Time for a New Season

It is almost time for a new Lady Vols basketball season.  Yes, I know we have to get through the football stuff first, but basketball is closer than it was.  What the year will bring for this new program is still unknown.  I, among other Lady Vols fans, am still trying to adjust to the loss of our general.  It is going to be great to have coach Holly Warlick on the sidelines and she did a great job last year, but it is still going to be difficult not to see Pat Summitt leading these Lady Vols to victory and championships.

My heart has been heavy and even though I know that is not what Pat wants from the fans.  It is difficult to move on.  I felt down when Martina and Chris stopped playing tennis, I got upset at the end of Babylon Five, and think I had actual withdrawals from the end of STNG, but this is different.  Maybe it is because Pat and I are so close in age and I briefly coached high school basketball that this has hit much harder.  This is personal.  Pat Summitt has been handed award after award this year and they are all well deserved, but I would rather see her prowling the sidelines and eating the refs for dinner than see her get these awards. For nearly four decades, the University of Tennessee Lady Vol basketball program has been among the nation's elite and in the process has changed the way women's collegiate hoops is perceived across the country. No one has done a better job of managing what goes on inside the 94x50 rectangle known as a collegiate basketball court than the UT head coach. Her unfathomable victories, eight NCAA Championships and 32 combined Southeastern Conference titles, directly speaks to her incredible management and mastery of the 4,700 square feet of roundball real estate. And few have even come close to accomplishing what she has done outside the lines for the last 38 years. To her peers, she is forthright, well-respected, ethical, and a winner who serves as a shining example in the sport of collegiate basketball. Most importanly she has made sure that 100% of her players earned college degrees.  74 current coaches on various levels of the game were once taught by Coach Summitt, two are on the Olympic team, and 13 former players are playing pro-basketball in the WNBA.

But in life, like it or not, time marches on, and it is often difficult for me to recognize that there are fewer years in front of me than are behind me.  I will embrace this new basketball season and continue to support the Lady Vols.  I will enjoy watching the new generation of coaches bring in new champions and win or lose I will always love the Lady Vols.