Pat Summitt is not the only one who made Kyra Elzy tough
From the time Kyra Elzy was an Oldham County High School freshman, her aspiration was to play college basketball with Pat Summitt as her head coach.
Yet the reality of living that dream was initially trying.
“At the very beginning, it was tough. It was tough to play for Pat,” says Mark Evans, Elzy’s high school coach at Oldham County.
When Summitt sensed she had pushed Elzy to her brink, Evans says the iconic Tennessee Lady Vols coach would call Oldham County.
“Pat would call me and say, ‘Now, Mark don’t let (Elzy) talk her mother into letting her leave,’” Evans recalls. “There were a couple of times Kyra wanted to come home. I just said, ‘Absolutely not. This was your dream. You are going to stay.’”
Elzy, of course, stayed.
Played on two of Summitt’s eight NCAA championship teams.
And learned a life lesson in persevering through difficult times.
That should serve Elzy well in her new role as University of Kentucky women’s basketball head coach. On Monday, UK Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart announced that he had removed the “interim” from Elzy’s job title.
Elzy’s head coaching contract will run through the 2025-26 season.
“This is a big responsibility,” Elzy said on a video news conference. “And I am ready for the moment.”
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One can argue the pros and cons of UK giving Elzy its full-time head coaching role.
Yes, there is risk in turning over a program that now-former UK coach Matthew Mitchell built into one of the 15 or so best in the country to someone without prior head-coaching experience.
Some will question not conducting a national search just to scope out what quality of head-coaching candidates might have been available to Kentucky.
Conversely, in elevating Elzy, Kentucky gets continuity within a successful program. In two separate stints, 2008-2012 and 2016 until this year, Elzy helped Mitchell build and then rebuild UK women’s basketball into a nationally relevant program,
In the small sample size that has been the six games Elzy had served as interim head coach, she has handled herself well in the public facets of the job.
Elzy showed mettle when she began her interim head-coaching season by suspending two returning starters, including National Player of the Year candidate Rhyne Howard, for multiple games for undisclosed violations of program standards.
It doesn’t hurt that Kentucky has gone 6-0, with a victory over Big Ten-favorite Indiana and a road win at the Big 12’s Kansas State, either.
Barnhart said on the UK video conference call that he was comfortable forgoing a national coaching search because Elzy “had an incredibly-well-thought-through, detailed plan of what she wanted to do to continue to move our program forward.”
With Elzy’s elevation, three of the 11 head coaches of women’s sports teams at UK are female. She joins track and field coach Lonnie Greene in giving Kentucky two Black head coaches.
So weighing the pluses and minuses as they appear now, Kentucky is right in giving Elzy this opportunity.
The plan moving forward, Elzy said, is to build on top of the foundation Mitchell (303-133 as UK head coach from 2007-2020) constructed.
“The formula is laid,” Elzy said. “It’s a matter of continuing to build and putting my own twist on that.”
For Elzy, the toughness that will be required to succeed in the cutthroat world of SEC head coaching was being instilled even before she played for Pat Summitt.
“(Elzy’s) mom, Sheryl, actually worked in the prison system back then,” Evans recalls of Elzy’s high school playing days. “She was a tough, tough lady — and still is. Academics were No. 1. That’s what (Kyra) was going to have to do if she wanted to play — and (her mom) meant it.”
At Oldham County, Elzy left an epic hoops legacy, averaging a double-double (22 points and 12 rebounds) for her career. However, Evans says what was most impressive about Elzy the player was “she was super-sharp. She could pick up things other kids struggled to get.”
After it was announced that Mitchell was stepping away from running the UK Hoops program and Elzy was being elevated, Evans says his former player called him.
“Kyra said, ‘Coach Evans, what do you think?’” says Evans, now the athletics director at Mercy Academy in Louisville. “I said, ‘Kyra, you are more than ready for this.
“’You know how to recruit. You know how to love the kids, but have a stern, tough love if you need it. You are not afraid to make decisions. ... You know your X’s and O’s. You are still super-fit, so you can get out there (on the practice court) with them. You’ve got everything you need to do this job and do it well.’”
That is what Barnhart and UK Hoops are now banking on.
