A Tribute to Pat Summitt. (Yes.
Seriously.)
Note: I have never told this story
outside of my family. It seems appropriate, given that Coach Summitt
received the Arthur Ashe award for Courage at this past weeks' ESPY
awards. It's also appropriate because this year is the 40th anniversary
of Title IX, something I will be discussing in another post.
When I was eleven years old, Pat
Summitt called me.
I don't mean she called my house
looking for Dad, or called home by mistake in search of an office phone.
No. This was a deliberate phone call, by Pat Summitt, looking
for me. "Hello, Alysa, this is Pat Summitt from Tennessee."
Verbatim.
I was eleven. We
had just started our rivalry with Tennessee. To say I was terrified of
Pat Summitt is understating the point. She is an icon of the sport.
She's naturally terrifying because of her intensity, her drive, her winning
history...it's PAT SUMMITT. I mean, cripes!
And I say this as a kid who had spent
the past four years on a bus with Rebecca Lobo, so I tend to be unfazed by
athlete superstars. This was a whole different kettle of fish.
This is also coming from a girl who
spent the ENTIRE very first UConn/Tennessee game on January 16th, 1995, in the
Gampel student lounge playing SuperMunchers on a Compaq computer.
So if this nerd was freaked out by Pat Summitt, it was a very, very, very big
deal.
She had heard, I'm assuming from my
father, that I had been saying to people that The University of Tennessee
looked like a really good place to go to school. I knew this information
from two sources - the games I had seen on TV of the Lady Vols playing,
and the media guides I had stolen from press rooms when I snuck back there
during games to hunt for food or Diet Coke.*
*some kids collect
stamps, I collected media guides of women's basketball programs and and tried
to memorize the school mascots of every single Division 1 program. It
became a huge game with the team to see if they could stump me. I
could not be defeated.
I had watched our game tape of the 1995
National Championship about 29347 times. I thought Michelle Marciniak was
terrifying. I thought Dana Johnson could rip me in half. And I was
particularly drawn in to the replay of Laurie Milligan's turnaround jumper at
the foul line near the close of the first half. I will not lie: I spent
hours on my basketball court attempting to perfect that jumper. "Milligan
fakes, spins, gonna put it up from the free-throw line - good! Milligan hits!
Connecticut brings it up and they're not gonna get a shot off, Laurie Milligan
with the clock rolling down, to bring Tennessee into the locker room, leading
38-32."*
*That is VERBATIM what the announcer
said on the highlights video I have in my Mom's basement. And yet I
wondered why I didn't get a real boyfriend until I was 23.
When I heard that famous drawl on the
answering machine, I started screaming and could not stop. My Mom,
listening in the next room, howled with laughter. I was paralyzed
with fright; not because of Pat, but because of the implications.
I thought Dad
would garrotte me. I felt guilty that she
called me. I mean, this was Pat Summitt! Tennessee! The
supposed antithesis of everything we were at the University of Connecticut, our
'mortal enemy', was on my answering machine, addressing me by name, saying in a
quite cheerful voice, "I hear you like orange!"
Benedict Arnold didn't have anything
on me. I began picturing my funeral.
Thankfully, my Dad thought the entire
situation was absolutely hilarious and kind of cool. I figured that was the
end of it. I'm positive I was so freaked out I never returned her call.
A few weeks later during the 1997
Dayton Regionals I ended up meeting Coach Summitt. I'm
not sure if it's inappropriate to call her "Pat" so I'll stick with
"Coach Summitt" out of respect. I don't remember how this
meeting came about, but I think we were due to play them in a few days for the
NCAA tournament.
I was shaking the entire time.
Being that I was very young but very aware of Coach
Summitt's history and her legacy, I made sure I was polite and didn't say
anything too ridiculous. In fact, I don't think I really said much of
anything. I think I gaped. She was gracious, and welcoming. I
can't recall what we talked about but she definitely shook my hand and looked
me dead in the eye, which made me feel important. I'm positive this
meeting wasn't because she saw me as a potential recruit considering
I was, well, the biggest little dork on the face of God's green
earth. I was wearing a gigantic Nike shirt that probably could have
doubled as a nightgown with a Nancy Drew book tucked under my arm, blinking
behind oversized metallic purple rimmed glasses my sister had stepped on
once during a game of one-on-one in the Seton Hall gym, so one lens stuck
out and the other pushed into my cheek. My hair was probably unbrushed
and I had a unibrow that looked like a caterpillar took a vacation on my
face.
I actually spent most of that
afternoon hanging around the gym with my brother and Coach Summit's son Tyler,
who I recall as being an outgoing and energetic kid. I didn't meet her
then-husband RB, but he was around I'm sure. We lost to Tennessee that
year in the Dayton Regional Final - the year we lost Shea to that horrific ACL
tear, the sad first of many sad firsts and ends in her career - and flew home,
and that was that. I haven't seen or spoken to her since. But I
will never forget that.
Let me just clear this up right
away. Pat Summitt is a titan of women's basketball. She practically
IS women's basketball.
I know. I'm the daughter of
Geno Auriemma. I've met Barack Obama twice. I've been in the Hall
of Fame to watch my father inducted alongside Charles Barkley and Dominique
Wilkins. Tennessee is the grits and gravy-soaked Evil Empire and we're
the cool Yankee rivals with good posture and Katharine Hepburn houses on our
coastline. I should be stoned for even suggesting a compliment towards
Pat Summitt.
I would be the worlds' most
ungrateful, insipid, spoiled, solipsistic idiot if I didn't
recognize the importance of this woman in the women's rights movement and the
game of basketball as a whole. Women's basketball as an
institution would be NOTHING without that woman, and I don't think
hyperboles exist in this situation.
Everything my father has done in the
world of womens' basketball, Pat Summitt did it first. It's like that
episode of South Park "Simpsons
Already Did It". Pat Summitt is The Simpsons in
this corollary. (Sentences I never thought I'd say.) She got a
39-0 season before UConn did, she got a Championship 3Peat before UConn
did, she got the best recruits before UConn did. And she did it with
grace and a sense of dignity that you cannot argue. I won't try to
argue it. I am General Disarray, to keep up the South Park
comparison. Pat Summitt Already Did It.
Pat Summitt has a gold medal, and
more championship trophies, and 1,000+ wins. Whether you like it or not,
she is the number one reason my father was even able to do half of what he's
done. And if I can give her those kinds of props, you can too. She
is the standard to which we should all aspire for in terms of grit, clout,
proficiency, success, and determination. And she did it without dropping
nearly as many f-bombs as my Dad does. So...she's probably a little
classier, but Southern people just tend to sound classier than Philadelphia
people do in general. I think it's the accent.
When I read of her diagnosis of
early-onset Alzheimer's last spring, I was heartbroken for her and her
family. Watching the games was too upsetting, because she wasn't the same
coach I remember from all of those years seeing her patrol the sidelines like a
lioness.
When I read of her
retirement this May I was saddened but not surprised, and wished
her Godspeed.
When I read the reaction of the CT
newspapers, read everyone's references to the UConn/Tennessee rivalry and the
'disappointment' that Pat and Dad didn't 'settle their differences or have
another UConn/Tennessee showdown before Pat stepped down'...I was enraged.
How dare you, newspeople and
sportscasters and the whole lot of you, make this about an isolated incident
that is merely a footnote in the epic, a stone in the glass slipper, a crack in
the Yellow Brick Road? Or the Orange Brick Road, if we want to be adorable
about it (and I NEVER pass up a chance to attempt adorable).
Why can't you celebrate the stuff
that happened before my Dad even got into the
picture? Hell, before Gampel Pavilion even existed? The gold medal,
the national championships, the grand tradition, the countless record-breaking
crowds? Pat was winning championships before Dad even coached one game of
women's basketball. I'm not knocking anything my Dad has done. If
you've watched a championship game on TV, chances are you've seen me blubbering
like a fool at the end of it at one point or another. I know my Dad's
legacy. I'm just saying Pat was there first.
If I can get over that moment in
time, you can too. I mean, you can still wallow if you want, but it'll
probably be easier to choose to move past it. Be happy or be miserable.
The work involved is pretty much the same for both.
This has nothing to
do with Geno Auriemma or the University of Connecticut. Yes, I
realize I could just say "Dad" in this instance, but really the
parent/child relationship has nothing to do with this either. I'm just
speaking as a UConn alum and current UConn graduate student who is seriously
annoyed with the childish behaviors of specific journalists regarding this
issue. The attention should be focused squarely on Pat Summitt, her
legacy, and the new road the Lady Vols will now go down with Summitt's adjusted
role as head coach emeritus. A lot of support and well-wishes, by the
way, should be accorded to the new head coach Holly Warlick. She served
as Pat's first AC for a long time and played under Pat as well, and will have
no problem adjusting to this new role. The transition should be pretty
seamless and I hope they do well.
And all of these stories about how
it's 'such a shame' that Dad and Pat didn't 'kiss and make up' are forgetting
one piece of the puzzle. They had a great conversation and hug in Denver,
during Dad's open practice at the Final Four. When I read the recap by
Mike DiMauro in the New London Day, I had to walk off to a private area because
it was raining on my
face. Not because I missed my Dad and thought it was a lovely
example of his class, something I really don't think he displays
enough (and more people should be aware of the kind of person he is that
has nothing to do with snarky comments or side jabs). Nor did I cry
because of "Oh, look at that, the conflict is over! Maybe we'll play them
next year!? I'LL BE ON THE TEEVEE BOXES AND EVERYTHING IS ABOUT MEEEEEEE."
I cried because of a monument to the
women's game who is currently battling a major, major disease that I would
be far too weak to deal with. I cried because that disease, that
horrible, memory-leeching illness, could have easily been one of my parents,
and I would not have the guts to endure that. I don't know if I could
have nearly the strength that Tyler has to watch his mother fight this battle
every day. To lose your memory is to lose a very deep part of yourself.
Memories constitute most of your identity. They are a major
signifier of self and person-hood. To lose your memories can be conflated
with losing yourself.
I cried because some things are just
much bigger, and more important, than stones in your shoes.
You can take your shoe off and let those stones go now,
journalists of CT newspapers. And you know who you are, and you know what
you do to piss me off every single time I read your articles or blogs.
They're just
pebbles. They'll go right back to the ground. Let go, for the
love of God. And I'm what, 26? And actually LIVED this experience?
And I am telling you enough is enough? That's probably a cue
for you to focus on what really matters here.
Pat Summitt's identity splashes
over every part of the University of Tennessee, the city of Knoxville, women's
basketball, and the triumph of women in sports in general.
I will treasure all of those memories
that she has given our state as well, preserved forever on tape and DVD in the
state of those epic matches in the tournament and regular season.
But I will mostly remember that this
mutliple championship winning coach, on her way to another championship in
1997, called me on the phone, remembered my name, and looked me in the eye as
an eleven-year-old with gnarled hair with a gaze that said, "You are
on my level."
But no one is on her level.
She's at the Rocky Top.
ally
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