Overall Record: 333-74-4/26 years
They lead a life that rarely, if ever slows down, but in their 27th year coaching the Alabama Gymnastics program, Sarah and David Patterson wouldn't have it any other way.
Last year alone, the Pattersons coached Alabama to its 22nd NCAA Championship appearance where the Crimson Tide finished tied for third and won three individual NCAA titles. Taking third gives Alabama 19 top-4 finishes under the Patterson, no other school, let alone coach, has as many. Senior Jeana Rice earned the Honda Award, denoting the national gymnast of the year and she was voted the Southeastern Conference Female Athlete of the Year.
It wasn't just a busy year in the gym. The 2004 season saw eight Alabama gymnasts earn Scholastic All-American honors and 11 named Academic All-SEC. Senior Stephanie Kite earned the Tide's 10th NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship, was named to the Southeastern Conference's Good Works Team and became the eighth Tide gymnast to be named NCAA Woman of the Year for the State of Alabama.
And if work didn't keep the duo hopping their daughter's Jessie and Jordan certainly did. Both Jessie, 19, and Jordan, 12, have a balance of their own, participating in a wide variety of extracurricular activities while making excellent grades. Last year was Jessie's senior year in high school, meaning a spring of prom and graduation gave way to a summer and fall of starting her freshman year at Alabama. And Jordan made a move her own, starting junior high school at American Christian Academy this fall.
After a standout high school volleyball career, Jessie is now on a different side of sports, working part time for the Tuscaloosa News. She spent the fall covering high school football in addition to getting accustomed to college life. Jordan plays volleyball, basketball and softball at ACA as well as playing on a travel softball team. Both girls are active in church youth group activities.
David, in his scant spare time, is an avid fly fisherman and cyclist. He has caught fish in 45 states, with an ultimate goal of conquering all 50. As a cyclist, for the last three years he has helped spearhead the "Ride of Love", a one-day, 150-mile ride through Alabama to raise money for Camp Smile-a-Mile, which caters to children with cancer. And as if all that weren't enough, this past year he has taken up woodworking.
And while it may seem that Sarah Patterson's favorite hobby is speaking to groups about Alabama gymnastics, she has become an enthusiastic scrapbooker over the last several years and has become a big country music fan, filling her IPod with Martina McBride, Kenney Chesney and others.
Such a full lifestyle requires nearly superhuman time management skills. Sarah and David acquired those skills as they added more and more tasks, responsibilities and passions to their lives.
"When we first started out, we'd either be in the office or the gym all the time," Sarah Patterson remembers. "We'd get to the office early, work until practice, then after practice we'd go over to Storyville, a restaurant a few blocks from the athletic department, grab some dinner and then come back to the Coliseum and make recruiting calls until 10:30 p.m. Then we'd go home and start the whole thing over again. As we started a family and our schedule started filling up, we learned to work smarter, to find a fit for everything."
While the couple's time management skills have grown along with the program, the tenants of excellence upon which the Pattersons have built the Alabama program have been a constant from day one.
"David and I are basically doing the same thing we did 25 years ago," Sarah explains "Our philosophy of developing not just the athlete but the whole person has not changed. It's still recruiting. It's still coaching. It's still promoting. The framework of our job has not really changed, but the details, and the number of those details certainly has. We've come a very long way in that regard."
And while Sarah and David have come a long way in terms of their job, they have also taken Alabama gymnastics a long way from very humble beginnings. The Tide hadn't enjoyed a winning season or even the same coach in its four years prior to Sarah taking the helm as head coach. In fact, Sarah had been hired as an assistant coach for the program's fifth year, but received a letter during the summer before she arrived on campus that changed her life and Alabama's fortunes.
"I was going to be the assistant coach," Sarah remembers. "But I got a letter during the summer saying the previous coach had left and did I want to be the head coach. I asked my coach at Slippery Rock, Cheryl Levick (now athletics director at St. Louis University) about it and she told me that it would be a great place to build a program."
Upon her arrival, Sarah found a program on its last leg. The 22-year-old New York native was the Tide's fifth coach in as many years. After four losing seasons, no one expected success, except Sarah.
After getting the Alabama job, she put in a call to David Patterson, an Alabama diver whom she had worked with the summer before at a gym in Huntsville, Ala. With the lure of a leftover women's basketball scholarship, David joined the gymnastics program.
"After my freshman year, Sarah called and said she was going to be here and asked if I would help out with the team. It was a tough decision, but I decided to go with coaching. I just assumed it would be something to help me pay for a little bit of school for a couple of years. Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with it."
With the coaches in place, Sarah making about $5000 a year in what amounted to a graduate assistant's salary and David receiving a $500-a-year scholarship for his efforts, Alabama started on its fifth season.
It was a partnership that immediately clicked. The two balanced each other in such a way that their combined talents are more than the sum of their parts.
"David is such a great technical coach, while I tend to enjoy the artistic side of the sport," Sarah said. "I think both of us are good motivators, though we have different styles in that respect. David also helps me keep focused on what's best for us and the program. And while I love to be out speaking and promoting the program, he's much more comfortable in the background, providing the plan and structure."
With Sarah and David in place, the difference was immediately discernable. Excellence wasn't a quality to hope for, it was expected. Results were swift and a snowball effect was underway. But while things were shaping up in a hurry for the Crimson Tide, there were still plenty of bumps in the road.
"I was naïve," Sarah Patterson said. "I didn't realize there were obstacles in my way. I guess in that way we were lucky. If I had known everything that would stand in my way, we might not have made it this far."
And they've come very far indeed over the past 26 years. In Sarah and David's first season the Tide won seven meets, matching the total of number of victories from the program's first four years combined. Things would only get better from there.
The duo promised their first recruiting class that Alabama would make it to the national championships during their careers. As seniors, that first recruiting class marched into the 1983 NCAA Championships. The Tide finished an amazing fourth at their first national championship appearance and hasn't missed the big dance since. Alabama has made 22 straight appearances at the NCAA Championships, finishing in the top five 20 times.
In 1988, Alabama won the first of four NCAA Championships to date. That victory gave credence to a coaching philosophy of developing the overall person instead of just the athlete. Titles followed in 1991, 1996 and 2002. Alabama has collected five Southeastern Conference crowns under the Pattersons, 1988, 1990, 1995, 2000 and 2003.
In the classroom, Sarah and David's charges have enjoyed unparalleled success, earning a nation-leading 10 NCAA Postgraduate Scholarships and eight SEC Postgraduate Scholarships. Since the award's inception in 1984, Alabama gymnasts have brought home an astounding 141 Academic All-SEC honors, a total that is two dozen better than the next best school in the league.
In the area of community service, Sarah and David Patterson give countless hours and encourage their athletes to do the same. Over the last six years alone, Alabama gymnasts have given over 1500 hours of their time to Tuscaloosa area causes.
"I think as David and I have matured we've placed a greater emphasis in our own lives on community service and how we can help," Sarah Patterson said. "I feel that if we can instill that quality, that characteristic of giving in our athletes when they are 18 to 22, and they have the sense of accomplishment that working in the community gives, then when they graduate and go out into the world, they will have gained so much from that experience that they will always be giving people. That's something that's very important."
One offshoot of being out in the community is an ever-growing fan base.
"Our fans come in the years that we finish second, third or fifth at the national championships as much as they do the years that we win it all," Sarah Patterson said. "I think that's because of what the program stands for. It's not just winning. It's the type of people who are involved in the program, the emphasis on being involved in the community and academics; it's the total package. That's why people support us"
And they support the Crimson Tide in force. Alabama has averaged over 9,000 fans a meet for the past decade. In 1997, the gymnastics program sold out Coleman Coliseum to the tune of 15,043 fans, the largest crowd to ever see a meet in Southeastern Conference history. That total is also the largest to see a collegiate gymnastics meet since 1993. All that success came from a program that could count its fans in the stands of Foster Auditorium in the 1970s in increments of 10.
In addition to the team titles, Alabama's success has resulted in 17 individual NCAA Champions, 198 All-American honors and 92 Scholastic All-American accolades. Four times Sarah Patterson has been National Coach of the Year while David Patterson has twice been Region Assistant Coach of the Year.
And in addition to her coaching duties, Sarah Patterson has served in Alabama's athletic administration as Associate Athletics Director since 1985. Other administrative duties include serving on the SEC Executive Committee, the NCAA Women's Gymnastics Committee and the NCAA Recruiting Committee.
Just like their days, Sarah and David Patterson seemingly never stop. Their time is filled with family and work and the wide variety of details that intertwine everything together. It is an intricate act of balance to keep everything going at such a high level for such a long time, but it is a balancing act that the Patterson family excels at and thrives upon. Every day is different, and that's where the fun is.
Sarah Patterson File Education: Slippery Rock State College (Penn.), 1978
Major: Physical education
Year at Alabama: 27th
Overall Record: 333-74-4/26 years
Coaching Achievements:
