Sports Illustrated wrote a feature story on Pat Summitt called “Eyes of the Storm”. This piece highlights a player named Michelle Marciniak who Pat came to visit and recruit while she was pregnant. This feature goes on to tell how Marciniak is on the team and how Summitt coaches them to win the 1994 NCAA tournament. This article emphasizes Pat’s regal and intense coaching habits. At the end of the article, it talks about Marciniak meeting a girl named Amanda and Marciniak took what she learned from Pat and taught it all to Amanda.
The author uses Pat Summitt’s background and Michelle Marciniak’s experiences to make this a strong piece. It leaves you wanting to know Summitt’s experience growing up in middle Tennessee and why Marciniak is so amazed by Summitt. I felt like I was reading a story instead of an article on two ladies basketball experience. Summitt took all of her hardships and experiences and projected it into her coaching. When she started coaching at twenty-two she knew the potential each player had to win. When someone was not doing well Summitt called them out.
I really loved the beginning of this feature because it starts by saying, “Here comes this lady into your life. You don’t know that she has been up all night peeing, racked with pain in her lower back. You don’t know how many people told her she was nuts to get on an airplane and fly to your hometown at a time like this. You don’t know that an hour ago when her water broke, she was crouched in an eight-seat King Air blotting her legs with paper towels.” Pat cared so much about her team that she went to talk to a girl that she wanted to recruit while she was in labor. Pat treats each of her players like family and pushes them to be their very best. I also love the end of the feature when Marciniak is talking about the girl named Amanda that she met. Marciniak took Amanda under her wings and trained with her and was her mentor. These personal stories reel you into the feature as a whole and make you realize that basketball was Pat’s life. To her, it was more than a game or a win.
Link to the article :Eyes of the Storm
StevieTurski 