Pioneering women’s basketball coach Pat Summitt has died, her son Tyler announced in a post on the Pat Summitt Foundation website. Summitt, 64, was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease five years ago. Summitt coached the Tennessee women’s basketball team from 1974 until 2012, wining 1,098 games and eight national championships; she is the winningest basketball coach in NCAA Division I history.
When Summitt became head coach at Tennessee, CNN notes, “the NCAA did not even formally recognize women’s basketball.” NCAA sponsorship of the sport did not begin until 1982.
Summitt was the fourth of five children raised on a farm in Tennessee; the New York Times writes that in the early days of organized women’s sports the game of basketball “thrived in rural enclaves in states like 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 also coached the United States women’s basketball team to a gold medal at the 1984 Olympics and was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012. A “public celebration” of her life is being planned and will be held at Tennessee’s basketball arena in Knoxville.
