There was no Title IX when Pat Head began playing basketball competitively. There barely was competitive basketball to play. The NCAA had no interest then in women’s athletics. That was a boys’ club, entirely. The high school she was supposed to attend didn’t have a team for girls. Her parents, blessedly, moved to another district so she could play.
Look around you now. Pat Summitt, the name she wore when she became justifiably famous and one that fit her enormous talents so neatly, is being mourned as one of the greats in the history of American sports.