“She was one of my heroes, one of my competitors and one of my friends.” That is the way Oklahoma women’s basketball coach Sherri Coale summed up legendary Tennessee women’s coach Pat Summitt, who died Tuesday at the age of 64.
Summitt was an icon and an institution in women’s basketball. She coached for 38 seasons and won 1,098 games and eight NCAA championships during her legendary coaching career.
The Sooners played Summitt’s Volunteer teams a number of times over the years, but perhaps the most memorable in Coale’s 20 seasons at the helm of the OU women’s program occurred in 2009 in Courtney Paris’ final season at Oklahoma.
Oklahoma won that game, 80-70. The game was memorable for three main reasons. First of all, it was a Sooner victory over one of the top teams and coaching staffs in women’s college basketball. Second, the loss left Summitt one win shy of her 1,000th career victory.
The game also marked the end of Paris’ NCAA-record 112 consecutive double-doubles. She had 12 rebounds in the game but scored only nine points, far below her season average.
“She (Pat Summitt) molded and inspired generations of strong women doing what she loved in an extraordinary way.” —Sherri Coale, OU women’s basketball coach.
“As a young coach, I read everything I could get my hands on about Pat Summitt and the Tennessee Lady Vols,” Coale said in a statement posted on the OU athletic website. “I remember only months after my college graduation, sitting front row at the Oklahoma High School Coaches Clinic listening to her speak as I began to create the architecture for my first high school program.
“Coach Summitt was one of the indisputable matriarchs of our game. She molded and inspired generations of strong women by doing what she loved in an extraordinary way,” the Sooner head coach said.
“Life by life, (Summitt’s) influence has spread into little corners all across the country and beyond…Our world is a better place because she was in it.”
The legendary Tennessee women’s coach died after battling health issues associated with early-onset dementia Alzheimer’s type.