University of Tennessee Athletics
Coach In Waiting: Tyler Summitt
December 23, 2011 | Men's Basketball
Dec. 23, 2011
By Josh Pate
UTsports.com
Tyler Summitt is busy.
The mornings are typically filled with school and a workout squeezed in sometime. The afternoons are for practice - on the court with the men's basketball team and on the sidelines of most Lady Vols practices. Tennessee's walk-on guard watches film with his own team but also breaks down film for the women's squad with his mom, Pat Summitt, something he's done for quite a while.
He's coached an AAU team the past two summers and plans to again after this season is over. He has family time and girlfriend time that is an absolute must. And now he's working hand-in-hand with his mom on the Pat Summitt Foundation, raising awareness and support for Alzheimer's research.
Then there's a little thing called graduation. Summitt is only in his third year of college, but he will graduate early when he receives his communication studies degree in the spring.
Needless to say, those images of Pat Summitt cutting down national championship nets with a little boy tagging along up the ladder are long gone. Tyler Summitt's goal is to follow his mom's footsteps and become a basketball coach. His next stop will likely be on the basketball bench serving as a graduate assistant somewhere.
"I'm really just waiting for God to open whatever door that's best for me to go through and I'll do that," Summitt said. "I've applied to different graduate schools, including Tennessee. I'm just looking to be a graduate assistant somewhere because that's usually the first step."
As busy as Summitt is, his resume shows the rewards of that dedication. Summitt was a three-year starter and captain at Knoxville's Webb School, and when he arrived on the University of Tennessee's campus, he knew he wanted to be a head coach from the outset.
Summitt spent his freshman year as a practice player for the Lady Vols basketball team, working with the team each day all while learning from his mom, a walking basketball legend. The next year, he earned a spot as a walk-on for the men's team playing for Bruce Pearl. This year, he's learning under Tennessee's first-year head coach Cuonzo Martin. All told, Summitt has a wealth of coaching knowledge filed away.
"In the three years I've been here, I think it's pretty unique to have three separate head coaches over me to learn from," Summitt said. "I've been pretty blessed to have that. When I become a head coach someday, there will be things in my style that come from all three of those coaches, some more than others. It's been incredible to build my philosophy of coaching while I'm only a junior in college. I don't think many people get to do that."
The education goes beyond the court, too. Summitt spends time in the basketball offices - both men's and women's - to watch film with the coaches and help in any way possible.
"A lot of people think coaching and they think Xs and Os but that's a small fraction of what coaching really is," Summitt said. "It's more about the relationship you have with your players and how often you meet. Everybody talks about how Coach Martin calls or texts us and how my mom has a lot of team meetings and they're like a family. It's things like that that people don't see behind the scenes that I'm learning as well."
Perhaps most importantly, this fall he has learned how to balance school and basketball issues with family life. Pat Summitt announced prior to the season her diagnosis of early onset dementia, Alzheimer's type. Tyler Summitt has been helping his mom with the establishment of the Pat Summitt Foundation.
Just like everything else on his schedule - and following his mom's example - he welcomes the addition of a new challenge because, quite frankly, failure isn't in his genes.
"It's been good to see that there's a balance when there's really not time for much else," Summitt said. "I'll talk to my friends and they say they're playing video games or watching TV, and I can't even comprehend time to do that so it's kind of funny. I think it's been a great learning experience."
For more information on the Pat Summitt Foundation and to help fund research for a cure to Alzheimer's, go to patsummitt.org.
