Patterson Reflects on 30 Years of Tide Gymnastics
2/19/2008 12:00:00 AM | Gymnastics
By Scott Latta
UA Media Relations
It was a good thing Sarah Patterson was only 22 when she took over the Alabama gymnastics program, or otherwise she might not have stuck with it very long.
Just a day after graduating from Slippery Rock State College in Pennsylvania, Patterson arrived on the Alabama campus to inherit a program that had all but been taken off of athletic life support. She was the fifth gymnastics coach on campus in the previous five years and was about to take over a program that had not had a winning season in any of the previous four seasons.
She wasn’t even expecting the job just before arriving??Patterson had accepted a position to be an assistant coach but received a letter the summer before coming that told her the previous coach had left, and asked her if she wanted the head coaching job instead.
She agreed. With a call and an offer of an assistant coaching position to Alabama diver David Patterson, who Sarah had worked with the summer before at a gym in Hunstville, Ala., the two started slowly, patiently, to rebuild the program from the ground up.
“I think that’s where being 22 years old probably served me well,” Patterson said. “I didn’t see the negatives or the struggles that we would encounter. I had a lot of energy so overcoming obstacles and challenges didn’t seem so great at the time. Working long hours and having really little of a social life didn’t seem to phase us at the time.”
In her first season as head coach, she led Alabama to a 7-7 record. The next year, Alabama was 16-4, and in 1981 the Tide went 14-1. In 1983, she led Alabama to its first NCAA Regional, where the Tide finished first to advance to the NCAA Championships, where it finished fourth.
It was the start of a winning legacy at Alabama??Patterson would lead Alabama to a first-place NCAA Regional finish in 22 of the next 25 seasons, with her hard work culminating in the school’s first-ever NCAA Championship in 1988.
“For Sarah and David, in 1988, us winning the championship validated for them that you can win a national championship without forgoing the principles they had established for the program,” said Marie Robbins, Alabama’s associate athletics director and senior woman administrator, who was a sophomore on the championship team. “We’re going to be a family and we’re going to excel in the classroom and the community and do it the right way and yet still be able to win a championship.”
After starting on just a $5000-per-year salary, Patterson had brought the Alabama gymnastics program from the dredges of the Alabama athletic department to the forefront of national gymnastics in just 10 years. Alabama won the SEC Championship again two years later, in 1990, and finished second in the country. The year after, in 1991, the Tide won its second national championship.
But ask Sarah Patterson, and she’ll tell you the secret to her success isn’t found in the four national titles or five SEC titles, or the 50 All-Americans and 49 All-SEC athletes she coached. It comes in balancing, she says??the reason the Alabama gymnastics program took off so well so quickly was due in part to the relationship she and David Patterson had formed in the gym.
That relationship has carried over to today, allowing both coaches to balance the challenges of running a championship-level program with their numerous ties to the community.
“I think we’ve gone through different points in our career, and I tell people now that I work harder now than I ever worked, but maybe I work wiser and faster and maybe I’m a little better at multitasking than I was years ago,” Sarah Patterson said. “People say, ??How do you not burn out when you do the same thing after 30 years?’ and I think one of the differences to me is that I have branched out.
“David and I have worked together for so long that we have a great working relationship. We’ve figured out what he’s best at and what I’m best at. Because he’s good in certain areas it affords me the ability to go out and raise money.”
The Pattersons’ ties to the Tuscaloosa area involve Sarah’s deep connections with the DCH Foundation’s Breast Cancer Fund and Alabama’s involvement with its annual “Drive 4 the Cause” gymnastics meets, but they also carry over to David, who has helped raise more than $350,000 for Camp Smile-A-Mile through his annual “Ride of Love” charity bike ride.
Their love for the community and subsequent desire to give back, Sarah said, came from their own experiences and how they witnessed firsthand what impact a community can make.
“Our tie to the community is so important because almost 12 years ago, David had kidney cancer and he had tremendous support from the community to help us,” she said. “I felt like before then we had support from our community, but once you realize something like that happens, I think it takes your focus to a different level.”
Today, when she thinks back to 1978, to the setting up and breaking down of equipment in Foster Auditorium and to the handfuls of fans that would dot the bleachers, it doesn’t feel like 30 years. It doesn’t feel like three decades have passed since two college-aged students took over a floundering program and turned it into one of the nation’s top gymnastics powerhouses.
It doesn’t, she said, until she meets those first athletes who helped jumpstart the program. Now, when she sees them at alumni events or just over email, previous eras of gymnasts at Alabama have crossed over??some have helped others with job opportunities, while some have just offered encouragement over the years.
“I think that like any family it’s not perfect but that’s the way to describe it, as a family,” Patterson said. “And that’s how our ladies feel about it. They have a connection back here.”
