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  Sarah & David Patterson

Sarah & David Patterson

Player Profile

Position:
Coaches
Experience:
34th Season

Throughout their careers, Sarah and David Patterson have always said that at the University of Alabama you can truly have it all, and there is no better example of that fact than last year's tremendous success.

The Crimson Tide enjoyed a season for the ages in 2011, going 11-1 in the regular season, which pushed the Pattersons over the 400 mark in career regular-season wins. Alabama followed that up with the postseason `triple crown', winning its fifth NCAA Championship, seventh Southeastern Conference crown and an NCAA-best 26th regional title. Individually, Geralen Stack-Eaton won the Tide's 22nd individual NCAA title while she and six other UA gymnasts earned All-American honors. Kayla Hoffman made the absolute most of her senior year, earning SEC, regional and national gymnast of the year honors as well as being named the SEC Female Athlete of the Year and earning the NCAA Today's Top VIII award.

In the classroom, the Tide was just as successful, turning in a program-record 3.71 team grade point average, making Alabama one of only two schools in the country that competed at the national championships and finished in top-20 nationally by team GPA. Alabama also set the school mark in Scholastic All-American honors in a single season when 14 gymnasts earned the accolade. A league and Alabama record 16 gymnasts earned a place on the SEC Academic Honor Roll while all 17 members of the 2011 team earned a 3.2 or better GPA, including five that earned perfect 4.0s.

In the community, the Alabama gymnastics team continued to make a difference in the world around them, spending hour upon hour of their free time helping those around them in ways both great and small. This included helping those in need get back on their feet after the tornado that tore through Tuscaloosa in April as well as working with the Power of Pink, Easter Seals, the Stallings RISE Center, Project AngelTree and local schools among many other causes.

While 2011 was certainly an extraordinary season, during which Alabama rose to new heights, that kind of excellence in all areas is the norm for the Crimson Tide under the Pattersons. The duo, in their 34th year coaching at Alabama, has built a program that has remained a constant among the nation's elite for more than 30 years. That sustained greatness led to the Pattersons becoming the only coaches in collegiate gymnastics history to win NCAA titles in four different decades - with the first coming in the `80s, followed by two in the `90s and one each in the '00s and the `10s.

"I don't know that there is a secret to the success we've enjoyed over the years," Sarah Patterson said. "I think you start by always demanding excellence from yourself. But then I think you have to change with the times. When we started our coaching careers I was two to three years older than some of our athletes. Now these young women are the same age as my youngest daughter. As a coach, to be successful, you have to be able to grow and adapt with the times. You have to be able to see how young people change, what motivates them and influences them, and you have to take your basic philosophy and continue to work it within the mold of those student athletes."

The seeds of Alabama's success were planted with the Pattersons' very first recruiting class. The duo promised that class Alabama would make it to the national championships during their careers. As seniors, that first recruiting class marched into the 1983 NCAA Championships where the Tide finished an amazing fourth at their first national championship appearance.

The Tide has not missed an NCAA Championship appearance since, making it 29 in a row last season, the second longest streak in the history of collegiate gymnastics.

During that 29-year span, Alabama became one of just four teams in collegiate gymnastics history to win an NCAA Championship. The Tide has also finished in the top six 27 times, including 20 top-three finishes.

Alabama's first national title came in 1988 and it cemented the Tide's place among the nation's elite programs and gave credence to the coaching philosophy that Sarah and David Patterson had utilized since day one of their coaching career.

"We had gotten to a point going into the '88 season, after coming up a little short in '87, where we had some long talks about our philosophy of trying to develop the whole person and being involved in the community and stressing academics and were we still going to try to keep that focus," David Patterson said. "And we decided that yes, even if we never win a championship, this is the way we want to run our program. So it was very rewarding that next year, right after we'd had those conversations, to win."

Alabama also won its first SEC Championship in 1988 as well as the NCAA Regional title, giving the Tide its first championship `triple crown'.

"That season proved you could have that philosophy, those priorities," Sarah Patterson said. "It proved you could coach for a championship, you could instill that academic success was first and foremost and you could treat your student-athletes as maturing individuals who you want to see become better citizens who will continue to grow after graduation."

Alabama followed the 1988 NCAA crown with national championships in 1991, 1996, 2002 and last season. The Tide also collected SEC titles in 1988, 1990, 1995, 2000, 2003 and 2009 to go with last season's championship.

Individually, Alabama gymnasts have earned 261 All-American honors and 22 NCAA Championships. Seven times a member of the Crimson Tide has earned the Honda Award, given annually to the nation's top gymnast. UA gymnasts have also earned the NCAA Today's Top VIII award, presented annually to the nation's top-eight senior student-athletes, regardless of gender or NCAA division, four times.

Patterson-coached athletes have earned 22 NCAA and Southeastern Conference postgraduate scholarships, another figure that is best in the nation as well as 162 Scholastic All-American and 229 SEC Academic Honor Roll accolades.

While those numbers just scratch the surface of the Pattersons' accomplishments, it does outline a pattern of success that is extraordinary even among the nation's elite collegiate programs. That is one of the reasons that when ESPN began making plans to start a new unit within its sports empire targeted to women, ESPN/W, they asked Sarah to serve on the advisory panel.

Such recognition of her contribution to the landscape of women's athletics over the past 33 years is certainly gratifying, but what Sarah and David Patterson are most proud of is the success their gymnasts enjoy after they leave Alabama. After spending their collegiate careers at the Capstone, Tide gymnasts invariably go on to lead lives of distinction, both professionally and personally.

"Winning championships never grows old," Sarah Patterson said. "And I have thoroughly enjoyed watching our ladies take home conference and national championships and awards, but there is nothing like the sense of satisfaction I get watching our ladies go out into the world and use what they learned at Alabama, both in the classroom and in the gym, to make themselves successful. It is simply the best feeling in the world."

Alabama's all-time roster is filled with highly successful doctors and lawyers, mothers and executives, teachers and engineers and they all share the common thread that they learned the habit of success at Alabama. That fact is probably the single greatest measure of Sarah and David Patterson's three decades of success at Alabama. The Pattersons are also extremely proud of the role their current gymnasts and alumni play in the community.

"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 of the reasons that the Pattersons have been so successful over the years is that the tenets of excellence upon which they have built the Alabama program have been a constant from day one.

"The core of what we are today hasn't changed from 20, 30 years ago," Sarah Patterson said. "Now we've gotten a little older and a little wiser, but when you get right down to it we still have the same philosophy, the same goals and the same drive to succeed on all levels that we did at the start."

There have been some changes along the way, including David Patterson's retirement from the University in the fall of 2008, which allowed him to assume the volunteer coaching position. He had surgery after the 2005 season to fuse four vertebrae in his spine to help ease chronic back problems.

"Nothing has really changed as far as the gymnasts are concerned," David Patterson said. "The biggest difference is that now my relationship with our student-athletes begins when they come on campus, instead of on the recruiting trail."

While he isn't on the road recruiting, or spotting in the gymn, he still plans practices as he always has and is still in the gym every day, watching, teaching and encouraging.

In addition to her coaching duties, Sarah Patterson is the driving force behind the Power of Pink initiative that raises awareness in the fight against breast cancer and has raised over $1.25 million for the DCH Breast Cancer Fund established by Alabama gymnastics and the DCH Foundation in 2004 to help women in need prevent, detect and treat breast cancer. In 2005 she was also named to the DCH Foundation Board. She also speaks to groups throughout the state of Alabama and she and David are always there to lend a hand with local causes.

She has served in Alabama's athletic administration as Associate Athletics Director since 1985 and was on the SEC Executive Committee, the NCAA Women's Gymnastics Committee and the NCAA Recruiting Committee.

And while it may seem that Sarah's favorite hobby is speaking to groups about Alabama gymnastics, she is a an enthusiastic scrapbooker, a legendary baker of cookies and a big country music fan, filling her iPod with Sara Evans, Carrie Underwood, Toby Keith, Kenny Chesney and others.

David, in his scant spare time, has become skilled in woodworking over the last several years, creating ever larger and more intricate projects, graduating to pieces of furniture that are proudly displayed in the Patterson house.

An accomplished fly fisherman, he's caught a fish in all 50 states, checking the last one, Missouri, off his list in May of 2010. In the community, he has helped spearhead the "Ride of Love", a one-day, 150-mile bicycle ride through Alabama to raise money for Camp Smile-A-Mile, which caters to children with cancer.

The Pattersons have two daughters, Jessie, who is married to fellow Alabama grad Brent Jones, and Jordan. Jessie, who earned both a Bachelor's and Master's degree from the University, works across the street from Coleman Coliseum in Alumni Hall for the Alabama Alumni Magazine. Jordan is a sophomore at Alabama and earned an SEC Championship ring of her own last season as a catcher on Patrick Murphy's softball team.

With lives as busy as they have ever been, Sarah and David Patterson find their days 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 at which they excel and thrive.