Astonishing

"She is 22 years old when the job lands in her lap.

Pat Head grew up on a dairy farm in Henrietta, Tennessee, the kind of place where chores came before basketball and basketball came before almost everything else.

She played at the University of Tennessee at Martin, then made the 1976 U.S. Olympic team, winning a silver medal in Montreal.

1974. While Pat is still a graduate student, the head coach of the University of Tennessee's women's basketball team quits with almost no notice. Someone has to take over. Pat Head, who just turned 22, gets the job.

The salary: 250 dollars a month. The team has no budget for hotels, charter flights, or even a full-time practice gym of its own.

Here's what makes it worse, at the time, the NCAA doesn't even formally recognize women's basketball as a sport. There's no TV deal, no media coverage, almost no fans in the stands.

On road trips, Pat does the team's laundry herself and drives the van for hours. At least once, the team sleeps on the floor of the opposing school's gym because there's no money for a hotel.

She coaches anyway. In her first season, the team goes 16-8. The following year, she finishes her master's degree while running the program almost single-handedly.

For the next decade, Pat builds something out of almost nothing. She recruits players other programs overlook. She runs practices so hard that opposing players hear about "the look" - a stare so sharp it could make a college athlete burst into tears at center court.

In 1984, ten years into her coaching career, Pat leads the U.S. women's Olympic team to a gold medal. Two years later, Tennessee's program is starting to draw real crowds.

1987. Thirteen years after she started, the Lady Vols win their first national championship. It will not be the last.

1996. Pat earns her 600th career win, becoming only the second woman in basketball history to reach that number.

1998. Tennessee wins a third straight national title, capping a perfect 39-0 season.
By the time she's done, Pat Summitt has coached for 38 years.

Her record, 1,098 wins, 208 losses. 8 national championships. 32 conference titles. 18 trips to the Final Four. Not one losing season - not one, in nearly four decades.

At her retirement, it is the most wins by any college basketball coach in NCAA history, men's or women's.

Then, in 2011, Pat faces an opponent she can't out-coach.

August 23, 2011. At age 59, Pat Summitt announces that doctors at the Mayo Clinic have diagnosed her with early-onset Alzheimer's disease.

For a woman famous for a single icy glare that could silence a gym full of 20-year-olds, the diagnosis is brutal. Alzheimer's doesn't just take memories. It takes the sharpness, the instant recall, the total command of a room - the very things that made her Pat Summitt.
She refuses to disappear quietly.

When she tells her players the news, one of them - senior Vicki Baugh - stands up and says, "Pat, we've got your back."

Those five words become a movement. Fans, players, and strangers start wearing t-shirts with 3 words on them, "We Back Pat."

That same fall, Pat and her son, Tyler, start the Pat Summitt Foundation, dedicated to Alzheimer's research, caregiver support, and ending the silence around the disease.

In a letter to friends, she writes, "Put away your hankies. There's not going to be any pity party."

Pat coaches one final season, going 27-9, before stepping down on April 18, 2012 - 38 years after she took a 250-dollar-a-month job nobody else wanted.

Later that year, President Obama awards her the Presidential Medal of Freedom - the highest civilian honor in the country.

In 2015, the foundation helps open a dedicated Alzheimer's clinic at the University of Tennessee Medical Center, staffed with neurologists, social workers, and specialists focused entirely on patients and the families caring for them.

June 28, 2016. Pat Summitt dies at age 64, 5 years after her diagnosis. Her foundation keeps funding research and running that clinic.

She spent the first half of her career proving women belonged on the court, on equal footing with men. She spent the last years of her life proving that an Alzheimer's diagnosis doesn't have to be a secret - and that no one has to face it alone.

Share this with someone who needs to know - real courage sometimes means facing your hardest fight out loud, not in silence."

Let this story reach more hearts.....
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