Pat Summit

Pat Summitt is one of the many elite coaches of basketball, but coaching doesn’t make Pat the person she really is; she’s a determined woman and strong willed in everything she does in life. How Pat was raised in her childhood is an important factor to the person she is today. Pat Summitt is one of the most successful coaches of all time. Pat now has to deal with a disease called Dementia Alzheimer’s type.

Her birth name is Pat Sue Head. She was born in June of 1952 in Clarksville, Tennessee. She was the second to youngest in the family of seven. Pat was 5 foot 9 in the third grade, talk about a giant! Pat was raised in a strict environment. Her father Richard Head expected the best of his kids. He expected them to be hard workers and to do work around the farm. Every morning Pat had to wake up at five in the morning to go work on the farm before school. Her father never told his kids that he loved them; he never hugged them her father believed in tough love. At Pats sixteenth birthday party she had to work on the farm and missed her entire party. Pats father supported her wanting to pursue her dream in playing basketball. Richard Head built a basketball court on top of the hayloft, and strung lights so Pat and her siblings could play at night. When Pat reached high school her father moved the whole family across the county line six miles to Henrietta, so that she could play basketball, because the school she’d been assigned to in Clarksville didn’t have a team for girls. Basketball in Pats day was slowly growing. Pat Summitt took her basketball talents to play college ball at UT Martian.

Pat Summitt became the lady volunteers coach after Margaret Hutson resigned from the coaching position in 1974. Pat had never coached a day...

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... “She’s always better when she knows what she’s fighting against, she had recommendations, what to do and what routine to get into and she’s going to prepare just like a game for her health.” Since finding out about her dementia pat has started a foundation, called The Pat Summitt Foundation. All money given to this foundation is going towards a possible cure for dementia. Pat Summits famous saying is “I’m gonna keep on keepin on.” This is what she continues to say to her players and her fellow peers.

One word describes this woman successful, in her coaching and her will to fight weather it was trying to win a championship or trying to be the first woman to win over a disease like dementia. Pats childhood was rough and tough. She was and still is one of the best coaches to have coached at the college level. She is taking one day at a time to fight her disease.