Dawn (my sister) just left a message on my cell phone to tell me that the Tennessee women lost to Kentucky tonight, which is kind of startling news in light of the 20+ point trouncing they got at Duke on Sunday. Even more intriguing to me, though, is that Kentucky's coach, Mickie DeMoss, was also my coach at Tennessee--she was Pat's assistant for 18 years--and we all ADORED her.
Mickie masterminded so many small adjustments, many of which won us games, like deciding to play in front of rather than behind those gigantic twins from UVA. She was the one who wisely advised me to never let Pat see me cry unless it was because we just lost, and who would even stand in front of my face (out of protection) if I happened to be upset after a victory. Mickie was our out-of-state recruiter, which meant she went after the big guns, the Ms. Michigan Basketballs, or the Chamique Holdsclaws. She recruited almost every All-American at Tennessee.
Even though Mickie was a wisp of a woman, she was in charge of coaching Tennessee's post players, the big gals. I moved in between post and guard, which meant that on occasion I would get all 110 pounds of her plus a big blocking pad, the kind designed for football, pushing me from behind during offensive drills. She liked to eat big garlicky lunches in the arena cafeteria and would suck on halls cough drops to try to mask the odor. Sometimes I thought this was to make her seem more brutish.
She was, in other words, charming in ways that the head coach can't be. And so I'm curious about her as a head coach: is she still able to maintain levity with players, or does she have to be all business? Or is my notion of what a head coach can and can't be skewed by my small data set (one high school coach and Pat Summitt, both very serious, intense, and, well, sometimes just plain mean)?
I'm sure Pat and Mickie hugged after the game, but I wish I could have seen how they really responded to each other, these women who worked together for so many years, who developed a system together that only Mickie could devise a plan to defeat (okay, Mickie and the Duke women, and as my colleague Joe Valente insists with his exquisite trash talking, UConn women at the end of the day).
I just have a hard time picturing Mickie without the coughdrop or the blocking pad, but I think I'll probably have my chance come tournament time.
