The Face of the Title IX Generation
Pat Summitt has been the face of women's team sports for so many years. Girls grew up wanting to play for her, people who had never watched a women's basketball game knew her name, knew she was the one who won all the time. Her coaching career was shortened by early signs of dementia. But in leaving her chair on the sideline, she becomes the face of an era that allowed women's sports to be what they are and what they might yet be.
She is not the first great coach to exit, but she is the most transcendent figure in women's team sports to leave the stage. She spent 38 years on the sideline making history by winning more than 1,098 games. And no Division I women's basketball coach will begin a career fighting for practice space with physical education classes in a multi-use gym, as Summitt used to at Tennessee. Summit finished her career at the same school in a gleaming basketball only practice facility next to an arena that regularly welcomes more than 12,000 fans for home games. Summitt lived through and mastered the kind of change that can come only at the beginning, when anything is possible and nothing is promised.
