Korcek: Summitt's reach felt in DeKalb by former NIU coach Jane Albright – DeKalb Daily Chronicle
Wisdom fosters tribute. Tribute fosters payback. Payback fosters memories.
If anyone knows the number of doors the late Pat Summitt opened in women’s college basketball since the 1970s, former Northern Illinois University head coach Jane Albright would certainly know.
“There’s like 78-80 coaches in the Lady Volunteers’ family tree,” Albright recalled the other day.
According to CBS Sports, 78 people who were mentored by the University of Tennessee’s iconic educator are currently coaching or working administrative jobs in the women’s game. Albright is one of them.
Opportunity doors, scheduling doors, personal favor doors, Summit unlocked them for her team, her family, her game.
Entering her 33rd season as a Division I head coach with 501 career victories and ninth year at the University of Nevada-Reno, Albright readily and fondly acknowledged that Summitt opened the door for her at age 28.
She also said how grateful she was that so many things had fallen into place in reference to head coaching jobs at NIU, Wisconsin, Wichita State and now UN-R – not to forget the two years as a grad assistant at Tennessee.
At NIU, the women’s hoops legacy dates back to 1900. The modern age began in 1957-58 under the auspices of Hall of Famer Mary Bell. The zenith of that era would be Bell’s 1971-72 quintet that finished 15-3 and advanced to the Elite Eight of the AIAW national tournament.
But there’s no doubt the most productive Huskies basketball decade – women’s or men’s –would be the Albright era (188-110 record in 1984 to ’94) that featured five postseason appearances (NCAA in 1990, 1992, 1993, and 1994, NWIT in 1991), five 20-win campaigns, six All-America picks, three regular-season league titles, Top 20 rankings, state attendance records, etc.
In 2003, Albright was enshrined into the NIU Athletics Hall of Fame. Seven of her players (Cindy Conner, Denise Dove, Lisa Foss, E.C. Hill, Tammy Hinchee, Carol Owens, and Charmonique Stallworth) plus the 1989-90 squad have been similarly honored.
Albright’s Summitt connection dates back to 1975 as a sophomore guard when Appalachian State University played Summitt’s Volunteers in a tournament. In the post-game handshake line, Summitt approached and smiled at her.
“Pat said to me, ‘My mother’s maiden name was Albright.’ Right then I said to myself that I wanted to work for her and learn what she had to say about the game,” Albright said. “This lady is the real deal.”
Five years later, Albright was a high school coach in South Carolina.
“I took a day off, got in my car and drove to Knoxville,” Albright said. “I literally sat outside of her office door waiting for Pat to go to lunch. I wanted to ask if she had a grad assistant job (open).”
Albright didn’t get the job and was, “devastated.”
The next spring, the UT hire fell through and Summitt remembered Albright. The rest, cliché time, is history. In the Summitt camp two years, Albright and the Vols advanced to the initial women’s NCAA Final Four (1981-82) and won the SEC crown (1982-83).
“What an experience. I did get that Pat Summitt stare twice. She was tough. Pat always said to win, you had to outwork the other team. You wanted to please her,” Albright said.
At the end of the 1983-84 season, NIU released head coach Cherri Block and Summitt called women’s athletics director Susie Jones. Albright then was an assistant at Cincinnati.
The Summitt-Albright relationship went beyond the usual mentor-protege one. In our 20-minute conversation, Albright said “she (Summitt) was my friend” three times.
A national power such as UT scheduling mid-major NIU three times (1987-88, 1989-90, and 1991-92) – including the latter date in Chick Evans Field House – isn’t commonplace. Neither was Summitt, a Gold Medal U.S. Olympic coach, appearing at an NIU clinic, personal phone calls after tough Albright losses, or offers to share game films and counsel. But this is what the game’s No. 1 ambassador did behind the scenes.
“Pat was invested in women’s basketball and would do anything to help the growth of the game,” Albright said. “She would do anything to help her (coaching) family. She invested in me and my career from the start. When I was at Wichita State and struggling, Pat called and offered to help many times. She ached for me.”
Albright recalled looking on the Evans Field House floor and seeing Foss, Owens, Hinchee, et al, scrimmaging on their own in July.
Why?
“Because we were playing Tennessee that winter, that really motivated them (NIU players),” Albright explained.
Earlier this month, Albright was recruiting at the Tournament of Champions at McCormick Place in Chicago. Foss and Hinchee joined their former coach and the stories started flowing. Foss said that during the reminiscing about their NIU days and Summitt, tears of personal joy and loss started forming in Albright’s eyes.
“As a player, it was a dream – an honor – to play Tennessee,” Foss said. “Those are the types of games you want to play. Tennessee coming to NIU. You better believe that was big. We didn’t play well (and lost, 78-61). Think I got in foul trouble. (But) Coach Summitt had an aura, she had ‘it.’ She had a presence. Leadership ran through her veins. I think you could’ve plugged her into a CEO position in any major corporation and she would have succeeded.”
Sure the nation knows about Summitt as the winningest coach in Division I basketball history (1,098-208 in 38 seasons), her program’s eight NCAA titles, 18 Final Four appearances, 16 SEC championships, the 1984 Olympic Gold, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, but not the “insider” stuff.
“Once, she beat me, 21-2, in racquetball with a toothpick in her mouth,” Albright chuckled. “I think it was when I was at Wisconsin and Pat once asked, ‘Are you ever going to get a job where it’s warm in the winter?’”
After winning the Olympic Gold at the 1984 Los Angeles games, Summitt was expected to be in a ticker tape parade on Broadway in New York. Instead, she went back to Knoxville.
“She was a farm gal,” Albright said. “My phone rang, I picked it up. It was Pat who explained why she didn’t go to the parade. She said, ‘My tomatoes needed canning.’ “
Albright did not attend the funeral service in June. She had visited with Summitt earlier.
“I told her, I loved her and would continue to love her by having my team outwork our opponents.”
• Mike Korcek is a 1970 graduate of NIU, and was the school’s head sports information director from 1984-2006. His historical perspective on NIU athletics appears periodically in the Daily Chronicle. Write to him at [email protected].
