A guest post today from Kathy Morash in the wake of the passing of legendary basketball coach Pat Summitt:
As a young lady coming through the ranks of women’s sports, Pat Summitt stood tall as an example of what a girl could do if one worked hard enough. She was a trail blazer. With her steel blue eyes and her deep love of knowledge of the game, she made me believe that yes, a woman could compete in the (at the time) the male dominated world of sports.
She had a habit of making the boys look bad. She made myself and others believe that not only could we compete with the boys, but that we SHOULD compete with the boys. She understood that in order to improve at anything, you have to seek out people who are better than you at your given quest, or who have more knowledge than you. She helped me understand that in order to get better at something, we must make our weaknesses your strengths. And through that, there is growth. She was larger than life, she was a little intimidating, she was fascinating. She won gold medals! She won national championships! She was my hero. Someone I wanted to be like.
A few years later, I found myself a student at the University of Tennessee. Although I was not on the basketball team there, I had classes with her players. Through them, through Pat, I continued to learn from her. As a coach, she insisted that her players sit in the front row of their classes and be engaged with what was going on in the classroom. She wanted them to remember that they were representing not only the University of Tennessee and the Lady Vol brand, but more importantly themselves. She knew the value of a college degree, even if her young prodigies fouuodn themselves at the University more for basketball than anything else. So, taking those instructions to heart, I started sitting closer to the front than I was comfortable with. Thinking back, I most likely never would have passed economics nor statistics had I not sat up front. Once again, she inspired me. She was my coach, too.
April 8, 1997, was the exact day that Pat Head Summitt stopped being an unreachable hero to me. I knew that she had a son that was around my own son’s age. They were in the same sports leagues. I used to see Pat at Tyler’s soccer games. I never bothered to introduce myself to her because, not only did she ALWAYS have an entourage of very tall, muscular women clad in orange and blue around her, but I was just thrilled to be within sight of someone I had admired for so long. On this day in April the sun was shining and the flowers were blooming. I was sitting quietly by myself, watching one of my son’s first baseball practices of the season, when a white Mercedes zoomed into the parking lot and out popped Pat Summitt. I remember a feeling of nervous excitement came over me like it did every time I saw her at the soccer field.
Coach Summitt just walked right up to me and started talking to me like we were long lost girlfriends. We talked alone for at least half an hour as we watched our boys play baseball on that fine spring day. There was not one mention of basketball. It was just two moms, sitting in the bleachers talking about our boys. To this day, I think I played it cool. I hope I did. It happened to be my birthday. I had just received one of the best birthday presents of my life. Pat Summitt had just turned herself into my peer.
There would be many more times over the years that I would run into Coach Summitt at events that our boys shared. She would always say hello to me and we would chat about what proud mothers we were. When news broke that Coach Summitt had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, I found once again our lives in a parallel place. I had been taking care of my own family member who had the disease. One day, Coach Summitt showed up at my aunt’s assisted living facility for a visit and to sing some Christmas songs and enjoy some fellowship. On that day, I knew she did not recognize me as someone that she knew, but when I told her about how her son and my son played sports on rival teams for many years, and that we used to see each other on the sidelines, her face completely lit up. The twinkle in her eye at the mere mention of Tyler let me know that we still had our connection, even if it was a bit fleeting for her. With Alzheimer’s disease, there are many things that a person will forget, but the two things I know for a fact that people with dementia remember are the words to familiar songs and the people that they love the most. Once again, even through the fog that was encasing her brain, we bonded as proud moms. In that moment, we were friends.
Pat Summitt was a coach to a few lucky women. She was an inspiration to many more off the court. She was a warrior in a fight she never saw coming. The definition of a hero changes by the person. For me, it always comes down to someone with an intangible quality that inspires others to be better. It could be anyone from any walk of life. Coach Summitt did that for me. As a young lady in sports, as a college student, and more importantly as a mother and a warrior in the fight against Alzheimer’s. Through all her trailblazing, we as a society will probably never be able to measure the number of people she has affected. But I know I am one. Because of this, I will never root for UConn, and I will always and forever be a Lady Vol.
-Kathy Morash
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