Lifetime Achievement Award

Pat Summitt was a women’s college basketball head coach who accrued 1,098 career wins – the most in college basketball history upon her retirement in 2012. As the head coach of the University of Tennessee’s Lady Vols basketball team (1974-2012), Summitt won eight NCAA championships; an NCAA women’s record when she retired and the third most of all time.

In addition to coaching college basketball, Summitt won a silver medal at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal as a member of the United States women’s basketball team during women’s basketball’s inaugural tournament and returned to the Olympics in 1984 as a head coach winning a gold medal.

Summitt received the Naismith Basketball Coach of the Century in 2000, the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the 2012 ESPY Awards, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2012.

In August 2011, Summitt announced that she had been diagnosed three months earlier with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Despite the diagnosis, she completed the 2011–2012 season, but with a reduced role. Summitt created a foundation to raise money for Alzheimer’s research and worked to raise awareness of the disease. Summitt died on June 28, 2016.

After her death, the Pat Summitt Alzheimer’s Clinic was opened at the University of Tennessee Medical Center, with funds from her Foundation. In 2017, the NCAA established the Pat Summitt Award to recognize individuals who positively influence college athletes.