Pat Summitt Quotes

One of the biggest reasons I like coaching college ball is the kids. I feel I can impact players' lives. I like the fact that they're student-athletes. I like to see those kids graduate.

It's been our goal as a program to always give our players the best opportunity to be successful, whether it's personally, academically, or athletically.

You know, my stepdad taught me growing up, you know, if the team has success then the individual things will follow.

So, college was kind of the only option that I looked at, and I was fortunate to have great coaches when I was at UCLA. They helped me improve on and off the court.

I became a better talker on the floor, being at Duke, being in leadership with Coach K, and I think I got better defensively as the season progressed.

A lot of times those things are shaped by coaches you work with, but other times they're shaped by coaches you admire and study.

My conclusion: Management is the most noble of professions if it's practiced well. No other occupation offers as many ways to help others learn and grow, take responsibility and be recognized for achievement, and contribute to the success of a team.

Engage, educate, equip, encourage, empower, energize, and elevate. Those are the methods for maximizing the potential of any individual, team, organization, or institution for ultimate success and significance. Those are the methods of a mentor leader.

The realization that you're not always standing down there on the field merely to win, to be successful, was very liberating. One can be successful by helping the team, the other players. All of a sudden I felt the kind of empathy for people that I hadn't felt before.

The great thing about basketball is you work as hard as you can to individually get better so that your team can win

There's a term, agape, you hear used a lot with charismatic religious groups, that it's this more pure love of caring, of sharing of concern and understanding. I think players and teams have to come to that at some point in the season to become successful. Maybe not "personal friends," but they become teammates at the highest level of that term.

A star can win any game; a team can win every game.

The best way to improve your team is to improve yourself.

The team that trusts-their leader and each other-is more likely to be successful.

I hated motivators - never been a motivator. Motivation is like a warm bath, and you should take a bath probably, but you need more than that; you need strategy. I was a strategist, but nobody responded to that, so I was, like, "OK, what am I? I'm a coach. I'm not a guru." As an athlete, I had great coaches, and I was a better athlete than many of them, but they still were better than I was as a coach because they could see when I couldn't see. I thought, that's great, because I'm not better than anybody, but I do have the skills that I can help people.

To have harmony on a team, you need a coach who can get inside the head of every player and get them all pulling in one direction.

As a college coach, I felt you could make a difference in a player's life. There was an educational aspect I thought was important.

A star wants to see himself rise to the top. A leader wants to see those around him rise to the top.

To me, the big thing in being a successful team is repetition of what you're doing, either by word of mouth, blackboard, or specifically by work on the field. You repeat, repeat, repeat as a unit.

The only true satisfaction a player receives is the satisfaction that comes from being part of a successful team, regardless of his personal accomplishments.

All I got to do is keep getting the most out of each one of my days and keep trying to be the best athlete I can become.

To have a successful team, you have to have great players of course - but you have to have good personalities and good people as well.

If you really want to be a successful leader, you must develop other leaders around you. You must establish a team.

Work as hard as you can to become as good an individual player as you can to help your team win

Few leaders are born. We learn to be leaders. We learn by working with other people and working through our philosophy.