete as men did, tough and competitive and fierce. “Lace gloves” was her way of saying, “Are you going to play like a girl?”
I was furious and frustrated. “I’m not used to being yelled at like that!”
“Am I not supposed to coach you?” Coach Summitt said. “Am I not supposed to do my job? Am I going to have this problem with you all year?”
“No, ma’am.”
“I’ll send you right back to Texas. You need to stop being stubborn and start thinking about this team. You’re going to get yourself in trouble. You’re going to get the team in trouble.” Pat then added coolly, “We don’t need to have this conversation again.” She turned without saying another word to me.
After practice, I showered and dressed, then went up to Coach Summitt’s office.
I apologized. “I’m sorry, Coach,” I said. “I got frustrated. It will never happen again.”
And it didn’t. That would be my first—and last—run-in with Coach Summitt in my entire college career.
Like I said, I wasn’t used to being told I was doing something wrong. But it went deeper than that. I wasn’t used to being yelled at. That hurt me. And in that first practice, I had suddenly felt that my coach was singling me out and yelling at me, humiliating me in front of others.
I realized later that wasn’t her intent. I realized I had defied her authority and she couldn’t allow that, for the sake of the team.
I also didn’t realize at that point how much Coach Summitt specialized in defense. She believed offense would usually take care of itself. There were offensive strategies, of course—plays designed to get the best-shooting players into their best position to take their best shot. And in that moment, offense was one-on-one—a great player jumping and shooting over a defender.
Defense, Coach knew, needed to be a team effort. A hot-shot player like me trying to play one-on-one defense might succeed once in a while in stealing the ball, but all those other times she would lunge at the ball unsuccessfully, setting up the rest of the team to defend four against five.
My initial defiance of Coach Summitt was an opportunity for her to make a statement. Tennessee was going to play defense and it was going to play it the right way. Pat Summitt’s way. She used my defiance to make a statement. She knew I would back down.
Pat had counted on that.
For me, it was a lesson learned. Or maybe I should say, a lesson I would continue to learn. And it’s a life lesson too. Life isn’t played solo. We need people around us, family, and friends.
Teammates in life.
I’ve been asked who my best friend was in college. Not dodging the question, but the truth is I had a number of “best friends.”
Now, of course, all of us on the team were friends in a special way. When you practice with others so often in the course of a week, your teammates become your social life, your “sorority,” your world. So we were all close in the way teammates are.
But the four of us freshmen became especially good friends, in part because we were living together in Humes Hall. The dorm layout was a suite of rooms: a center hallway with a sink on one end and a shower on the other, and two doors each suited with double beds. Semeka and Tree shared one of the rooms. Ace and I shared the other.
While Pat Summitt was famous for not liking or using the word girl, we Fab 4 freshmen got to hang out together just as girls. We practiced together, ate together, and talked together—about school, family, guys, and boyfriends.
My roommate Kristen probably resented the girly-girl image as much as Coach did. She was naturally beautiful and had won some beauty contests in high school. But that beauty queen stereotype seemed to overshadow her athleticism and hard work on the basketball court. She was good—really good—as a scoring leader and record breaker in Philadelphia high school basketball, and she wanted to be known for the athleticism she had worked for and earned, not for the beauty she was born with.
Ace, Semeka, and I had played together before Tennessee—at the Junior Nationals that previous summer. That was a whirlwind eight days, and it didn’t give us a chance to develop close friendships, but it was a confidence builder as we competed against some of the best in the world and walked away with a championship.
Falling short of making the Junior Nationals team, Tree hadn’t had that experience. And in that first year at Tennessee, she struggled to find herself. As we all settled into dorm life, Tree always seemed a little
aloof. I think she wasn’t sure she was good enough to deserve being there.
One night Semeka came to Ace and me and told us Tree was crying. She had studied hard for a biology exam, but it was a tough subject for her, and she was terrified of failing. What’s more, tomorrow was her birthday, but she thought no one knew.
Semeka said, “We have to do something.”
The next afternoon, Semeka, Ace, and I planned a surprise. That night we were all together with Tree, acting like it was just another night in the dorm. We talked about eating out—but no, by design Semeka, Ace, and I voted that down. Instead we decided to order pizza. And all along Tree was thinking, It’s my birthday and no one cares.
When the pizza was delivered, we called Tree into Ace’s and my room. There in the dark was a birthday cake aflame with candles. Tree’s eyes filled with tears and she was overwhelmed by what we’d done. Semeka started to sing, but not “Happy Birthday.” It was the song “Count on Me” from the movie Waiting to Exhale.
We all joined in, singing as best we could through tears, “The friendship that will never end.”
Semeka, on the other hand, quickly gained notice on the court for being fast and relentless. Her speed was an injection of energy whenever she was brought into a game—the opposing players literally could not keep up with her. In high school, and now in college, Semeka would turn out to be one of the game’s fiercest defenders, setting records for steals and proving to bring far more than opposing players could handle.
Of course, to us in Humes Hall, Semeka was just one of us girls. She was one of the Fab 4. One of the four freshmen with a chance to make history.
Coach expected a lot out of us. That goes without saying when you’re talking about a legend. But in practices she drove us to our limits and beyond.
I knew two things: I had never had to work that hard. And I loved the challenge.
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