Hampton University women’s basketball coach David Six is the exception. Six had a stroke in June but returned to guide the Lady Pirates through their first season in the Big South Conference since leaving the MEAC last summer. He received the U.S. Basketball Writers Association (USBWA) Pat Summitt Most Courageous Award last week, during a luncheon at the NCAA National Semifinals in Tampa, Florida.
“For all that Pat Summitt has done for women’s basketball, to be associated with an award that has her name is amazing,” says Six, who owns to being in his 50s.
David Six and the Hampton University women’s basketball team pray before boarding the bus to a game.
Pat Summitt, the legendary Hall of Fame Tennessee women’s coach, had the award named after her in 2012 when she received the award in the wake of her battle against Early-onset Alzheimer’s that was revealed the previous summer.
Summitt, the first women’s coach to surpass 1,000 victories, ultimately succumbed to the disease in June of 2016.
Six, who surpassed the 200-win mark in November and is No. 1 on Hampton’s career victory list, felt some discomfort and heaviness in his right arm while driving his wife Angela to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. The couple had made the four-hour drive numerous times while Angela was being treated for Polymyositis, a muscular disorder that resulted in her having to use a walker, and Six had developed a routine. He would stop at a Wawa convenience store in Richmond, Virginia, or Fredericksburg, Virginia. On this trip, the Sixes had recently purchased a new Honda Pilot “with all the latest bells and whistles,” and he was so absorbed in dickering with them that he didn’t stop. About an hour from Baltimore, when he tried to touch the iPad-like console, his arm felt like it weighed 100 pounds. He dismissed it as stiffness from not having taken a break as he normally did.
