Former players, coaches reflect on Pat Summitt's impact on women's basketball in new film
As March Madness puts women's college basketball front and center this month, a new documentary is shining a spotlight on the life and legacy of one of the sport's winningest coaches, the late Pat Summitt.
Summitt, who died in 2016 after battling early-onset Alzheimer's, won eight NCAA Championships and more than 1,000 games overall during her 38-year career coaching the University of Tennessee Lady Vol basketball program, according to her team biography.
In the new documentary, "Breaking Glass: The Pat Summitt Story," now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+, Summitt is remembered as a "visionary" both on and off the basketball court.
In addition to coaching her players to winning records, Summitt also made sure her players were coached on life, ensuring that each and every one graduated from college and had a plan for their post-college careers.
"Pat was a visionary, so she always saw what was beyond basketball," Mickie DeMoss, Summitt's longtime assistant coach at Tennessee, says in the documentary. "And, you know, back then, in the early or late '80s and really through the '90s, there was not a lot of money for professional women's basketball. So the women had to go out and make a living after graduating, and she did not want any of them to leave there without the tools to do that."
Patricia "Trish" Roberts, an Olympic silver medalist for Team USA who played one season under Summitt at Tennessee, remembers her coach following up on her academics even after she left the team.
"Once I left the University of Tennessee, I still needed a couple of classes to finish up. Pat was calling me all the time," Roberts recalls in "Breaking Glass." "She said, 'You need to come back, summer school, finish up. I've never had a player not graduate so far, you're not going to be the first.'"
Another former Lady Vol, Tamika Catchings, says Summitt wanted her players to be not just great athletes but "great people."
"Pat wanted us to be great people. She was a mentor on life, not just my basketball coach, but somebody that helped shape my life," Catchings says, adding of her decision to play for Summitt, "One of the main reasons that I chose to go to University of Tennessee was because I knew I wanted to play for the best."
"Good Morning America" co-anchor Robin Roberts is an executive producer of "Breaking Glass: The Pat Summitt Story." She said Wednesday that she hopes people see another side of Summitt in the special, beyond the "tough" coach persona.
"There was a time that she said to her players, 'If you win the [NCAA] National Championship, I'm going to dance for you,' and they're like, 'No way she's going to do that,'" Roberts said on "GMA" while showing video of Summitt dancing after her team won the title. "It's these kind of moments that we have in the film that no one got to see."
"Breaking Glass: The Pat Summitt Story," directed by Dawn Porter, is streaming now on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+. The film, produced by ABC News Studios and Rock’n Robin Productions, will also air on Sunday, March 29, on ESPN2 and Sunday, April 5, on ESPN.
The Walt Disney Co. is the parent company of ABC News, Hulu, Disney+ and ESPN.
