Raise the Roof
by Pat Summitt
List Price:
Our Price: $8.83
You Save: $6.12 (41%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.26 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Pat SummittEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1999-10-05
ISBN: 0767903293
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Broadway
Book Reviews of Raise the Roof
Book Review: A great sports book to read!
Summary: 5 Stars
"When I said I wouldn't write another book (after Reach for the Summit), I didn't know about this team. I had no idea what a remarkable story the Lady Vols would prove to be, and how much they would accomplish. I didn't know what they would do to me. Usually, it's the coach who changes the team. But in this case, it was the team that changed the coach." (From Raise the Roof)
While this book is all about the Lady Vols 1997-98 season, when Tennessee faced the very real possibility of going for a "Three-peat" (winning 3 NCAA championships in back-to-back years, an incredible accomplishement), it's also a book about the people who made up that season, from the returning veterans (including the amazingly talented Chamique Holdsclaw, before she turned pro) to the "Fab Freshmen Four," and the coaching staff.
This is not a book about the technique or skills or drills that it takes to play basketball at the level of the Lady Vols or try to win another championship. Or necessarily an inside look at what exactly drives Coach Summitt or makes her one of the winning-est coaches in any sport at any level of play.
It is a book about the heart and emotions behind the play on the court. About long trips to play games. About how to make a team anew and creating a new family with them. About the significant games they played in that season and what it took to win them. About the pure fun of spending time together. About the families involved. About the losses these young women had already endured in their lives prior to coming to Tennessee, and how these losses might have motivated them in a particular way to become the type of athletes and students who they became. About a personal loss Coach Summitt experienced that year.
And it's about Coach Summitt, who in the face of her new players, realized that her own coaching style had to change and that she would have to engage differently with this team because of who they were.
The story is written in a a simple format for describing sports: Start with what we know: A truly magnificent season and recreate it. From the first moment when the incoming freshmen players arrive on campus and, after moving into their rooms, play their first game with the other players to feel each other out. Move into the first team meeting of the year. Begin building for the reader the sense that Coach Summitt had that this team had something special in them. Chronicle the small moments making up significant games played that year. Focus on each starting player, including brief interviews with them and their parents. End with the championship game.
By reading this book, you become a part of that history-making season and, in turn, learn much about the heart and emotion and soul of the people involved in that season.
Truly a great book to read!
Summary of Raise the Roof
"It wasn't a team. It was a tent revival."So says Pat Summitt, the legendary coach whose Tennessee Lady Vols entered the 1997-98 season aiming for an almost unprecedented "three-peat" of NCAA championships. Raise the Roof takes you right inside the locker room of her amazing team, whose inspired mixture of gifted freshmen and seasoned stars produced a standard of play that would change the game of women's basketball forever.
The 1997-98 season started innocently enough. One Saturday in August, four young freshmen--Semeka Randall, Tamika Catchings, Ace Clement and Teresa Geter--arrived on the Tennessee campus to begin their college careers. Welcoming them were a number of players from the previous year, including Chamique Holdsclaw and Kellie Jolly. But that night, in a sign of things to come, a simple pickup game turned into an amazing display of basketball brilliance--freshmen against established players, and with barely a shot missed by either side. Suddenly Pat Summitt glimpsed the future: fast, aggressive and hugely talented. This might be the team she'd worked her whole career to coach.
As the season got under way, other dramas unfolded. After one emotional team meeting, Summitt realized that many on the team were playing for something more than just the glory of the game: all four freshmen, for example, came from single-parent homes, and the tough circumstances of the majority of the other players seemed to add an extra edge to their desire to win it all. Further, Chamique Holdsclaw, widely regarded as the greatest female player ever, was being dogged by questions about turning pro--and she seemed reluctant to rule it out. Meanwhile, another member of the team began to notice the unwelcome attentions of a fan, who soon turned out to be a full-fledged stalker.
All this was behind the scenes; out on the court, the win column was swelling with every game: 8-0, 15-0, 21-0. As 1997 turned into 1998, Pat Summitt began privately to admit that this team had changed her: these kids were so lovable, funny and eager to please that she simply had to let them into her heart. Along the way, the Lady Vols were redefining what women were capable of, trading in old definitions of femininity for new ones--in short, they were keeping score. And by the time they entered the NCAA Final Four tournament in Kansas City, Summitt found herself believing the impossible: despite all the distractions, the 1997-98 Lady Vols could go undefeated, and, in doing so, raise the roof off the sport of women's basketball.
Packed with the excitement of a season on the brink of perfection and filled with the comedy and tragedy of one year in the life of a basketball team, Raise the Roof will have readers cheering from the bench for a team of all-conquering players and their astonishing coach.
From the Hardcover edition.
It seems fitting that the most successful college basketball coach since John Wooden is named Summit, because that's exactly where she's taken the women's program at the University of Tennessee. In Raise the Roof, she recounts the Lady Vols' astonishing 1997-98 campaign. The team went 39-0, won its third straight NCAA crown and sixth overall under her direction, and, most importantly to Summitt, "played as if they had no internal or physical boundaries." If the team's unprecedented success is the engine that runs Summitt's story, the fuel that powers it goes a good deal deeper than what happened on the court.
"With this team," she admits, "I was different." From two-time All-American forward Chamique Holdsclaw to the four freshmen from broken homes on whose talents the future rested, Summitt realized early that she had to approach them differently than she had any collection of Lady Vols before, and she did; she cared about them differently, yelled at them differently, and reveled with them differently, ultimately tapping into her own emotions in ways she never had before. She, and they, sought to set new standards for themselves, and for their sport. The record shows they did; Summitt details how and why. "Throughout the season," she writes, "I had the curious sensation of something rising." In the end, she rises to the occasion by identifying and preserving that "something." --Jeff Silverman
Basketball Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Basketball Books
VENABLES.by Terry & Neil Hanson. Venables
P/B; Published: 1995; Paperback; Book
Power Pattern Offenses for Winning Basketballby Jack Nagle
Parker; Published: 1986-03; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $7.99
Price in other shops:
Coaching Basketball's Zone Offensesby Delmer Harris
Prentice Hall; Published: 1976-03; Hardcover; Book
Price in other shops:
Great Basketball Drills: A Baffled Parent's Guideby Jim Garland
International Marine/Ragged Mountain Press; Published: 2001-10-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.33
Price in other shops:
Coaching Basketball: Ten Winning Conceptsby Maryalyce Jeremiah
John Wiley & Sons Inc; Published: 1979-02; Hardcover; Book
Price in other shops:
Jaap Stam: Head to Headby Jaap Stam
Harper Collins Pb; Published: 2002-03-18; Paperback; Book
Best price: $49.98
Jaap Stam: Head to Headby Jaap Stam, Jeremy Butler
Harpercollins Pub Ltd; Published: 2001-11; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $126.06
European Football Whos Who 2000/ 01 Hbby Gavin Hamilton
Willow; Published: 2000-09-04; Paperback; Book
Play Their Hearts Out: A Coach, His Star Recruit, and the Youth Basketball Machineby George Dohrmann
Ballantine Books; Published: 2010-10-05; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $13.09
Price in other shops:
The Last Season: A Team in Search of Its Soulby Phil Jackson, Michael Arkush
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2005-10-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.63
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
Leading with the Heart: Coach K's Successful Strategies for Basketball, Business, and Lifeby Mike Krzyzewski, Donald T. Phillips
Warner Business Books; Published: 2001-03-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.99
Price in other shops:
The Same River Twice: A Season with Geno Auriemma and the Connecticut Huskiesby John Walters
John Walters; Published: 2002-02-28; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.80
Price in other shops:
Seven: The National Championship Teams of the Tennessee Lady Volsby Alan Ross
Cumberland House Publishing; Published: 2007-11-14; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $6.48
Price in other shops:
Geno: In Pursuit of Perfectionby Geno Auriemma, Jackie MacMullan
Grand Central Publishing; Published: 2009-10-29; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.80
Price in other shops:
Sports Illustrated, NCAA Women's Basketball Champion, Tennessee Commemorative, 2008 Issueby Editors of Sports Illustrated Magazine
Sports Illustrated; The Time Inc. Magazine Company; Published: 2008-09-19; Single Issue Magazine; Book
Best price: $6.99
Won't Back Down: Teams, Dreams, and Familyby Kim Mulkey
Da Capo Press; Published: 2008-09-09; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops:
In These Girls, Hope is a Muscleby Madeleine Blais
Grand Central Publishing; Published: 1996-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.73
Price in other shops:
Why She Plays: The World of Women's Basketballby Christine A. Baker MA
Bison Books; Published: 2008-12-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.74
Price in other shops:
Won't Back Down: Teams, Dreams, and Familyby Kim Mulkey
Da Capo Press; Published: 2008-09-09; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.11
Price in other shops:
Reach for the Summitby Pat Summitt
Broadway; Published: 1999-03-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.99
Price in other shops: