Duncan Praises Pat Summitt on House Floor

VIDEO

Mr. Speaker:  Last night I had the privilege of sitting with Coach Pat Head Summitt as she received the top award presented by the National Alzheimer’s Association.

This is the Sargent and Eunice Shriver Profiles in Dignity Award, and it was presented by their well-known daughter, Maria. No one could have been more deserving of this award than Coach Summitt.

As the Nation knows, she was diagnosed with early onset dementia, or Alzheimer’s, almost a year ago. She made the decision to both go public with this diagnosis and continue coaching her beloved Lady Vols. Now she has decided to give up her coaching job after 38 years to help lead the fight against Alzheimer’s.

She and her son Tyler have established the Pat Head Summitt Foundation to carry on this battle that is and will be so very, very important to millions of people. Pat Head Summitt is certainly the most admired and respected woman in Tennessee. She is my most famous constituent and a long time friend.

I have been honored on two occasions to be her Honorary Assistant Coach. The first time was on her 25th anniversary as a coach and the second time was a few years later against Vanderbilt on the last home game of the season. Before that game, we were given a scouting report and Tennessee had beaten Vanderbilt in Nashville by 30 points. So it is easy to say that the team was fairly confident about this game. However, at halftime the game was almost tied, and the Lady Vols came into the locker room with their heads hanging down.

That is when I saw Coach Summitt go into action. She got into each young woman’s face like a baseball manager arguing with an umpire. She started with Lady Vol Teresa Geter, and told her in a drill sergeant’s voice that she was going through a pity party out there, and Coach Summitt was having no part of it and was giving her two minutes to make her presence known on that court or she was going to yank her out of there so fast it would make her head spin.

When we went back out for the second half, the first thing that happened was that Teresa Geter stole the ball and she took it down court for a layup and her first two points of the game. The Lady Vols went on a 20-to-nothing run, and Vanderbilt called a time out.

A spectator in the stands, which I had not seen because there were 20,000 people there, sent me his card down to the bench and on the back, he had written, “Jimmy, great halftime coaching, come again.” But it was not me. It was Coach Summitt. In fact, when she was staring each one of her players in the face at halftime, in an intensely angry, very loud voice, I was just glad that I was not one of the players.

Coach Summitt is the winningest coach in Basketball history with 1,098 victories. Her teams have won 16 Southeastern Conference Championships and eight national championships. She has coached in 18 final fours. She has an 84 percentage winning record as a head coach.

But to me, her most impressive statistic is a 100% graduation rate, and she did not allow her players to take easy courses. She made them prepared for life after basketball, and almost all her players have been successful after leaving the University of Tennessee.

On top of all this, she has never had a question raised about her recruiting or any NCAA violation. She has shown through the years that you do not have to cheat in sports to win and be very successful.

She has succeeded at her most important job, being a mother and raising her fine son, Tyler, who is following in his mother’s footsteps and will soon start his first job as an assistant coach for the Marquette women’s basketball team.

Coach Summitt is a member of the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame, was NCAA Coach of the Year an unprecedented seven times. In 2000, she was named the Naismith Coach of the Year. Pat Head Summitt is a woman of honor and integrity. She has been a great, great success because of her very hard work, dedication, determination, and discipline.

Most of her success she credits to hard-working parents and lessons learned on her family’s Tennessee farm. This Nation is a better place today because of her work with young people and the inspiring example that she has set for all of us. Coach Pat Head Summitt is truly a great American, and I am proud to call her one of my constituents and one of my very, very close friends.