There are five, larger-than-life bronze statues that grace the Walk Of Champions outside Bryant-Denny Stadium.
Surely you have seen them, either in person or in photos: The gazes of national championship coaches named Wade, Thomas, Bryant, Stallings, and Saban rightfully immortalized so that generations of Crimson Tide football fans can celebrate and remember their legacies.
But there is one statue missing from Alabama’s array of athletic bronze, one that has been more than earned by the coach who earned as much – if not more – respect for the Crimson Tide athletic program than any of the football coaches.
Her name is Sarah Patterson.
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Who, you ask? Well, perhaps you need your Crimson Nation fan card brought up for review if you don’t know the championship pedigree of Sarah Patterson and her Alabama gymnastics program.
Consider:
- Five national championships – that is just one shy of Bryant’s six football crowns.
- Seven Southeastern Conference championships.
- 22 gymnasts who have earned individual national championships.
- 56 gymnasts who have earned individual SEC championships.
- 67 gymnasts have earned 162 Academic All-American honors.
- Seven gymnasts have won the Honda Award as National Gymnast of the Year.
- Four times Patterson has been named SEC Coach of the Year, and four times she has earned National Coach of the Year honors.
Patterson, 57, has done all this in 34 seasons at the helm of the Crimson Tide – though using the word “helm” is a figurative one when you consider what she walked into as a “Jock from the Rock” fresh out of Slippery Rock (Penn.) State College in 1978.
Hired by Bryant to come breathe a semblance of life into a gymnastics program that was dying on the proverbial vine, Patterson arrived to a situation that could charitably be called laughable – gymnasts working on used wrestling mats and scrambling to find an indoor place suitable for practice.
Patterson quickly told Bryant, who served as athletic director along with football icon, that the status quo simply wouldn’t do. And the old coach listened – directing his staff to “give the little lady what she needs.”
The rest is statistical history, recounted above. But that doesn’t tell all the story of Sarah Patterson.
Two of the perennial obstacles that women’s collegiate sports is that of fan support and media attention. Patterson early on realized that the two obstacles really are intertwined, and set about changing both.
She aggressively pursued media attention for her championship athletes, while at the same time working tirelessly across Tuscaloosa and West Alabama to get rear ends in seats.
Over time, the program moved out of Foster Auditorium and into Coleman Coliseum for meets. A short while later, they began seeing 10,000-plus people show up for events. And then Patterson and UA did what seemed impossible when looking back from her beginnings in Tuscaloosa – they began selling out all 15,000-plus seats at Coleman Coliseum.
Pulling numbers like that drew media attention, of course, and Patterson’s outgoing nature made it easy to cover her program at the magnitude it truly deserved.
But Patterson doesn’t deserve a statue alone for her coaching and program-building success.
She also deserves one for what she has done to fight breast cancer.
A few years ago, after a mammogram scare, Patterson decided to throw some weight around and create the “Power of Pink” initiative. Now a mainstream notion among women’s athletics nationwide, Patterson was the first to dedicate entire meets toward the awareness of breast cancer research – with both competing teams uniformed in pink instead of their school colors and the often-sellout crowd also awash in pink.
But awareness alone wasn’t Patterson’s goal. She also wanted to raise money. That goal was also attained, as she twisted plenty of arms along the way to get over $1.2 million and counting donated to the DCH Breast Cancer Fund.
There is plenty of space in front of Coleman Coliseum to honor Patterson – who sees no reason to add a 35th season to her resume, then a 36th and beyond. And she is also intent on adding national championship rings to a second hand’s worth of fingers already overwhelmed with bling.
“I go back to when we won that first one in 1988,” Patterson said last year after her team won their fifth national title. “I felt then as I do now. I just feel fortunate to be a small part of the rich history and tradition of the University of Alabama.
“A lot of people try to compare one thing to another, but just to know you’ve contributed to the history and tradition, I think that makes it all worthwhile. … How many can say they’ve had an opportunity to stay in a coaching position at one institution for 33 years?
“I have a lot of gratitude for the support the university gives us. I know the support we have is what allows us to compete at the highest level. It’s been nine years since we won our last one. This one’s pretty sweet.”