Legendary Ladies: Middle Tennessee's Elite Eight

Betty Wiseman. Pat Summitt. Teresa Phillips. Alline Banks Sprouse. Lin Dunn. Carolyn Peck. Marynell Meadors. Nera White.

These eight women — who all have ties to Middle Tennessee — helped put women's college basketball on the map in the United States. The sport ballooned in popularity and prestige thanks in part to a slew of world championships and landmark moments that these women helped author through bold initiative and unmatched dedication.

These ladies are legendary. And as the NCAA Women's Final Four kicks off in Nashville this weekend, there's no better time to celebrate their achievements, their contributions, and their legacies.

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Betty Wiseman established her career goals while she was still a student at Portland High School.

She wanted to teach and coach, which today seems not only simple, but attainable.
In the 1960s, however, when Wiseman graduated from Belmont College, it was neither simple or, for the most part, attainable.

The teaching part was no problem. Wiseman landed a job as a health and physical education professor at Belmont in 1966, the year after she graduated.

The problem, however, was with coaching because there was nothing to coach. Belmont did not have a women's basketball team at the time.

"In my first year of teaching at Belmont and in the four years I was there in school I played intramurals and there were all these girls who could play," Wiseman said. "And I kept thinking, 'If we just had a team.'"

Wiseman finally got up the nerve to suggest that the administration give women the same opportunity men had on the basketball court and two years later turned her dream of coaching into reality.

She founded the women's basketball team at Belmont, which became one of the first women's teams not only in the state, but throughout the southeast.

"Girls high school basketball in the state of Tennessee was big and it was important," said Georgia women's basketball coach Andy Landers, who grew up in Maryville. "Betty tasted something before anybody else did. And so she created a college basketball program for women at Belmont when it didn't exist anywhere - not at Vanderbilt, not at Tennessee, not at Georgia. People probably thought Betty was crazy."

Wiseman's summer basketball camps at Belmont became popular and served as inspiration for young players to follow in her footsteps. One of those was Pat Head Summitt, a young basketball star at Cheatham County at the time.

Wiseman quickly built Belmont into a women's college basketball power. The Lady Rebels (now Bruins) earned four consecutive berths in the National Women's Invitational Tournament, from 1973-1977.

Belmont beat North Carolina, Alabama, Nebraska, Tennessee and Vanderbilt.

Wiseman established a record of 248-152 in her 16-year coaching career. By 1981, when she was only 37-years-old, she was inducted into the Belmont Athletics Hall of Fame. In 2004 she became the first Belmont coach or athlete inducted into the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame based on her contributions to promoting women's basketball in the state.

After stepping down as a coach, Wiseman stuck to the mission of advancing women's athletics by moving into administration. She served as assistant athletics director until she retired last May.

"I feel blessed to have been a part of those early years," Wiseman said. "People want to call me a pioneer or a legend; all that does is just date me. And that's okay. I still am very proud of the fact that I was in on those formative years and I have great pride in where we have come from in women's sports and in particular women's basketball."

Because of her early-onset dementia Pat Summitt admitted in her book released last year there are times when she is unable to remember the many milestones and accomplishments of her career.

Her multitude of fans will never forget.

The Clarksville native who grew up in Henrietta and played basketball at Cheatham County High, won 1,098 games, 32 SEC championships and eight national championships in her 38 years as Tennessee's women's basketball coach.

Those are the highlights. The feats that roll off the tongues of diehard Lady Vols fans.

There are no categories or lists, however, which illustrate the positive impact Summitt, 61, had on the young women who played for her or the inspiration she provided for the countless little girls who attended her summer basketball camps or watched UT play.

Then there was the enormous competition she placed on her counterparts, unmeasurable pressure that forced them to elevate their game and in the process improve women's college basketball across the board.

Her legacy will not only be the seven times she was named NCAA Coach of the Year or the six halls of fame in which she has been inducted. But also her high personal standards like the bold and conscientious stand she took against girls high school

players having to play the six-on-six style after most states had moved away from it.

Three players played offense and three on defense because it was deemed it was too strenuous for any to actually run the full length of the floor.

Summitt thought that was foolish and didn't hesitate to let the Tennessee Secondary Schools Athletic Association know it.

In just her second year as the coach at UT (1976), she testified in a lawsuit that challenged the six-on-six rule in court. Gil Gideon, executive director of the TSSAA at the time, testified that girls could better develop their skills if they didn't have to endure the "strain" it takes to run the full court.

While not issuing an injunction, the judge did direct the TSSAA to change to five-on-five for girls.

The TSSAA appealed and Summitt, not being one to back down from a challenge, became even more adamant with her stance. She let it be known that she would not sign another in-state high school player as long as the TSSAA continued playing six-on-six.

Two years later the TSSAA buckled and voted to approve the five-on-five style.

"Even then, Pat was a force," former Knoxville Journal sports writer Randy Moore wrote. "Single-handedly banishing six-girl basketball from Tennessee high schools is just one example of Pat's devotion to elevating her sport."

Summitt's career winning percentage was .844, but she always deflected the credit to her players.

"I remind people that I've never scored a basket for the University of Tennessee," she told the New York Times as she approached her 1,000th victory.

The recognition Summitt has received through the years spanned beyond basketball.
In 1997 she was honored by Working Mother magazine at the White House and named one of "25 Most Influential Working Mothers."

In 2007 U.S. News & World Report named her one of "Americas Best Leaders," and in 2012 she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

A mind-boggling 74 former Lady Vols players, assistants and graduate assistants followed in her footsteps and became coaches. Seventeen are currently college head coaches.

While some bemoan the time it took for women's basketball to catch up to men in terms of equality, Teresa Phillips has no complaints.

Phillips played a big role in the evolution of the women's game in the Midstate not only as a player and coach, but also as an administrator.

And considering how far it had to go in order to reach the men's level she's been quite pleased.

"I think it was rather quick, actually," Phillips said. "You couldn't just shoot ahead at warp speed because individuals weren't prepared for that and there wasn't the infrastructure to handle that. But once some of the major schools decided to buy into women's basketball they did it at the reasonable, quick pace at which it needed to be done."

Phillips fondly and vividly recalls those early years playing at Vanderbilt because they weren't that long ago. She was a member of the Commodores first three teams (1977-80). In fact, Phillips played on a club team at Vanderbilt her freshman year (1976-77) before the school recognized basketball as a varsity sport.

She remembers the days when teams made do on shoestring budgets, traveled in borrowed vans to play away games, and had only a handful of fans show up.

"It's so fun now to think back on it and those were some great days," she said. "Riding in the van doesn't sound very exciting, but to see how far you've come from doing that or having to drive your individual cars to knowing that today they fly anywhere they want. They do pretty much anything they want. Their locker room and everything else for the most part is equitable to the men and that is satisfying."

Phillips made national news when she became the first woman to coach in a men's Division I college game in 2003.

Phillips didn't take her seat on the men's bench at TSU to make history. She simply felt she was left with no other option.

She had fired Tigers coach Nolan Richardson III earlier in the season and then suspended interim coach Hosea Lewis.

She had 19 years coaching experience at the time, had coached the TSU women three years earlier, and felt that her only option was to coach the team herself in its next game against Austin Peay. The eyes of the nation watched as the Tigers lost their 17th consecutive game falling to the Governors 71-56.

While Phillips was praised for taking such a bold move, it was a step she regrets having had to make.

"That would probably still go down as my lowest time in my career at Tennessee State," Phillips said. "That was a decision that I didn't think very much of; I didn't think a big deal would be made of it and all of a sudden it was a big deal. It was not intended to make history."

Sports Illustrated made sure Phillips made history by naming her one of its "101 Most Influential Minorities in Sports" that year.

The Tennessean named her the "Second Most Influential Woman in Sports" in the state.

Phillips may be 0-1 in her career coaching men's basketball, but she was very successful coaching women.

After serving as an assistant at Vanderbilt (1981-1984) she became the coach at Fisk where she was named the WIAC Coach of the Year in 1987 and 1988. Her career record at Fisk was 68-34, which helped her to move on to TSU in 1989.

By 1990 she was named National Coach of the Year by USA TODAY.

Phillips went on to be named the OVC Coach of the Year three times including the 1993-94 season when the Lady Tigers claimed the league's regular season and conference titles and sent them to the NCAA Tournament for the first time.

She guided TSU back to the NCAA Tournament the following year when the Lady Tigers posted a 22-7 overall record.

Phillips was named interim athletics director while she was still coaching. She stepped down as coach after the 2000 season to take over the athletics director position on a full-time basis.

Her career coaching record at TSU was 212-189, which is not bad considering she graduated from Vanderbilt with an economics degree and went to work as an insurance broker.

She never, however, lost her love for basketball.

"I just couldn't get it out of my crawl, enjoying sports," Phillips said. "I wasn't making much money coaching in those early years and my father thought I was absolutely crazy. But with mother, the one thing that she really urged all of her children to do was to follow your heart. Follow what it is that you love and desire to do. I guess she was too crazy to realize I had all those bills to pay."

Alline Banks Sprouse went from worrying she wasn't talented enough to make her high school basketball team to becoming one of the greatest women's players of all-time.

She was in high school in the 1930s when girls not only had very limited opportunities to play, but were restricted on the floor.

Manchester High, the school nearest to Sprouse's home, didn't have a girls team so she stayed with family members in Murfreesboro and attended old Buchanan High, which had a girls team.

Girls in the state at the time were regulated to a style in which the court was split into three divisions - two defensive players on one end, a center in the middle, and two forwards on the other end, who could shoot the ball.

Sprouse, who was tall for her age, had played forward in grammar school, but was put at center, a lower profile position, in high school since the coaches at Bunchanan were unfamiliar with her skills.

"I didn't think I had much of a chance to make the team," Sprouse said in a video interview in 1972. "I was running center and two other girls were playing forward. I didn't tell the high school coach that I could play forward, even though I had played it in grammar school."

After one of the forwards got sick and could not play the coach was forced to move Sprouse to her position.
"I scored 42 points in that game," Sprouse said. "From then on I was a forward."

Sprouse went on to be a four-year starter. She averaged a mind-boggling 36 points per game her senior year and by the time she graduated was considered one of the greatest high school players to ever play in Tennessee.

Since she didn't have the opportunity to play basketball on the college level Sprouse enrolled in the Nashville Business College when she was just 16-years-old so that she could play for the tema the school sponsored.

Her youth did not hold Sprouse back on the court. In her first season she was named All-America honorable mention.

The following season began a string of 12 consecutive years of Sprouse being named All-America.

She became known not only for her heroics on the court, but her vibrant red hair and helped lead Nashville Business College to seven national championships.

Sprouse had grown up playing with her older brothers and their male friends on a dirt court using rims with no nets.

That, along with working on her family's farm, developed a toughness in Sprouse that was exemplified when she injured her right shoulder prior to the AAU title game in New York.

Since Sprouse was a right-handed shooter and wouldn't be able to use her right hand the coaches told her she couldn't play.

"I just told them I was going to play anyway and I did," she said.

Not only did Sprouse play, she poured in 56 points using her left hand and led NBC to a win.

"I have a pretty good opinion of myself and always thought that I could probably hang with Alline in some capacity until I heard that story," said Alan Banks, Sprouse's cousin who played basketball at Goodpasture High and Lipscomb University and is in the Lipscomb Hall of Fame. "They taped her dominant arm to her body and she played left-handed and scored over 50 points. That really effects your ego because I couldn't do that. That tells you what kind of player she really was."

Along with NBC Sprouse led Vultee Aircraft out of Nashville to the AAU national championship in 1944 and 1945, the Nashville Goldblumes in 1946 and the Atlanta Sports Arena Blues in 1947.

She was named MVP of the AAU Tournament nine times and is in the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame, Helm's Basketball Hall of Fame and Georgia Sports Hall of Fame.

After retiring as a player Sprouse also enjoyed success as a coach. She led Sinclair Refining Company to the AAU Class B championship.

"I think about (my playing days) a lot," Sprouse said. "Bank then it was my life; it was everything."

Purdue's women's basketball team went from having 200 people in the stands for the first game Lin Dunn coached there in 1987 to having more than 9,000 for her final game nine years later.

The exploding fan base is indicative of the type of building Dunn became known for at several stops during her coaching career.

"I guess I'm considered a builder; I like to build something from nothing," Dunn said.

That's exactly what the Dresden native has done, from the colleges to the pros.

She is credited with building from scratch Austin Peay's women's basketball team in 1971 and the WNBA expansion team Seattle Storm in 2000.

The UT Martin graduate also helped take the teams at Ole Miss (1977-1978) and Miami (1978-1987) to new levels.

"I like to do what hasn't been done before," Dunn said. "I built Austin Peay and the University of Miami and actually built a little bit of Ole Miss when I was there. And even at Purdue, really getting that program going. Starting the Seattle Storm with no team, no name, no logo, no nothing and then turning it into a championship team."

Dunn led the Storm to the WNBA title in 2004. In 2012 she led the Indiana Fever to the WNBA championship.

Her knack for trailblazing has led to Dunn being a part of the 2014 Women's Basketball Hall of Fame induction class. She will go into the Hall in June.

Dunn says there is less pressure in building programs that have little or no tradition. On the other hand, when you've been at it for more than 40 years as she has, there are expectations that she will do for one team what she has done for others in the past.

Dunn's most successful building may have taken place at Purdue, where she developed a relatively obscure program into a powerhouse in the time she was there."You're trying to prove that once again you can take something that nobody really believes in and turn it into something really special," she said.

The program was started 12 years before she arrived, but had only experienced three winning seasons and had only a small following.

Dunn led the Boilermakers to winning records every year she was there and the NCAA Tournament seven times, which included a Final Four and an Elite Eight finish.

In 1981 Dunn became only the second woman inducted into the Austin Peay Athletics Hall of Fame. She was inducted into the Women's Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 1985.

While she is honored to have received such accolades, Dunn is most proud of the progress she has seen take place in girls and women's basketball during the time in which she has been involved.

"I have lived that journey where girl's and women's sports in high school and college were ridiculous," Dunn said. "No opportunities, no coaching and in some instances no teams. So I'm thrilled to see the path we've gone down and the opportunities we now have."

Last fall Carolyn Peck returned to Vanderbilt's Memorial Gym where she reminisced about some of the happiest days of her life and looked forward to what promises to be an even brighter future.

While standing at mid-court inside the historical building Peck's boyfriend James O'Brien proposed marriage. He had been waiting for the better part of the year for the right time and place to pop the question and had a gut feeling that some Memorial magic might help him seal the deal.

He was right. Peck accepted O'Brien's proposal standing on the very court where she had been a part of some of Vanderbilt's most significant basketball teams. The wedding will be in May.

O'Brien had accompanied Peck to Vanderbilt where she was inducted into the school's athletics hall of fame in September.

She was a freshman on the 1984-85 team, which beat national power Tennessee (84-77) for the first time, and a junior on the team that beat the Lady Vols (77-76) in 1988-87. Both wins came at Memorial Gym.

In her sophomore season (1985-86) the 6-foot-4 center helped lead the Commodores to their first berth in the NCAA Tournament.

During the time she was at Vanderbilt the Jefferson City native helped the Commodores step up to the elite level of college basketball. And it probably never would have happened had she not turned an offer to play at Tennessee.

"My parents used to take me to Stokely Gymnasium and watch the Lady Vols play," Peck said. "If we didn't go to the game or watch it on TV we would listen on the radio. I was a big Tennessee fan, but when I got to high school Phil Lee was the coach at Vanderbilt and he really started recruiting me from when I was a freshman and I was extremely flattered."

But it wasn't basketball that ultimately swayed Peck's decision.

During her junior year in high school she attended a pre-engineering program at Vanderbilt and it was then when she chose to sign with the Commodores.

"My parents were real sticklers on academics and Vanderbilt has always had a wonderful academic reputation," Peck said. "And Phil Lee sold me on the fact that once you get a degree from Vanderbilt it's a lot easier to get a job."

Peck landed a job right after she graduated in 1988 with a degree in communications working for WSMV-4 television.

She later went into sales with a pharmaceutical company, but never lost her love for basketball.

She had turned down the opportunity to play professionally and started to rethink that decision.

"I missed the game and wanted to play," she said. "So I went overseas and played in Italy and Japan."

When she returned to the U.S., Peck wanted to stay involved in basketball and, as fate would have it, ran into former UT assistant Mickie DeMoss, who had moved on to become the coach at Kentucky.

"She mentioned that Pat (Summitt) might have an opening on her staff at Tennessee," Peck said. "I was like, 'I don't know if Pat will consider me because I turned her down to play ball.' "

Despite her reservations Peck contacted UT coach Pat Summitt, who hired her as the Lady Vols restricted earnings coach. A few coaching moves later, she was the head coach at Purdue which she led to the national championship.

Peck had already accepted the head coach and general manager's positions of the WNBA expansion team Orlando when she headed into her final season at Purdue in 1998-99.

"I asked the team to stay completely focused," Peck said. "I wouldn't think about the WNBA, I wouldn't expose them to that, and I think that focus is what was the key to us winning the national championship."

Marynell Meadors was presented with an ambitious goal early in life.

A local junior high boys basketball coach not only encouraged her to follow in his footsteps, but also create more opportunities for girls.

"I was in the seventh grade when I decided I wanted to coach basketball," said Meadors, who grew up in the Hillsboro area. "There were no teams and I knew that I had a long, hard battle in front of me. William Smith, who was the boys coach at Waverly-Belmont Junior High (near 12th Avenue South), inspired me to move on and try to start teams for the girls."

Meadors accepted the mission and after she graduated from Hillsboro High and enrolled at MTSU.

She actually started coaching women's basketball when she was still a student at MTSU in 1963, before it was a varsity sport, and went on to create a women's varsity team at Tennessee Tech, which she quickly built into a national power.

"I don't know where it came from, I just had that burning desire to make something happen for the women," Meadors said. "I didn't have the opportunity myself to play that much in college. If little girls had an aspiration to play basketball then I wanted to make sure that they had the opportunity to do that."

Meadors first annual budget at Tennessee Tech in 1970 was a whopping $100.

"High school basketball in the state of Tennessee was really huge and I thought if there's any state in the country that would accept the women's game it would be Tennessee," Meadors said. "We started out with crowds where the player's parents were the only ones there cheering us on. The next thing you know there's 200 or 300 people there and then you get the students involved and it just grew and grew and grew."

When the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women started a national tournament in 1972, Tennessee Tech made the 16-team field five of the first six years. The Golden Eagles advanced to the quarterfinals in 1975.

"Women's basketball at Tennessee Tech, in the eyes of others, went from , 'This is a thing that we might have to deal with, a thing that we have to tolerate,' to 'This is something we can be proud of,'" said Georgia women's coach Andy Landers, who graduated from Tennessee Tech in 1974. "It went from that club level to the top 20. It became something in the early 70s that the school and the community was extremely proud of. They drew, they had great crowds; it was a wonderful thing to observe."

Marynell laid such a solid foundation at Tech that even after she left the program continued to thrive. Her former assistant Bill Worrell won 12 OVC regular season championships and 13 tournament titles from 1986-2006.

"My first theme was playing off of Marynell - 'The Tradition Continues,'" Worrell said. "I wanted to be the person to take care of the program she started. It was her baby, I just wanted to rock it some more."

Worrell said there is no way to overstate the impact Meadors had on women's college basketball.

"She is a legend, she is a historical figure," he said. "People still respect her today for what she did with the Tennessee Tech program."

Meadors became the first women's major college coach to win 350 games. She left Tech with a 363-138 record.

Meadors moved on to Florida State in 1986 and in 1997 became the coach and general manager of the WNBA's Charlotte Sting. In 2007 she became coach and general manager of the Atlanta Dream.

"I really think having the WNBA has inspired a lot of young kids," Meadors said. "And of course there are your high school and college athletes who are now able to pursue the game to the best of their ability."

Nera White lives a quite, simple life today still working on the farm her family has had in Macon County for many years.

She travels almost daily into the town of Lafayette on a highway that bears her name to buy supplies.

She is recognized by nearly everyone in the tiny community, which seems odd considering she keeps such a low profile.

Her name also resonates with longtime fans of women's basketball because of the impact she made on the game in its infancy.

Before there were hardly any opportunities for women on the college level White was traveling across the world playing basketball.

She attended Peabody College, which is now a part of Vanderbilt and didn't have a women's basketball team so she played on an Amateur Athletes Union team sponsored by Nashville Business College.

Not only could the slender 6-foot-1 athlete dunk the basketball (coach John Head would not allow it during games), but she could also nail a long jumper. She would have been even more lethal in today's game with the 3-pointer.

She was listed as a forward, but her dribbling and passing skills were as good as any guard she ever faced.

White also played on the U.S. Women's National Team, which toured Russia, Germany, France, Brazil, Venezuela and Great Britain.

White, 78, was then and still is extraordinarily shy. She turned down requests to be interviewed for this story.

As a 15-time AAU All-American she led Nashville Business College to 10 national championships from 1955-1969 including eight consecutively.

In 1957-58 White led the U.S. National Team to a gold medal and the World Basketball Championship in Rio de Janeiro. She was named the Most Valuable Player.

Sally Smith, from Waverly, became the first black player for Nashville Business College (1968-69) and went on to coach at several colleges including Tennessee State.

As an assistant at Kansas State, Smith recruited players such as Sheryl Swoopes and Cheryl Miller.

In his book "Just for Fun: The Story of AAU Women's Basketball", Robert Ikard wrote that Miller's father once asked Smith if Cheryl was not the best player she had ever seen. Smith, without hesitation, said White was "unequivocally" the best of all-time.

Ikard stated in his book that White should be recognized as one of the world's greatest all-around female athletes included with elites such as Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Marion Jones and Jackie Joyner-Kersee.

White retired from competition in 1969 and that same year was inducted into the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame.In 1992 she became the first woman inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame and in 1999 was inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame.

In 2000 Sports Illustrated ranked White seventh on its list of the 50 greatest sports figures in Tennessee.The gym at Macon County High, where she attended (1950-54), is named in her honor. The Nera White Christmas Tournament is played there annually.

Legendary Ladies:Middle Tennessee's all-time top female athletes

Legendary Ladies:Nashville Business College paved the way for today's NCAA stars

Elite Eight stories by Mike Organ |@mikeorganwriter

Video production and digital design by Eric Stromgren | @estromgren