Kara Lawson summed up the end product of Pat Summitt's career in dramatic fashion Tuesday morning.
The former Tennessee women's basketball point guard took her turn at the Ray and Lucy Hand Studio expounding on the career of the Lady Vols coaching legend, who died earlier that morning. Lawson described Summitt as "the most important figure in the history of the sport."
Former Tennessee football coach Phillip Fulmer appeared later and essentially covered the foundation of Summitt's 1,098 career victories and eight national championships by extolling some key virtues.
"Pat was way ahead of the game in women's basketball as to how she coached and recruited," he said. "She set the entire standard for everybody out there that's being successful now."
No less important, though, were some key Summitt moments during her early years. They helped shape the stature of the Lady Vols program and changed the game at the high school level in the state of Tennessee.
Summitt became Tennessee's coach in 1974. Her hiring came two years after the passage of Title IX legislation, which federally mandated equal opportunity for women in school.
Bob Kesling, the university's director of broadcasting, once was the radio voice of the Lady Vols. He recalled the game against Texas on Dec. 9, 1987, at Thompson-Boling Arena. A crowd of 24,563 turned out, which was then a world record for single-game attendance at a women's basketball game.
"It just showed you how far she took the program," he said, "from a day when she was handing out tickets just to get people to come to the game to selling out Thompson-Boling Arena."
Kesling recounted another poignant moment that characterized Summitt's passion for advancing the sport. The Lady Vols played a game at LSU in 1979 that was the opener of doubleheader featuring a Tennessee-LSU men's game. The women's game went overtime and the coaches were given the option of five minutes of running clock or playing overtime after the men's game. Summitt wanted to play immediately and Tennessee lost, 85-80.
"Pat was just livid, not just about that they lost, she was upset about that, but she was mad because her team, her players, her sport was disrespected," Kesling said.
"I think that was a motivating factor for Pat that no more was women's basketball treated as a stepchild or second-hand citizen. She talked about that game for years after that. It was a milestone fighting for her sport, fighting for her players."
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Dan Fleser writes for the Knoxville News Sentinel, part of the USA TODAY NETWORK.
GALLERY: Pat Summitt through the years
