Bless You, TN Lady Vol Coach Pat Summitt

The coach of the University of Tennessee's women's basketball team, the legend that is Pat Summitt, has been diagnosed with early onset dementia/Alzheimer's.

This is stunning news, not only because she has been such a force in women's sports for years, but because she is just such a force as a human being...period.

One of her best friends, Sally Jenkins, covers sports for the WaPo, and had an incredibly moving article a couple of days ago about how Pat is dealing with all of this -- and how the folks around her are dealing with it.  For anyone who has followed women's college basketball through the years, it will come as no shock that Pat Summitt is one tough cookie.

In her article, Jenkins shares a number of tidbits that give you a glimpse past the spine of steel that Summitt is as a coach that are well worth a read.  (warning:  this article made me sob, so bring tissues with you to the link)  And while I would have liked more backstory on the tidbit about a fight that Summitt apparently had with a raccoon, it was this bit at the end that made me really sit up and take notice:

When everyone departs the Summitt household there are two people left, gazing at each other with a deep, indestructible understanding. Suddenly, something becomes clear: Summitt’s qualities and legacy have been vastly underrated. All these years, while she was coaching basketball and teaching other people’s daughters, she very quietly and without any fanfare, did a stupendous job of mothering her son.

“I followed her everywhere growing up,” Tyler says. “I followed her on bus rides, airplanes, in gyms and in locker rooms all over the country, and I thought she taught me everything she had. But she saved this lesson, to always come out and be open, to not be scared, to have the courage to face the truth like she’s doing.”

At the end of my days, if my child has learned half that much integrity and fortitude from my own example as a parent, I will consider mine a life well lived.


That is extraordinary and definitely something to shoot for to teach your child those lessons in character. I learned similar ones from my granny, who struggled with debilitating rheumatoid arthritis and kept on working in her garden every summer because she refused to give in to the pain.

Human beings can be such extraordinary vessels of courage and character when they make a conscious choice to live their lives in just this way.  I feel like I've just been given some extraordinary marching orders from Pat Summitt on how to be a better mom.

Bless her and her family, may they find only laughter and love among the falling shadows to come, and may that darkness close in for her as slowly as is possible under the circumstances.