From an intramural sport to Pat Summitt: Women’s basketball has a long history at UT

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Did you know that the University of Tennessee at Knoxville women had an intercollegiate basketball program several years before the men, and that the daughter of the school president later coached them?

In short, if you think the Lady Vols basketball program basically did not exist until Pat Head Summitt came along in 1974, think again. Long before the legendary coach’s eight national championships and the team’s current high-profile status, the UT women were already setting new standards for what local female athletes could achieve in sports and life.

Those are some of the facts uncovered by longtime former UT women’s sports communications director Debby Jennings in her 2008 book, “The University of Tennessee Basketball Vault: The History of the Lady Vols.”

As Jennings recently recalled her research in a phone interview as another season is winding down, women were not actually admitted to UT until 1893. That was nearly 100 years after the school’s founding.

Women’s basketball began as an intramural sport at UT in 1901

However, within 10 years women were bouncing and shooting basketballs, first as an intramural sport in 1901 under Anne Gibson and at the intercollegiate level two years later under coach Katherine Williams.

“They decided that once women were admitted, they needed physical training to meet the demands of academic life,” Jennings said regarding the longtime emphasis on both mental and physical activity for students.

Just as the UT men’s football program would have trouble beating Vanderbilt until Gen. Robert Neyland arrived in the 1920s, the UT women had their own nemesis early on – Maryville College. Using the five-player style, they lost to Maryville in their first game on March 13, 1903, at Maryville’s Bartlett Hall by a score of 10-1. 

“From 1903 to 1909, they lost 11 times to Maryville,” said Jennings of a losing streak that likely bothered them, just as the more modern one to UConn did until the skid was stopped earlier this season.

Despite these pioneering women, some antiquated rules that echoed through society were still in place. Jennings said she learned that the women could practice only one afternoon a week and that their games were played in front of female spectators only, other than officials and faculty members.

Some early games were played at the Knoxville YMCA, although the school did have a gym before what is now Alumni Memorial Building opened in the 1930s.

The UT women had an absence of about 10 years before re-fielding a team in 1920, the same year women earned the right to vote with the passage of the 19^th Amendment. The sport must have been considered important, because the late former UT President Brown Ayres’ daughter, Mary, became the coach for one year.

However, the program was stopped in 1926, Jennings said, perhaps in part because of different philosophies and outlooks developing around the country regarding whether such sports as basketball were considered too strenuous on women’s bodies.

A decades-long hiatus, then a slow return

Eventually, though, the sport would return like a slow but methodical second-half rally. From 1960-68, Nancy Lay had a women’s program through the physical education department, although there was no money or actual uniforms, and the players provided their own shoes. The games in that era were also as much about socializing as hustling on defense.

“Dr. Lay would pick up the phone and call the physical education departments at other schools and say, ‘Let’s all play,’ ” Jennings said. “There was no formal schedule. You would go play in a tournament and sleep on the floor of the gyms. You brought your sleeping bags and maybe a guitar. It was like a big social thing.”

In 1969 future athletic director Joan Cronan coached the women’s program for one year.

“Joan Cronan was here to revitalize the women’s program with Dr. Helen B. Watson,” said Jennings. “They then hired Margaret Hutson, and she led them through four seasons. In 1973-74, they were 25-2.”

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Jennings said the program began taking on its more modern look under coach Hutson. The players were also then known as the Volettes, with the Lady Vols nickname not being used until the 1976-77 season.

The women’s basketball program seemed to be doing so well under coach Hutson several years before the Title IX changes began being implemented fully that they were able to extend the budget and hire a graduate assistant beginning in 1974.

Not just any graduate assistant: Pat Head is hired

That assistant was Pat Head, who would later become known to women’s basketball fans far and wide as Pat Summitt. But as Jennings recalled, Summitt did not arrive at UT after playing at UT-Martin with dreams of being a successful college coach. 

And that proved true even after Dr. Hutson left for Ole Miss for athletic training certification, and coach Summitt was asked to fill in as the head coach.

“She said, ‘Sure, I’ll do it,’” said Jennings of Summitt. “She was just going to be a teacher, probably in the middle school.”

However, as Lady Vol fans would soon find out, this woman who never missed a day of school from kindergarten through 12^th grade would stay at Tennessee and never miss a season of fielding an outstanding team over the next 38 years.

She would make the Lady Vols one of the outstanding programs in the country and garner attention for UT far greater than those early days nearly 125 years ago.