I usually ignore that old canard about celebrity deaths coming in threes. I guess I generally don’t have time for that sort of game.
But then there’s June 2016, when three people who were icons in their respective sports, whose fame transcended their sports, all died within a few weeks of each other.
After Muhammad Ali and Gordie Howe, there was Pat Summitt, the former Tennessee women’s coach who died after battling dementia on Tuesday at age 64.
If you’re any kind of sports fan, you know who Pat Summitt was.
She started coaching at Tennessee in 1974, when she was barely out of college, and stayed there 38 years. She left because of the onset of dementia in her late 50s.
She began coaching when women’s basketball, like most women’s sports at that time, was an afterthought, in funding, facilities and media attention.
That lack of attention extended to the NCAA, which didn’t sponsor championships for women until after the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women proved there was an audience for, and profits to be made from, women’s sports.
In 1980, the AIAW held its national basketball championship at Central Michigan University. Former Brighton softball coach Pam Lee-Campbell worked the AIAW Final Four, which saw Old Dominion defeat Tennessee in the championship game.
“She was the greatest coach out there,” Lee-Campbell said. “She did amazing things and she stuck through it all. You could see it in her kids and the respect they had for her.”
I was there for the final four, too, working for my college radio station. Summitt was known as Pat Head then, and she had the same characteristics then that fans grew to know so well.
“I had a friend on the Wayne State basketball team,” said Hartland volleyball coach Katy Westenberg, who played volleyball at Wayne State. “Her coach at Wayne mimicked Pat in how she put character first while recruiting.”
Summitt had a record 1,078 victories as a coach, more than anyone else, man or woman, in NCAA history. But there’s another amazing stat — everyone who played four years for her left Tennessee with a degree. That’s right. A 100 percent graduation rate.
Westenberg says Summitt reminded her of Don Palmer, who coached her in basketball at Milford.
“They both could have an icy stare,” she said, laughing. “My roommate and I would talk about her disapproving look. She didn’t have to yell, which brought me back to Palmer. They’re a great coach when they get the message across without having to say anything.”
Palmer, told that, laughed.
“Katy had the misfortune to go through times when I was younger and more energetic,” the 65-year-old joked, then grew serious. “Coaches in my era grew up with strict discipline, and Pat was one of those types. Bobby Knight, too, and Jud Heathcote was another. There was good and bad to that.
“I heard a lot of her former players flooded to see her in her final hours, and that’s very indicative of how they felt,” he added. “She was a tremendous asset for women’s basketball. Tremendous.”
“You could tell she touched so many people,” Westenberg said. “Everyone from my beach volleyball friends in Chicago to old basketball teammates were commenting (on social media) and are affected by her death. Her range of influence affected all sports, not just women’s basketball.”
Lee-Campbell graduated from Central in 1980 and a few years later began her own long tenure as Brighton’s softball coach.
“She was a big leader in making women’s sports so popular,” Lee-Campbell said. “She was a role model to many. To me, Bo (former U-M football coach Bo Schembechler) and she are right up there.”
Ali. Howe. Summitt.
That’s quite the short list of people who changed the world who left us in a short time. But their influence remains, and we are the richer for it.
