I wrote about Lisa Soland, the writer and actor for PAT, a few days before the debut of the one-woman play about the iconic Pat Summitt in a story that can be read HERE. Then, I went to see the play.

Researching Summitt in terms of available books, videos, interviews, et al, is easy because of how well the Lady Vols basketball coach has been chronicled from the time she took over the program in 1974 to her retirement in 2012 due to early onset dementia. Summitt’s life, which ended just four years after retirement at the age of 64 in 2016, has been documented across every media platform.

However, it would take a skilled writer to distill that life into 105 minutes on stage. Soland checked that box. But playing the role of Pat in a city that claims her as its own? That takes the kind of guts and ability that Summitt would admire.

I walked into the Old City Performing Arts Center on Oct. 3 on opening night with an open mind and that familiar twinge of sadness. I started covering Summitt in 1998. I still write in 2025 about the program she established. Like anyone who came into her orbit, however briefly, I miss her. I stood outside the performing arts center and looked at the sandwich board sign rendering Soland in Pat’s image and felt that same glance of pain I get every time I walk into Thompson-Boling Arena. Summitt should be here.

PAT the play sandwich board (Maria M. Cornelius)

I had interviewed Soland and came away impressed. She was sharp, focused, committed – and like any honest artist, somewhat apprehensive. I read an assessment once that excellent writers always have doubts; it’s the overly confident ones that fall short whether they realize it or not. Soland respected the subject and embraced the process. She took it several notches higher with the courage to play Pat.

I settled on the back row in the intimate center, read the playbill and studied the set, which was simple in its design in a way that became perfect in how each piece carefully captured the main character. When covering Summitt, I followed the adage of if you’re on time, you’re late, so I watched people file in and take their seats for about 45 minutes. Soon, the venue had that buzz of multiple conversations, none of which could be clearly heard. Then the lights flickered, followed by silence.

Soland walked onto the stage – and became Pat. She must have studied videos for months with the intensity of Summitt breaking down game film. Soland talked like Pat, walked like Pat, moved her arms like Pat, stared like Pat, laughed like Pat, turned her head like Pat. She nailed Pat’s eyes, mannerisms and mouth. Soland’s Midwest accent was nowhere to be found. She channeled Pat’s Middle Tennessee dialect.

The play opens with Summitt in a doctor’s office getting her diagnosis. It weaves her story across six decades using that simple, yet profound, set. When she erases the words written on a whiteboard during the play, the symbolism hits deep in the soul. It was akin to watching Pat’s life begin to fade. Soland didn’t even need to say a word.

For someone like me, who had watched Summitt run hours of practices and interviewed her dozens of times, I was mesmerized. It was as if Pat appeared on stage. Anyone familiar with basketball and Summitt would enjoy the play, but Soland covered the trailblazer that Summitt became. The audience reacted with laughter, amazement and melancholy. A young woman seated near me gasped and clapped at Summitt’s well-documented accomplishments. She clearly was becoming aware of them in real time, and it was poignant to watch.

Lisa Soland as Pat reacts to the audience. (Lisa Soland photo)

The play also has drawn those who knew Summitt, including Joan Cronan, women’s athletics director emeritus at Tennessee. Cronan posted this on Facebook and it is shared here by permission:

I have a deep appreciation for the theatre. I also love the Lady Vols and what our program was able to accomplish. Never did I imagine these two passions would come together but playwright and actress Lisa Soland has brilliantly captured the essence of Pat Summitt in her play Pat. Not only does Ms. Soland physically resemble Summitt but her passion and intensity while in character are striking. The play goes beyond storytelling: It inspires and uplifts the human spirit.

Some of Summitt’s former players – a group known as 161 for the number of Lady Vols she coached – live in the East Tennessee area and have made their way to see the play. Karla Horton Douglas, who played on Summitt’s first national title team in 1987, posted on Facebook, and it also is shared with permission.

WOW!! Many tears, but ‘was it worth it?’ Absolutely!! Go see Pat!

That’s two people who knew Summitt well.

For those who knew her or knew of her in any capacity, the play is cathartic. Soland wrote an incisive script and then somehow delivered Summitt to the audience.

“Theater is about action, storytelling,” Soland said in an interview with Knox TN Today. “When I was a younger writer, I was more about self-expression, and these great ideas would come into my head, and I would write them and mount the plays and do them. But then I got older, and I started thinking more in terms of community. What would serve the community?”

Lisa Soland takes in Pat Summitt Plaza. (Lisa Soland photo)

The play has run for two weeks and will end soon on Oct. 26. Counting tonight, Oct. 16, seven shows remain. The final two on Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 25-26, are both afternoon ones at 2:30 p.m. Tickets, which are selling fast for several shows, are available HERE.

“When you do a one-person play, or any play, that sucker lives inside of you,” Soland said. “And as I got older, I realized that I could actually choose what lived inside of me. The impact that Pat Summitt has had on me, of course, now I’m playing the role, it works inside you even deeper.

“The impact of her lessons that came out of her strongly and organically, they do so in the play as well. Those live inside me. In some ways, they’ve gotten me back on track with my life, but they’ve also made me better.”

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 will be released in 2026.