Pat Summitt, 64, vitalized sport

Pat Summitt, who won eight women's national basketball championships at the University of Tennessee and more games than any other Division I college coach, male or female, died Tuesday. She was 64.

Her death was confirmed on the website of the Pat Summitt Foundation.

Summitt stepped down after 38 seasons and 1,098 victories at Tennessee in April 2012, at 59, less than a year after she learned she had early onset Alzheimer's disease.

Over nearly four decades, Summitt helped transform women's college basketball from a sport ignored by the National Collegiate Athletic Association into one that drew national television audiences and paid its most successful coaches more than $1 million a year.

"In modern history, there are two figures that belong on the Mount Rushmore of women's sports -- Billie Jean King and Pat Summitt," Mary Jo Kane, a sports sociologist at the University of Minnesota, said in 2011. "No one else is close to third."

Summitt, who was inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 1999 and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2000, was a trailblazer, ambassador and missionary. She was a co-captain of the 1976 women's Olympic team, which won a silver medal, then guided the United States to gold as head coach at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles. All of her players who completed their eligibility at Tennessee also graduated, school officials said.

She was born Patricia Sue Head on June 14, 1952, in Clarksville, Tenn. The fourth of five children, she slept in a baby bed until she was 6. Her farmer father, Richard Head, was a disciplinarian who, she recalled, admonished his children that "cows don't take a day off."

During the day, she joined her three older brothers in baling hay and chopping tobacco. At night, she played basketball against her brothers and neighbors.

"I was the only girl," Summitt once said. "They beat me up, but it made me tougher."

Title IX, the federal law that prohibited discrimination in schools based on gender, was passed in 1972, but expanded opportunities for female athletes came haltingly. The NCAA did not begin sponsoring women's basketball until 1982, 43 years after it held its first postseason tournament for men.

Still, the women's game thrived in rural enclaves in states such as Tennessee and Texas, where girls who worked on farms could not be told with any seriousness that they lacked the endurance to play sports.

Summitt attended the University of Tennessee at Martin and, upon graduating in 1974, became head coach at the University of Tennessee's flagship campus in Knoxville. At 22, she was barely older than her players.

Summitt's first game at Tennessee ended in a one-point defeat. When she phoned her parents to give them the news, she recalled, her father offered a bit of sage advice: "Tricia, don't take donkeys to the Kentucky Derby" -- meaning that the best coaches recruited the top players. For most of 38 seasons, she did.

Her two biggest stars, Chamique Holdsclaw of Queens, N.Y., and Candace Parker of suburban Chicago, led the Lady Vols to five of Summitt's eight national titles and are considered two of the best women's collegiate players of all time. Summitt's best team, guided by Holdsclaw and reliant on relentless offense and aggressive defense, finished 39-0 to win the national title in 1998. To that point, no women's team had won as many games in a season.

As the number of championships climbed, so did Summitt's salary, eventually reaching $1.25 million a year. She was once approached by Tennessee officials about coaching the men's team. She dismissed the overture, asking, "Why is that considered a step up?"

Summitt's marriage of 27 years to R.B. Summitt, a banker, ended in divorce in 2008.

Summitt's eighth and final national title also came in 2008, three short of the 11 titles won by Geno Auriemma, who coaches the Connecticut women's team.

Summitt began to notice changes in herself during the 2010-11 season: She grew forgetful during games; she lost track of meetings. After the season, she visited the Mayo Clinic, and doctors found that she had early onset Alzheimer's.

Summitt coached through the 2011-12 season, though her three assistant coaches assumed most of her duties during practices and games. The Lady Vols struggled at times but still came within one victory of reaching the Final Four. Shortly after the season ended, Summitt retired as head coach. She started a foundation to raise awareness about dementia.

Her memoir, Sum It Up (written with Sally Jenkins), was a best-seller in 2013.

Her survivors include her son, Tyler, who was the women's coach at Louisiana Tech before resigning this year over what was described as "an inappropriate relationship," widely reported to be with one of his players; her mother, Hazel Albright Head; her sister, Linda Atteberry; and her brothers, Kenneth, Tommy and Charles Head.

Sports on 06/29/2016