The University of Tennessee Press released the 10th anniversary paperback edition of my book, “The Final Season: The Perseverance of Pat Summitt” in June 2026. Pat Summitt passed away June 28, 2016, and the book, which was a few weeks from going to print when she passed, was published three months later. The 2016 book was updated to reflect her passing – including putting portions in past tense – but it was far too soon to ask those mourning her death to speak about it in detail during their overwhelming grief.
This anniversary edition became a way to honor her memory, help maintain her legacy and reflect after 10 years how much Summitt meant to everyone who crossed the path.
The intent was to intersperse the original book with anecdotes and updates, but one interview led to another and nearly 30 conversations later, a second book, “The Legacy of Pat Summitt” emerged, which will be released in hardback Nov. 17, 2026.
The 10th anniversary edition includes two new chapters, “The Goodbye,” which tells stories from those closest to Summitt about how they told her goodbye in her final days, and “The Funeral,” which outlines the final tribute and includes stories from the people, including her son, Tyler Summitt, who attended the service at the family’s church in Clarksville, Tennessee. She is buried in the nearby cemetery at Mount Carmel United Methodist Church.
The book also has a new forward by Lady Vols legend Candace Parker, a reprint of the coverage of Summitt’s celebration of life in Knoxville in July 2016 that previously had only been published online and a new afterword in tribute to my mother, Rosalie Cornelius, who died April 24, 2024, from Alzheimer’s disease. A portion of “The Goodbye” chapter is excerpted below with the permission of UT Press.
While Pat Summitt couldn’t remember much of anything about her past, she was still relatively active in the spring of 2016. She had moved into a retirement community called Sherrill Hills and participated in activities with the other residents. But her health began to decline noticeably in May and rapidly in June.
That led to a network, including Holly Warlick, Nikki Fargas, Mickie DeMoss and Debby Jennings, calling former players and telling them if they wanted to tell Pat goodbye, they needed to come now.
“They’ll say normally Alzheimer’s is ten to twenty years, and then it was early onset, maybe one to five years,” Tyler Summitt said. “And then early 2016, they said maybe one to three years. That’s the first time where it was like, hey, this is progressing quickly. And then March, they said, maybe six to eighteen months, and I’m thinking that’s fast.
“And then all of a sudden, we’ve got weeks to months, and now we’ve got days to weeks. Week to week, they were cutting off months of her life, and I’m thinking what has happened. Finally, I was told that we had days. I had a lot of people around me, friends, people like Joan (Cronan), and they told me we need to allow people to say bye. People have no idea how this has progressed. They probably just saw her playing golf six months ago or something, and now she has days.”
Kyra Elzy was at home in Lexington rocking her baby when the call came from DeMoss.
“She was crying, and of course, I start crying. She said, ‘Do you want to try to make it?’”
Elzy hung up the phone and tried to gather herself. Her mother told her to go, and she would take care of the baby. Elzy was an assistant coach at Kentucky and called Niya Butts, who was also a coach for the Wildcats. “I’m crying, but let’s just roll,” Elzy told Butts. “Let’s chance it and see if we can make it.”
Semeka Randall, who was an assistant coach at Wright State, called shortly thereafter and was about to leave Ohio. She offered to wait on her former teammate, but Semeka said she would catch up, so Elzy and Butts arrived in Knoxville at about midnight.
Mary Margaret Carter, a sorority sister with Pat at UT-Martin and a lifelong friend, greeted them outside. Summitt had a two-room apartment with a sitting room connected to her bedroom.
“I instantly started crying. Kara Lawson was already sitting in the chair. She’s crying, and (former Tennessee soccer coach) Ange Kelly was there. Butts and I went back together. Coach was stunning, glowing, gorgeous, and she was laid back and kind of propped up on the pillow. She wasn’t talking. She wasn’t responsive. But you know she could hear so Butts talked to her.
I grabbed her hand. I was thanking her and telling her how much I loved her and how much you changed our lives.
“By this time, we were exhausted. Everybody was there, and Semeka walks in and she’s crying.”
Before Randall left Dayton, she reached Katrina Merriweather, who was then the head coach at Wright State, and told her, “I don’t know if Pat’s going to make it.” Merriweather granted immediate approval to leave. Randall packed her truck, took her beagle, Shadow, “and we literally drove through the night. We get there at one, two o’clock in the morning. Kyra and Niya were already in there.”
Randall’s father and stepfather had died – and both were in pain as they approached the end – so she had made deathbed goodbyes before. “We all know we have an expiration date. I always say that, and I’ve seen it quite a bit. She was there peacefully, and I’m glad. When I walked in that room, she was laying there as if life was going to be OK, and she wasn’t hurting. She was at peace.”
Elzy: “We ended up staying all night because former Lady Vols were just flowing through. We were talking or reminiscing of good times.”
A nurse approached the players at three or four in the morning and told them, “Do you know how tough y’all’s coach is? Because usually when they have that death gurgle, they usually don’t last long. People have been telling her that your players are coming to see you, and she is fighting to make sure that she gets to see and hear you all.”
“You have to love how tough and stubborn she was that even in a dying moment she wanted to wait for us, so everybody could tell her goodbye,” Elzy said. “She was still fighting for us.”
The full chapter shares additional accounts from players, coaches and staff who were there in the final days and stories about how Summitt interacted with the residents, along with a not-to-be-missed story from DeMoss about her beloved and cantankerous cat, Kitty Kit, and how it brought some levity to a heartbreaking moment.
Summitt, who won 1,098 games and eight national championships, helped establish the Lady Vols as the top women’s athletics program in the country. She was diagnosed with early onset dementia in 2011 a few months before the 2011-12 season started, coached one more year and died on June 28, 2016, at the age of 64.
The 10th anniversary edition can be ordered HERE from UT Press and includes links to other booksellers. (If you use Amazon, be sure to select the 2026 edition as the listing doesn’t update the cover despite repeated requests to do so.)
The legacy book can be preordered HERE, which also has additional links. If not in stock at a local bookstore, it can be ordered for delivery to the store.
“While we know Maria as our senior editor and writer who has been at our company for nearly 13 years, we also know her history of covering Lady Vols basketball and have always been supportive of her endeavors,” MoxCar Marketing + Communications CEO and partner Lauren Miller said in a release HERE. “Pat Summitt was not only the greatest women’s basketball coach; she also was a champion for women. We are grateful to have Maria as part of our team and happy to promote her latest work as an author.”
Maria M. Cornelius, a senior writer/editor at MoxCar Marketing + Communications since 2013, started her journalism career at the Knoxville News Sentinel and began writing about the Lady Vols in 1998. In 2016, she published her first book, “The Final Season: The Perseverance of Pat Summitt,” through The University of Tennessee Press and a 10th anniversary edition was released June 16, 2026. A third book, “The Legacy of Pat Summitt” will be released Nov. 17, 2026.
