Pat Summitt
Name at birth: Patricia Sue Head
Pat Summitt is the head coach of the women's basketball team at the University of Tennessee and the winningest basketball coach, man or woman, in NCAA history. Her teams have won eight national titles since she began coaching the "Lady Volunteers" in 1974: in 1987, 1989, 1991, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2007, and 2008. Summitt grew up on a Tennessee farm and played basketball throughout high school and college. She graduated from University of Tennessee-Martin in 1974; that same year she was hired as the head coach at Tennessee, a position she's held ever since. (She also played on the US women's Olympic team in 1976 and won a gold medal as coach of the 1984 women's Olympic squad.) Summitt is famous for her fierce intensity and signature icy glare, and for her success in turning Tennessee into a national power. She won her 880th game on 22 March 2005, surpassing Dean Smith to become the NCAA's all-time wins leader. Her motivational memoir Reach for the Summitt was published in 1998. She was inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 1999 and into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2000.
Extra credit: Summitt is 5'11" tall... The court at Tennessee was renamed "The Summitt" after her 880th win... Many sources say she was born in Clarksville, but her biography on the University of Tennessee website says "Patricia Sue Head Summitt was born on June 14, 1952, in Henrietta, Tenn."... Summitt married banker R.B. Summitt II on 23 August 1980; she filed for divorce in 2007. Their son Ross was born in 1990. The Lady Vols website says of Summitt giving birth, "With her water broken, she still completed [a] recruiting visit in Macungie, Pa., and then flew home to Knoxville, urging the pilots not to stop so her son would be born in Tennessee."