Sarah and David Patterson
5/10/2002 12:00:00 AM | Gymnastics
|
|
Coaches NCAA Champions SEC Champions |
“Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all the time thing. You don't win once in a while; you don't do things right once in a while; you do them right all the time. Winning is a habit.” -Vince Lombardi
If anyone has mastered the habit of winning that Lombardi was talking about all those years ago, it’s Sarah and David Patterson. During their 30-year career coaching the Alabama gymnastics program, they have created a legacy of success in the gym and the classroom that is unequaled in collegiate athletics. And most importantly, they have instilled in their athletes the tools for success in life after graduation.
Under their direction, Alabama gymnastics has gone to 25 consecutive NCAA Championships, winning four and finishing in the top six 23 times. The Tide has also finished in the ??final four’ an NCAA-best 21 times.
Individually, Alabama gymnasts have earned 223 All-American honors and 21 NCAA Championships. Six times a Patterson-coached athlete has earned the Honda Award, given annually to the nation’s top gymnast.
Patterson-coached athletes have earned 18 NCAA and Southeastern Conference postgraduate scholarships another figure that is best in the nation as well as 115 Scholastic All-American and 171 Academic All-SEC honors.
And while those numbers just scratch the surface of the Pattersons’ accomplishments, it does outline a pattern success that is extraordinary even among the nation’s elite collegiate programs.
But the success that Sarah and David Patterson are most proud of is that enjoyed by their charges after they leave Alabama. After spending their collegiate careers at the Capstone, Tide gymnasts invariably go on to lead lives of distinction, both professionally and personally.
“Winning championships never grows old,” Sarah Patterson said. “And I have thoroughly enjoyed watching our ladies take home conference and national awards and championships, but there is nothing like the sense of satisfaction I get watching our ladies go out into the world and use what they learned at Alabama, both in the classroom and in the gym, to make themselves successful. It is simply the best feeling in the world.”
Alabama’s all-time roster is filled with highly successful doctors and lawyers, mothers and executives, teachers and engineers and they all share the common thread that they learned at Alabama, the habit of winning. And that fact is probably the greatest single measure of Sarah and David Patterson’s more than a quarter century of success at Alabama.
One of the reasons that the Pattersons have been so successful over the years is that the tenants of excellence upon which they have built the Alabama program have been a constant from day one.
“David and I are basically doing the same thing we did 25 years ago,” Sarah explains “Our philosophy of developing not just the athlete but the whole person has not changed. It's still recruiting. It's still coaching. It's still promoting. The framework of our job has not really changed, but the details, and the number of those details certainly has. We've come a very long way in that regard.”
Coming a Long Way
While Sarah and David have come a long way in terms of their job, they have also taken Alabama gymnastics a long way from very humble beginnings. The Tide hadn't enjoyed a winning season or even the same coach in its four years prior to Sarah taking the helm as head coach. In fact, Sarah had been hired as an assistant coach for the program's fifth year, but received a letter during the summer before she arrived on campus that changed her life and Alabama's fortunes.
“I was going to be the assistant coach,” Sarah remembers. “But I got a letter during the summer saying the previous coach had left and did I want to be the head coach. I asked my coach at Slippery Rock, Cheryl Levick (now athletics director at St. Louis University) about it and she told me that it would be a great place to build a program.”
Upon her arrival, Sarah found a program on its last leg. The 22-year-old New York native was the Tide's fifth coach in as many years. After four losing seasons, no one expected success, except Sarah.
After getting the Alabama job, she put in a call to David Patterson, an Alabama diver whom she had worked with the summer before at a gym in Huntsville, Ala. With the lure of a leftover women's basketball scholarship, David joined the gymnastics program.
“After my freshman year, Sarah called and said she was going to be here and asked if I would help out with the team. It was a tough decision, but I decided to go with coaching. I just assumed it would be something to help me pay for a little bit of school for a couple of years. Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with it.”
The Start of Something Special
With the coaches in place, Sarah making about $5000 a year in what amounted to a graduate assistant's salary and David receiving a $500-a-year scholarship for his efforts, Alabama started on its fifth season.
It was a partnership that immediately clicked. The two balanced each other in such a way that their combined talents are more than the sum of their parts.
“David is such a great technical coach, while I tend to enjoy the artistic side of the sport,” Sarah said. “I think both of us are good motivators, though we have different styles in that respect. David also helps me keep focused on what's best for us and the program. And while I love to be out speaking and promoting the program, he's much more comfortable in the background, providing the plan and structure.”
With Sarah and David in place, the difference was immediately discernable. Excellence wasn't a quality to hope for, it was expected. Results were swift and a snowball effect was underway. But while things were shaping up in a hurry for the Crimson Tide, there were still plenty of bumps in the road.
“I was na??ve,” Sarah Patterson said. “I didn't realize there were obstacles in my way. I guess in that way we were lucky. If I had known everything that would stand in my way, we might not have made it this far.”
A Promise Kept
They've come very far indeed over the past 29 years. In Sarah and David's first season the Tide won seven meets, matching the total of number of victories from the program's first four years combined. Things would only get better from there.
The duo promised their first recruiting class that Alabama would make it to the national championships during their careers. As seniors, that first recruiting class marched into the 1983 NCAA Championships. The Tide finished an amazing fourth at their first national championship appearance and has not missed the big dance since.
Championship Proof
In 1988, Alabama won the first of four NCAA Championships to date. That victory gave credence to a coaching philosophy of developing the overall person instead of just the athlete. Titles followed in 1991, 1996 and 2002. Alabama has collected five Southeastern Conference crowns under the Pattersons, 1988, 1990, 1995, 2000 and 2003.
In addition to the team titles, Alabama's success has resulted in 21 individual NCAA Champions, 223 All-American honors and 115 Scholastic All-American accolades. Four times Sarah Patterson has been National Coach of the Year.
And in addition to her coaching duties, Sarah Patterson has served in Alabama's athletic administration as Associate Athletics Director since 1985. Other administrative duties include serving on the SEC Executive Committee, the NCAA Women's Gymnastics Committee and the NCAA Recruiting Committee, and in 2005 she was named to the DCH Foundation Board.
A Helping Hand
In the area of community service, Sarah and David Patterson give countless hours and encourage their athletes to do the same. Alabama gymnasts are active in the community from working with handicapped children to spending time at a local retirement community to helping raise money for Project AngelTree.
“I think as David and I have matured we've placed a greater emphasis in our own lives on community service and how we can help,” Sarah Patterson said. “I feel that if we can instill that quality, that characteristic of giving in our athletes when they are 18 to 22, and they have the sense of accomplishment that working in the community gives, then when they graduate and go out into the world, they will have gained so much from that experience that they will always be giving people. That's something that's very important.”
Supporting the Crimson Tide
One offshoot of being out in the community is an ever-growing fan base.
“Our fans come in the years that we finish second, third or fifth at the national championships as much as they do the years that we win it all,” Sarah Patterson said. “I think that's because of what the program stands for. It's not just winning. It's the type of people who are involved in the program, the emphasis on being involved in the community and academics; it's the total package. That's why people support us”
And they support the Crimson Tide in force. Alabama has averaged over 9,600 fans a meet for the past dozen years. In 1997, the gymnastics program sold out Coleman Coliseum to the tune of 15,043 fans, the largest crowd to ever see a meet in SEC history until 2006, when the Crimson Tide’s meet against Florida drew a standing-room-only crowd of 15,162. Last season, 15,075 fans came to see Alabama take on Auburn. Those three crowds are the largest to see a collegiate gymnastics meet since 1993.
A Family Affair
Sarah and David aren’t the only Pattersons who have made success a habit. Daughters Jessie, 22, and Jordan, 15, have a balance of their own, participating in a wide variety of extracurricular activities while making excellent grades. Jessie is a junior at Alabama while Jordan is a high school freshman at American Christian Academy.
After a standout high school volleyball career, Jessie is now on a different side of sports, serving as the sports editor for The Crimson White, Alabama’s student paper, as a junior and as its managing editor this year. She also spent three years covering high school football along with Alabama football's spring and preseason football camps for The Tuscaloosa News. Jordan plays volleyball and softball at ACA as well as playing on a travel softball team. The entire family is active members of the Church of Tuscaloosa.
David, in his scant spare time, is an avid fly fisherman and cyclist. He has caught fish in 45 states, with an ultimate goal of conquering all 50. As a cyclist he has helped spearhead the “Ride of Love”, a one-day, 150-mile ride through Alabama to raise money for Camp Smile-a-Mile, which caters to children with cancer. Major back surgery kept him out of the saddle in 2005, but last summer, after a tremendous amount of hard work, he was back. And as if all that weren't enough, he has taken up woodworking over the last few years, creating ever larger and more intricate pieces.
And while it may seem that Sarah Patterson's favorite hobby is speaking to groups about Alabama gymnastics, she has become an enthusiastic scrapbooker over the past few years and has become a big country music fan, filling her iPod with Gretchen Wilson, Kenney Chesney and others.
With lives full to the brim, Sarah and David Patterson seemingly never stop. Their time is filled with family and work and the wide variety of details that intertwine everything together. It is an intricate act of balance to keep everything going at such a high level for such a long time, but it is a balancing act that the Patterson family excels at and thrives upon. It is a balancing act that’s central tenant is success and the habit of winning in all aspects of life.
Alabama Under The Pattersons
Year at Alabama: 30th Overall Record: 366-79-4/29 years
?? 2002, 1996, 1991 & 1988 NCAA Team Champions
?? 2003, 2000, 1995, 1990 & 1988 SEC Team Champions
?? 1983-85, 1987-96, 1998-03, 2005-07 NCAA Regional Team Champions
?? 21 individual NCAA Championships
?? 10 NCAA Postgraduate Scholarships
?? 8 SEC Postgraduate Scholarships
?? 50 athletes with 223 All-American honors
?? 42 athletes with 115 Scholastic All-American honors (since 1991)
?? 49 All-SEC honors
?? 171 Academic All-SEC honors
?? 35 individual SEC Championships
?? 3 NCAA Top VIII Honors
?? 6 NCAA Region Gymnast of the Year Honors
?? 4 SEC Athletes of the Year
?? 3 SEC Scholar Athletes of the Year
?? 5 SEC Gymnast of the Year Honors
?? 3 SEC Freshmen of the Year
?? SEC Single meet attendance record (15,162 vs Florida 1/20/06)
?? SEC Single season attendance record (12,578 per meet, 2006)
