We're all Volunteers Now

I lived in Tennessee in the early 1990s and like any semi-conscious person in the state, began to watch some women's basketball.  The state was an epicenter for the sport; the one place in the nation where girls' games were held during prime gym time.  A state where women's games - at all levels - were played in gyms full of cheering fans.  There was one outstanding reason for that fact and her name is Pat Summitt, the longtime coach of the Lady Volunteers.

Women's basketball, and the girls who play it, flourished as a result of Summitt's enthusiastic support of the sport.  Her teams won championships but, more important than that, the players served as ambassadors for a world of gender equality in sport.  And beyond that, Summitt's players symbolized the value of hard-work, perseverance, and love of the game.  The Lady Volunteers earned academic honors and won games; they were role models for other accomplished young women.  They did their coach proud.

And Coach Summit was the center of it all: a woman respected, loved, and admired.  Though I left Tennessee in 1994, I still cheer for her teams.  My son proudly wears a Lady Vols t-shirt on game day.  His favorite athlete of all-time is a former Summitt player, Candace Parker.  That's fitting, and a development that Summitt, also the mother of one son, would surely approve of. 

It was with a heavy heart that I heard of Summitt's diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer's.  But, as this fine Washington Post article indicates, Summitt's determination to manage the unexpected development proves that she's got at least one more legacy to bequeath the young women she coaches and Volunteer fans everywhere: the dignity of a life well-lived.

Thank you, Coach Summitt.  I'll be cheering a little more loudly in the seasons that lie ahead.  We're all Volunteers now.