Earlier this month in Tampa, Fla., Tennessee women’s college basketball coach Pat Summitt won her women’s collegiate-record eighth championship. Summitt trails only UCLA coach John Wooden, who won 10 titles as Bruins coach in the 1960’s and 1970s.
Summitt, who amidst much public interest filed for divorce from her husband of 27 years shortly before this season, is widely-regarded as the best coach in the history of women’s collegiate athletics.
She took on her position as coach of the Lady Vols in 1974, at age 22, and has held it since. Her career win-loss record as coach is 983-182, making her the all-time winningest coach in NCAA basketball history. She has 81 more victories than the next closest contender, all-time winningest men’s coach Bobby Knight.
Summitt’s Tennessee teams have won 104 of 123 NCAA tournament whereas former UMass men’s basketball coach Travis Ford was offered a lucrative contract extension by the school without his team having made the tournament.
On the international stage, Summitt’s leadership has also flourished: she led the USA Women’s basketball team to its first-ever Olympic gold medal in the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics.
Consistent with her accomplishments, Summitt has written two books: “Reach for the Summitt,” and “Raise the Roof,” both in 1999. The former is a motivational guide and was widely acclaimed by critics, including the New York Times.
Summitt’s leadership is in fact so appreciated that she has made numerous motivational speeches for companies such as Proctor ‘ Gamble and Kodak.
During the first Clinton presidency, Summitt, the mother of a now-grown son, was honored by First Lady Hillary Clinton as one of the “25 Most Influential Working Mothers.” She is the spokesperson for numerous worthy causes, including the United Way.
By any measure, Pat Summitt has been a beacon of excellence in American sports for the last three decades. Her accomplishments should inspire a generation of independent, motivated and talented young girls pursuing careers in all fields.
Summitt is the type of woman who would excel in any field. As she pushes her championship-caliber players to both academic and athletic achievement that they never thought possible, she demands the same excellence of herself.
On the subject of achievement, Summitt has said: “During my childhood I went to school, attended the Methodist church, worked the fields, and played basketball in the hayloft with my brothers. In my family, good work was expected, not praised. Excuses weren’t accepted and laziness wasn’t tolerated. I don’t mind being tough [on my players] because my dad was tough. I don’t mind showing affection because my mother showed affection.”
Summitt, unlike so many other money-chasing coaches, women-chasing and law-breaking athletes, and vote-chasing and unprincipled politicians, actually merits being called a leader and a role model. Both on and off the basketball court, she conducts herself in a manner that others would do well to emulate and that is unquestionably worthy of the respect, trust, and high regard in which she is held by so many.
And against this backdrop of one woman’s uncelebrated but triumphant career, we are in the heat of a contentious presidential election in which the two Democratic candidates can’t even agree on how to best disagree during debates. Each has slung a fair share of mud at the other, and many in the Obama camp have already insinuated racism on the part of Clinton’s people.
On the right, too, the worst of our humanity is expressed by conservative talk show hosts repeatedly race-baiting middle class white voters into voting for McCain simply because they think white voters ought to be uncomfortable with Obama’s skin color and his fringe affiliations with alleged black extremists.
It is, in short, an American election season and we look forward to six more painstaking months in which the politics of hope will give way to the customary special-interest driven, ad hominem attacks.
Whichever candidate can more effectively slander his or her opponent will be our next president.
As we have become ever-more educated, technologically-nuanced, and politically-active, we have also become a media-crazed society that thrives on negativity, controversy, fear-mongering, race-baiting and the next inevitable catastrophe.
That someone as widely accomplished as Pat Summitt is not revered by a cross-section of our country is indeed a sad commentary on our society and on the people whom we elevate to the level of hero status: athletes, movie stars, rock stars and political stars. These groups of people thrive on us paying for their performances, giving them our votes and – usually through needless media hysteria – telling them how great they are.
We ought to do better than this. Doing better would mean paying tribute to people like Pat Summitt and numerous other teachers, mentors and leaders across the country.
It is these unsung heroes – and not the latest political hotshot or cocaine-addicted British popstar – to whom our attention should be paid. They are the bedrock of our society, and we ought to appreciate and champion them much more than we do.
Brad DeFlumeri is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at [email protected]
