The Lady Vols: Never Wait Til Next Year
Carol Blankner
In case you might not be aware, The Lady Vols of the University of Tennessee are the magnificent woman's basketball team currently in the No. 5 spot nationally (down a few slots from No. 1 where they started at the beginning of the season but up dramatically from No. 13 where they sank trying to get their act together with 6 new players). Their head coach of 31 years, Pat Head Summit, is just 10 games shy of becoming the winningest coach in NCAA basketball history. Even though the University of Connecticut (better known to all Women's Basketball Fans as UCONN) has managed to be triumphant in the last 3 consecutive Women's NCAA National Championships it is Pat Head Summitt's "elite program" here at the UT Knoxville, that has taken woman's basketball to the height and recognition that it now enjoys. There is absolutely no doubt about that. Pat has been in or around the winner's circle for three decades. And everybody here loves her ... and she loves us ... and she likes to WIN.
So on this particular Sunday afternoon (today, February 6, to be exact) as we moved down from our higher perched seats in the corner to row 3 center court where our dear friends, Moonyean and Dwayne, have these marvelous seats. We all gathered for the post-game Pat Head Summitt Radio Show with Mickey Deerstone (who calls all the games on the local Knoxville station) after the most electrifying second half that The Lady Vols have played this year, scoring 64 points to beat Mississippi State 99-57. I found myself less than 10 feet from this AMAZING women, Pat Head Summit. I sat there feeling miserable and angry, studying her admiringly trying to figure out her secrets: How does she stay so up ... so focused ... so out there for the team, the fans, her family, the world? How does she stay so beautiful? What does she eat for breakfast? Does she walk, run, workout, do Yoga? What vitamins does she take? How does she sleep? Do her teeth grind at night? Does she use Clinique ?
After the 30 minute radio show was over, and we found ourselves on the Alcoa Highway on our way back to Maryville, I thought also about the article I had read on the way to the game on the front page of the Sports section of the Knoxville News Sentinel,"Ambition Drives Anosike", and Pat's comments in the article about this freshman player, Nicky Anosike, struggling to get better at the free throw line. "I knew she was a great athlete. I didn't know the total package." The article went on to say that "The package cannot be torn open like a Christmas present. Anosike would love to do the honors, to show how much her family and her upbringing has helped create her ambition. It doesn't work that way, however, not for someone who is a woman's basketball work in progress. Anosike is revealed one game and one practice at a time." And I thought WOW !!! Pat's secret is ATTITUDE and HARD WORK for sure. "A work in progress": that's what I am, that's what we all are. I'm just progress in slow motion.
Later this week still obsessed with Pat Head Summit and utterly frustrated with myself, I remembered that somewhere I had a copy of Pat's book, Reach for the Summit, that she wrote in 1998 after The Lady Vols had won 2 consecutive NCAA Championships in l996 & l997 (5 in all over a 10 year span). I anxiously searched for and found the book snuggled back in the depths of a shelf of over-stacked books in our little "library". I've never opened it before, I just thought I would when I bought it. But this particular day I chanced to do that. The title of the Prologue grabbed me, "Never Wait Til Next Year", so I sat there and I began reading.
"When I get after something, the veins in my neck stand out. The color begins to rise up from my collarbone, and you can see the pulse going in my throat, and my eyes look like the high beams of an oncoming car. I am what you would call a classic 'Type A' personality. An extremely demanding person. Certainly people close to me would tell you that, including my seven-year old son, Tyler. In whom, may I just say, I have met my match. The other night, Tyler pulled out his own front tooth, and it wasn't even that loose. The fact that it was his "only" remaining front tooth, and that it bled like a slaughtered hog, and that he reminded me more than a little bit of myself, may have accounted for the exorbitant fee of seven dollars he received from the tooth fairy."
"Mama," Tyler says, when I get that look in my eye. "Please put your sunglasses back on."
"That's who you're dealing with here. Someone who will sell her house to own your farm. Someone who will push you beyond all reasonable limits. Someone who will ask you to not just fulfill your potential, but to exceed it. Someone who will expect more from you than you may believe capable of. So if you aren't ready to go to work, shut this book."
WOW!, it's really hard to stop on that note but I fear that I have used up all my space for this issue of Loafers. Be encouraged however: I did NOT shut the book and I want so to share the entire prologue. So tune in next issue. There is more. "Winners are not born, they are self-made." Pat Head Summit is REAL... and she has LOTS of secrets.
 Loafer's #9, Spring 1997
The 'sideways' issue (it's read that way, not starring Paul Giamatti). Peter Schilling's controverisal "What I read in 1996" Loafitorial; R.T. Biyd's (A.C.) grab bag of fun, including curing hemorrhoids with peanut butter; Stephanie Milito, Andy Clason, Tom Loretto, Dave Greenlund and W. W. Thrackmorton all write in; Matt Schwetz learns from the Flophouse Fire; more of Steve Willis' Sasquatch hijinks; Eric Goodell's piece on the disappearance of an 80s child star; Pastor Lund on Easter; Betty Brown on the road to motherhood; Feminism unbound by Marilee Mitchard; Boart Sparrow has a baby, too; Railroad lines of Michigan, by John Schilling; Confessions of a Lumpen Academic!; a mess of great food by Janice Rideout; Lost Dante; The House on the Rock; illustrations by the Schilling brothers, A. & T. Clason, Willis, & Blankner-san. Cover photograph by Peter Schilling Sr., artwork by his son, John.
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