I knew about Patricia Sue Summitt’s winning ways on the basketball court.

She coached the women’s basketball teams at the University of Tennessee to eight national championships. She was fierce a competitor as they come. She would end up winning more collegiate basketball games than any coach in the U.S. history.

What I didn’t know — or may have forgotten — about Pat Summitt was that she demanded academic achievement among the young women who played basketball for her.

When I learned about Coach Summitt’s death this morning of complications from Alzheimer’s disease, I also read something else about her.

It was that every young woman who played through their entire athletic eligibility at Tennessee would graduate from the university.

Summitt has a 100-percent graduation rate during her storied and iconic athletic career in Knoxville.

They’re mourning her death at the university. They’ll remember her NCAA championships. They’ll salute her bravery after announcing she had early onset of the disease that would kill her, how she would coach a final year before walking away knowing more than likely that her time on Earth was short.

Those all are wonderful things to salute. I will honor her memory as well for those accomplishments. I will honor her as well because she died of a disease with which I have intimate knowledge, as my own mother lost her own fight against it many years ago.

Her enduring legacy, though, ought to be that she strove to have her young athletes complete their university education successfully. They were students first, and athletes second. Coach Summitt insisted they adhere to the term “student-athlete.”

Can there be a greater example of leadership than that?