Legendary Tennessee Basketball Coach Pat Summitt Dead at 64
Pat Summitt, the iconic former women's basketball coach at the University of Tennessee, has passed away Tuesday. She was 64.
Summitt won eight national championships at Tennessee, took her teams to 22 Final Fours (the most by any men's or women's coach) and helped propel women's basketball into the mainstream. Over 38 seasons in Knoxville, she won 1,098 games -- that's the most for men's or women's coaches in Division I history. She took over the program in 1974, when women's sports was deep in the shadow of men's sports:
In 2011, Summitt revealed she was battling early-onset dementia and coached for one more season before stepping down following the 2011-2012 campaign.
A recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012, Summitt, who led Team USA to a gold medal at the 1984 Summer Olympics, was also inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2000.
Summitt's death has resonated throughout the sports world and beyond: