“I wish I could get another one of those hugs. Maybe one day.”
10 years after Pat Summitt’s death, former Tennessee Lady Vol, Olympic gold medalist, and longtime friend Lea Henry still pauses when she talks about her former coach.
“If I had to pick two people in my life that made the biggest difference for me in so many ways,” Lea said, “It would be my dad and Pat.”
For most of the world, Pat was the Hall of Fame coach who built the Lady Vols into a dynasty. Pat led Tennessee to eight national championships and forever changed women’s basketball.
Lea knew the Pat Summitt the public rarely saw.
She visited Henry’s family in southwest Georgia, pushed her relentlessly in practice, and celebrated Olympic gold by her side. Years later, she was still writing letters.
It began with a phone call.
A Dream Bigger Than Damascus
In 1976 there was a little girl sitting on the floor of her family’s living room in Damascus, Georgia.
The town’s population hovered around 300 people.
Then one afternoon, while watching a brief television highlight of the Olympic Games, Henry looked at her father, W.T., and said something that sounded almost impossible.
“I want to play in the Olympics one day, Daddy.”
W.T. didn’t tell his daughter the dream was unrealistic. Instead, he explained what it would take.
“There are a lot of other young ladies your age that have the same goal,” Lea recalled. “But if you work hard, do the right things and put yourself around the right people, it can happen.”
Those words became the foundation of everything that followed.
W.T., who was also a former basketball player and coach, understood that growing up in southwest Georgia meant his daughter would have to create opportunities herself.
He also knew exactly who he wanted guiding her journey.
Pat Summitt.
The Phone Call That Changed Everything
W.T. Henry understood the odds.
Damascus was not a recruiting stop for most major college programs. If Lea was going to be seen, her family would have to help create the opportunity.
So he made a phone call.
“He called Pat and he said, ‘I’ve got a daughter I think’s pretty talented,'” Lea said.
At the time, Summitt had been recruiting players out of Georgia. W.T. told her about Lea and asked if he could send his daughter to Tennessee’s basketball camp that summer.
Pat said yes. Then she offered something better.
She encouraged Lea to try out for the first National Sports Festival and sign up for regional tryouts in Memphis. Summitt would be there as part of the selection committee.
“I’d really like a chance to watch her play,” Lea recalled Pat saying.
The Henrys loaded the car and headed for Memphis.
It was the first time Pat had seen Henry play. It was also the first time Henry met the woman who would become one of the most important people in her life.
The trip was not without complications.
The tryout jerseys never arrived. The players went to Walmart, bought white T-shirts and wrote their numbers on them. The numbers smeared. Lea found a bib to write her number on but couldn’t pin it on by herself.
“I just went straight to (Pat) and asked her to pin my number on,” Lea said.
Without realizing it, Lea was putting her father’s advice into practice.
“He just taught us about being respectful to people no matter what level they are, but to never be afraid of them,” Lea said. “To always have confidence in yourself.”
Pat noticed.
Henry made the national team that summer. By the time her senior season arrived, the point guard from Damascus had options.
She planned to visit three schools. Tennessee was first.
It was on that visit she knew there was no reason to keep looking.
“I said, ‘I don’t need to go anywhere else,'” Lea said. “I said, ‘Is it OK if I go ahead and commit to her?'”
Her father asked if she was sure.
“This is it,” she told him. “This is it.”
At the time, Tennessee was the destination for young women’s basketball players across the country.
“All young female basketball players wanted to go to Tennessee at that time,” Lea said. “It was the place to go.”
For Lea, the decision was even simpler.
“I chose Tennessee because of Pat,” Lea said. “Not because of Tennessee. I chose it because of Pat.”
The path her father had envisioned was beginning to unfold.
Learning the Lady Vol Standard
Lea arrived in Knoxville knowing Summitt demanded more than most coaches.
She quickly learned there was a reason players wanted to meet that standard.
“When Pat walked in a room, she took it over,” Lea said. “There was a presence about her that just… everybody stopped. People were in awe.”
Pat demanded excellence in every part of the program, but she also earned something just as important from her players; their trust.
“She could have thrown a ball and hit me in the back of the head and I’d probably been, ‘That’s okay,'” Lea said with a laugh. “You just trusted her. I trusted her, and so whatever she wanted to do was okay with me.”
Lea said Pat reminded her of another person she admired, her father.
“He expected a lot,” Lea said. “Pat reminded me a lot of him. She demanded and demanded. I liked that. I liked the fact that she pushed people and pushed players and made people be the best that they could be.”
That trust showed itself early.
Just three games into her freshman season, Lea asked to meet with Pat outside the locker room.
“I said, ‘I just want to know when I’m going to start,'” Lea recalled.
“‘I’m better than that player,'” she remembered telling Pat. “‘I come off the bench and play more minutes.'”
Pat asked one question.
“‘Is it that important to you that you start?'”
“‘Yes, ma’am,'” Lea answered. “‘It’s real important to me.’After that, I started every game.”
Trust also meant accepting difficult lessons.
After a loss at South Carolina during Lea’s freshman season, the Lady Vols returned to Knoxville expecting a day off.
Instead, Pat had the managers tell the team to pull their unwashed, game-worn jerseys from the trunk.
“It was disgusting,” Lea exclaimed.
The players put them back on and returned to the court to redo the final 20 minutes of that South Carolina game.
Then came another lesson.
Some of the veterans tried to lighten the mood by pretending to announce a starting lineup before practice.
“So (Pat) came and turned that corner,” Lea said. “I mean, she killed us that day.”
The message continued the following season after another road loss.
Back in Knoxville, Pat gathered the team for a two-hour lecture on what it meant to wear Tennessee across their chest.
“If you were going to play for this university, for this program, you better have pride or you can go somewhere else,” Lea recalled.
Years later, Henry doesn’t remember those moments as punishment.
She remembers the purpose behind them.
“She made it seem so important to win,” Lea said. “Not only was she teaching us about winning at basketball, but she was instilling in us the work ethic, the character and the integrity it takes to win in life.”
Lea never questioned the approach.
“We played terrible,” she said. “Whatever way she wanted to prove her point, I was on board with it. I never thought she was doing the wrong thing. That’s just how I felt about her.”
The Summer That Changed Everything
Lea had spent her freshman season learning what it meant to play for Pat.
The next lesson came away from the basketball court when Pat sent Lea a note.
“She said, ‘Well, my mom and dad and I are going to come down for a visit if that’s okay,'” Lea recalled.
Richard and Hazel Summitt had become close friends with Lea’s family. So, what began as a visit quickly felt more like a reunion.
When Pat arrived, W.T. was on a ladder painting the family’s house.
“She said, ‘W.T., where’s… you got another ladder?'” Lea said with a smile.
Before long, Pat and W.T. were painting side by side.
“We’ve got a picture,” Lea said. “Pat and my dad up on the ladder painting.”
For two days, basketball rarely came up.
“She and I would stay up all hours of the night,” Lea said. “She cared so much about how I felt about things. How I felt about playing and basketball, but how I felt about life in general.”
Those conversations have stayed with Lea ever since.
“I won’t ever forget those conversations.”
The coach who demanded excellence every day at practice was the same person willing to spend hours simply listening.
“That to me… I loved playing for Pat,” Lea said. “We as players don’t have to say, ‘I played for the Tennessee Lady Vols.’ All we’ve got to say is, ‘I played for Pat.’ Everybody knows who you’re talking about.”
Then Lea Paused.
“But the fact that we were more than a coach-player… it meant just as much to me.”
When Lea thinks back on her years at Tennessee, it’s often the moments between games that come to mind first. She remembers her teammates, Holly Warlick and Jill Rankin, picking her up in Damascus to attend Pat and R.B.’s wedding to be honorary bridesmaids.
She remembers seeing Pat let her guard down.
“If she was anxious or worried about something, we’d talk about it,” Lea said. “About the team or about anything personally.”
One Dream Left to Chase
Lea and Pat would go on to enjoy remarkable success together at Tennessee, reaching three Final Fours and playing for a national championship.
But one dream still remained.
The Olympics.
For Lea, the dream had started years earlier on the living room floor of her family’s home in Damascus.
Now, it was within reach.
“I knew who the competition was,” Lea said. “I felt like I deserved it. I wanted it to happen so bad.”
Walking into the room where the final roster would be announced, the pressure was overwhelming.
“There was so much pressure,” Lea said. “But it was such a relief when I walked in and Pat was smiling.”
Pat, now serving as head coach of the 1984 U.S. Olympic Team, was the one delivering the news.
The coach who had first encouraged Lea to chase an Olympic dream was now telling her she had made the team.
“I was so happy,” Lea said. “So excited. So relieved.”
For Lea, the moment meant far more than earning a roster spot. It was the dream W.T. had encouraged her to believe was possible years before.
“He really helped me understand early on that if I wanted to accomplish something, he taught me all the values that it would take,” Lea said. “He was a huge part of it.”
Then she thought about Pat.
“It never would’ve happened without her.”
Once the roster was set, there wasn’t much time to celebrate. Pat went back to being Coach.
“(Pat) was riding (me and Cindy Nobles) so hard,” Lea said with a laugh.
The demanding practices left the pair of former Lady Vols wondering what they were doing wrong.
“Nancy said, ‘She’s just trying to make examples out of y’all,'” Lea recalled. “I said, ‘Well, I don’t want to be an example anymore.'”
The payoff came on the biggest stage in the world when Team USA captured the first Olympic gold medal in women’s basketball history.
“It was such a fulfilling accomplishment,” Lea said.
Yet when Lea remembers that day, the gold medal isn’t the first image that comes to mind.
“She came down the line and told me how proud she was,” Lea said. “I thanked her for believing in me.”
For Lea, the embrace captured everything the medal could not.
“Winning a gold medal, that’s with you for the rest of your life,” she said. “But the fact that we did it with her is what made it super, super special.”
“I Wish I Could Get Another One of Those Hugs”
When asked what that embrace means to her today, Lea didn’t talk about Olympic gold or basketball.
“To me, it’s just a symbol of how much we cared about each other,” Lea said. “How much we loved each other and how much we respected each other.”
Then she paused.
“I wish I could get another one of those hugs. Maybe one day.”
On the 10 year anniversary of Pat’s passing, Lea still measures her life by the people who shaped it most.
“If I had to pick two people in my life that made the most difference for me in so many ways,” she said, “It would be my dad and Pat.”
The lessons Pat taught reached far beyond basketball.
“I watched her as a female be so successful and so confident and never look at herself as inferior to anyone,” Lea said. “I learned from her that that was okay. It’s okay to have a strong personality and to have that level of confidence.”
Among Lea’s most treasured possessions are the letters Pat wrote over the years.
Handwritten reminders of a friendship that never faded.
“I love you, Pat.”
