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How Pat Summitt forged a bond with girls in Iraq

Women's College Basketball

To this day, University of Tennessee coach Pat Summitt remains the winningest coach in the history of NCAA basketball, both men's and women's, though her impact reaches far beyond her record.

"For us, she was so real, so approachable, so authentic, so generous," University of Tennessee professor Dr. Ashleigh Huffman said.

Summitt's generosity is something Huffman and colleague Dr. Sarah Hillyer know well.

Back in 2007, while Huffman and Hillyer were studying for their doctorates at Tennessee, the two former college basketball players worked the Lady Vols basketball camp. They also had a big idea: to hold their own girls' basketball camp in Iraq.

"When Sadaam [Hussein] was gone, the most obvious place [for girls] to express their freedom was playing sports," Hillyer explained. "They had found their freedom and, with that freedom, girls hit the basketball courts."

Hillyer's goal was to give each Iraqi girl attending the camp her own basketball, but there was a bit of a problem. She didn't have enough money to buy the basketballs and, in Iraq, sports equipment was in short supply.

"They only have four basketballs and they don't have air," Huffman said. "How do you have a basketball camp with no basketballs?"

The answer came by way of a legendary basketball coach.

"It just dawned on us, like, who better to ask to send basketballs to empower a generation than Pat Summitt," Hillyer said.

Without hesitation, Summitt told the two doctorate students to raid the Lady Vols' equipment closet and take whatever they could carry out. That included upwards of 60 basketballs with Tennessee orange on them, uniforms and coaching DVDs.

"We paid a lot in extra baggage fees, but it was worth every single penny to see the joy on the girls' faces to get a ball," Hillyer said. "To hand it to the girl, you felt like you were handing off hope; you felt like you were handing off empowerment."

"[Pat] didn't do any of this in Iraq for credit," Huffman said. "That's just who she is. It's about giving. It was about all that basketball could represent in the lives of these young Iraqi girls."

Current Lady Vols head coach Holly Warlick, a former player and assistant coach of Summitt's, wasn't surprised in the least by the donation.

"They were in need," Warlick said. "I think Pat looked beyond what just the game does. You talk about this caring individual who truly wanted what was best for women and she wanted to make sure it happened."

A bond subsequently formed between the best women's basketball coach in the world and a group of young basketball players a world away.

In 2009, Summitt helped bring a team of Iraqi girls to her summer camp in Knoxville.

"We worried about how people would react," Warlick recalled. "So we introduced the group and had them stand up in front of our camp. Everybody gave them a standing ovation. It was unbelievable."

Up until that point, most of the girls simply knew Summitt as "Miss Pat," the nice woman who sent them basketballs and loved the color orange. That changed once they met the coach in person.

"It's like she touches you, and this touch changed your life," said Rizgar Raoff, who helped start the girls basketball camp in Iraq and accompanied the girls to Knoxville. "I still remember when she put her hands on my shoulder and she said, 'You, coach, better continue what you started. You are doing a great job.'"

Girls' basketball in Iraq continues to grow today. Raoof's basketball program has 60 girls, and he is committed to grow that number in honor of Summitt.

"He has channeled his inner Pat Summitt," Hillyer joked. "He wants more than anything to be the male Pat Summitt, to empower young girls in his community."

"She's my coach," Raoof added.

And when Summitt stepped away from the sideline when she was diagnosed with early-onset dementia, Raoof and his players honored their beloved coach by holding a "We Back Pat" tournament in Iraq.

"It was a duty. It was something that we had to do," Raoof said. "We wanted to pay her back [for] what she did for us."

Summitt's legacy not only includes the eight national championship banners that hang in the rafters above a court named after her, it's also carried on in the young Iraqi girls who received a special gift from her.

Said Huffman: "If you go in a gym in the north of Iraq or in central Iraq to Baghdad or the south in Basra, and you see girls playing basketball, you will see a Lady Vols basketball in their hands."

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