Remembering a Pat Summitt meeting at the South Point
I got to talk to Pat Summitt once.
This is how it is when the great ones die. A path is crossed, a memory is made. Then when the great one is gone, you tell people about it.
I said I got to talk to Pat Summitt, but the conversation was one-sided. It was the day after Thanksgiving, 2013; it was during a holiday basketball tournament at South Point Arena. I had gone to write about her only offspring, Tyler, then an assistant women’s coach at a young age at Marquette.
Marquette was playing the Lady Techsters — not the Lady Techsters from Louisiana Tech, who once were dynamite in women’s basketball, but the Lady Techsters representing Tennessee Tech. There were only a few dozen spectators in the arena. One was Pat Summitt.
Tyler Summitt’s youth — he still had rosy cheeks — sort of made it a story. But were it not for the young man’s pedigree, there was a 95 percent chance I would have stayed home to watch college football on TV.
I didn’t expect his mom to be there. She had only recently resigned as Tennessee women’s coach because of Alzheimer’s disease, or one of its virulent derivatives.
Pat Summitt was wearing a dark vest over a blue pullover. She was sitting in a wheelchair under the basket — she had just undergone foot surgery. She was with Billie Moore, her longtime friend and former assistant with the women’s Olympic team, a fellow Hall of Famer.
She also was sitting with a man from her foundation — a foundation striving to cure Alzheimer’s.
On Tuesday, Pat Summitt died at age 64, and Tyler Summitt issued the statement.
“Since 2011, my mother has battled her toughest opponent, early onset dementia, ‘Alzheimer’s Type,’ and she did so with bravely fierce determination just as she did with every opponent she ever faced. Even though it’s incredibly difficult to come to terms that she is no longer with us, we can all find peace in knowing she no longer carries the heavy burden of this disease.”
So now a lot of people are talking about Pat Summitt, of what it was like to play for her, to play against her, of having known her. Perhaps you knew her for a lifetime or darn near close to it, like Billie Moore. Perhaps it was just for a few minutes — a chance meeting, like on an airplane, when they bump you up to first class. Maybe you met her behind a huge, black curtain at a virtually empty rodeo arena in Las Vegas on the day after Thanksgiving.
Regardless of the circumstances, you tell people about it. This is how it is when the great ones die.
As much as I wanted to talk with Pat Summitt, I thought I should respect her privacy and dignity during a difficult time. But people from Tennessee Tech kept coming up at halftime and wishing her well — to these people, it must have been like somebody from Chicago walking into a bar a long way from Rush Street, and seeing Mike Ditka sitting at the end of it.
The coach kept smiling when the Tennessee Tech supporters would wish her well, so I approached the man from her foundation. He said to come back behind the big, black curtain, where the dressing trailers were, after the game.
There were so many questions to ask Pat Summitt — about her humble roots as the daughter of a dairy farmer, about her 38 years at Tennessee, the eight national championships, the 1,098 wins, the fierce demeanor. This woman won more games than Coach K won at Duke — won more games than the other coach K, the one named Knight, won at Indiana and Texas Tech, if perspective is called for.
Pat Summitt knew so much about the X’s and O’s, and about motivating young players, that her athletic administration asked more than once if she would like to coach the men.
But I wanted to ask about when she dressed up like a cheerleader for one of the men’s games.
She wanted to support Bruce Pearl, the Volunteers’ coach who was as zany as Summitt was intense. Pearl always was doing crazy things to support the Tennessee women (not that they needed it); she wanted to do something to support the Tennessee men. Dressing up like a cheerleader and singing “Rocky Top” with Peyton Manning and Dick Vitale in the house — that showed a side of Pat Summitt that belied her intensity, a side that outsiders rarely got to see.
But there would be no cheerleader questions at South Point.
When I asked a question, Billie Moore would answer. This Alzheimer’s disease is way more lethal than anything even Geno Auriemma can put on the floor. The coach mostly responded to my questions with one-word answers, and then Billie Moore would expound with other words.
So, yes, I got to talk with Pat Summitt, but not really.
I wrote about it the next day.
Now I’m telling you about it again.
That is how it is when the great ones die.
Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski
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