A Look at Pat Summitt’s Life off the Court: The Winning Coach’s Marriage, Son and Legacy
A look at the legendary coach's journey—from historic wins to her brave Alzheimer's battle
A new documentary centered around legendary female basketball coach Pat Summitt is releasing on Hulu this month, but before you watch it, you might want to learn a little bit about the Hall of Fame inductee. From her marriage and family to her devastating battle with early-onset Alzheimer’s, Pat lived a remarkable life that not only left an impact on the sports world, but on women everywhere. To learn more, keep reading.
Who was Pat Summitt?
Patricia “Pat” Susan Summitt was the head coach of the University of Tennessee Lady Vols basketball team from 1974 until 2012. She was the first NCAA coach (male or female) to reach 1,000 wins—ultimately leading the team to 1,098 wins and eight NCAA championships. She also coached the U.S. Women’s Olympic basketball team to a gold medal in 1984.
“I won 1,098 games and eight national championships and coached in four different decades. But what I see are not the numbers. I see the faces,” Summitt once said, according to the 2019 book Quotes from the Summitt. “Sometimes you learn more from losing than winning. Losing forces you to re-evaluate.”
Was Pat Summitt married?
Summitt was married to Ross Barnes “R.B.” Summitt from 1980 until 2008, when their divorce was finalized.
“I think she is doing all right,” Summitt’s lawyer, Bernie Bernstein, told ESPN in 2007. “She has been getting ready for the new season. Her son continues to live with her. He is in school. Things really haven’t changed that much for her.”
When asked why they were getting a divorce, Tennessee athletics spokeswoman Tiffany Carpenter told ESPN the winning coach “considers it a private matter and doesn’t want to make a statement about it.”
At the time of her divorce, Summitt was still coaching at Tennessee and had more than 945 wins under her belt.
Did Pat Summitt have kids?
Pat and R.B welcomed their son Tyler in 1990. Throughout his childhood, Tyler could often be found sitting on the sidelines of the Lady Vols games, and sometimes even on the court with his mom.
Once he got older, Tyler played basketball, going on to become the head women’s basketball coach at Louisiana Tech, but he was forced to resign in 2016 after it was revealed that he had engaged in an inappropriate relationship with a player.
“I am profoundly disappointed in myself for engaging in a relationship that has negatively affected the people I love, respect and care about the most,” Tyler said in a statement at the time. “My hope, plans and prayers are to repair those relationships. I am appreciative of the opportunity I was given to coach at Louisiana Tech. I am heartbroken that my time has ended in Ruston, but because of my respect for the institution, it is best that I resign. I am hopeful the media and the public will respect the privacy of my family and me as we deal with this difficult situation I have caused.”
Tyler is now 35 years old and has been married to his wife Brooke Pumroy since 2018. They have three kids together.
“Everybody asks me, ‘What was it like growing up as her son?’ And I say, ‘I don’t know how it is any other way. That’s the only way I ever knew.’ And so for me, it wasn’t anything different,” Tyler told TMJ4 in 2012. “I thought everybody’s parents went to the grocery store and had to sign three autographs before they could leave.”
Pat Summitt’s death
Summitt died in 2016 from Alzheimer’s. She was 64 years old. Prior to her passing, she created the Pat Summitt Foundation to help find a cure for the disease. She also continued coaching for a little while, despite her initial diagnosis.
“Numbers have a strange slipperiness for me, a lack of specificity; they suggest nothing,” Summitt wrote in her 2013, memoir Sum It Up. “If you ask me how many games we won in 1998, or what happened in the 2008 national championship game, I struggle to remember which one it was. But if you tell me who was on the team—if you prompt me with names rather than numbers…they bring it all back. Show me a picture of a former player, frozen in an old team photo, and I remember her.”
“I’d always said that no player was bigger than the program, and the same held true for me,” she continued. “I didn’t want to be bigger than Tennessee. While continuing to work was good for me, the Lady Vols weren’t my personal health clinic.”
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