Retirement Hasn’t Slowed Her Down—After 35 Years At MDC, Summons Still Dedicated To Creating Champions

Susan Summons has dedicated her life to creating champions. 

For the past 35 years—whether it was on the basketball court at the Gibson Center or inside her classroom at Kendall Campus—she has been preparing students to make an impact in the world. 

The people she inspired have become professional athletes, school teachers, college professors, police officers and federal agents. The list even includes Miami Dade College President Madeline Pumariega.

“It just resonates and validates my legacy, as well as the impact that I’ve had on students and student-athletes across the board,” Summons said. “That’s what Susan Summons has been cultivating every day, every minute—one champion at a time.”

After more than three decades at MDC, Summons retired at the end of the spring semester. As head coach of the women’s basketball team, she led the Lady Sharks to the state championship tournament 26 times. She also taught psychology and health and wellness courses at MDC.

But retirement has not slowed her down. During the past two months, she has been busy working as a motivational speaker and writing an autobiography. Summons is also involved in two documentary projects about female legends in professional basketball.

“You know, the word retirement sometimes suggests that an individual is going to stop living, but in reality, it should suggest that a person starts living,” Summons said. “I know who I am [and] what my purpose is. There’s always something for me to do or someone for me to motivate.”

Summons’ basketball career started at the Shelburne Community Center in Boston, Massachusetts, where she played in the Amateur Athletic Union. She would go on to play in the Boston Neighborhood Basketball League, where she was named Most Valuable Player six times.

In 1977, she started her collegiate basketball career at Roxbury Community College in Boston. The point guard led her team to the National Junior College championship tournament in back-to-back years. 

She was recruited by Cindy Russo, who later served as the women’s basketball head coach at Florida International University, to play at Lamar University in Texas. There, she set an Association of Intercollegiate Athletics women’s record, which she held for more than 15 years, for points—43—in a single game. 

Summons was later drafted by the New Jersey Gems of the Women’s Professional Basketball League.

However, her career as a professional basketball player took a turn when she developed a degenerative spinal condition. She was temporarily paralyzed during some games and had to be carried out on a stretcher. To avoid permanent paralysis, Summons stopped playing and turned down an offer to play overseas. 

But while she was hospitalized, Summons received a life-altering visit from Judith Baker, her former high school history teacher and the basketball coach at Madison Park Technical Vocational High School in Boston. Baker offered Summons a coaching position at the school.

To make ends meet, Summons also took a job as a police officer while she was at Madison. Serving the community wasn’t unfamiliar territory for her: Summons previously served a three-year stint in the United States Army Reserve as a personnel management specialist sergeant. 

“For two and a half years, I would juggle taking off my bulletproof vest, holstering my gun, taking the bullets out, changing my apparel—my police outfit—and putting on my sweatsuit and my whistle,” Summons said.

The hard work paid off. Madison won the city-level and the state-level high school championships and Summons garnered multiple college head coaching offers, including one from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. She turned down the opportunity to return to Roxbury to serve as head coach in 1982 and helped the team reach a No. 5 Division II national ranking in the mid-1980s.

By 1986, Summons sought a new challenge. She left Roxbury to start her legacy at MDC. 

Under Summons’ leadership, the Lady Sharks won seven Southern Conference Championships—the latest one was in the 2018-19 season, when they finished with a 22-9 record. The team also had a 93 percent graduation rate during her tenure.

“She was one of those coaches that [if] something would happen or a student-athlete needed assistance, no matter what time of the day it was, she would be there,” said athletic director Alysia Dyer. “She was fully committed.”

One of Summons’ proudest moments came in 1992 after Hurricane Andrew. The Category 5 hurricane made the roof at the Gibson Center collapse, forcing the team to practice at the Dave and Mary Alper Jewish Community Center—which was also partially damaged—while water leaked from the roof. 

“They had an option to leave and go back home because of the hurricane, but they chose to stay,” Summons said. “We had no home-court advantage and no place to practice, but we still managed to win the conference championship that year.” 

Former Lady Sharks’ point guard Daliyah Brown—a two-time All-American recipient who led the nation in scoring during the 2019-20 season with 26.6 points per game—said she took valuable lessons from Summons to Liberty University after transferring.

“One of the things that stuck with me [from Summons] is to push through everything,” Brown said. “To never let a man or a woman dictate who you’re going to be or how you’re going to move forward throughout your life, to always make sure that you put in that effort and that once you do that, everything else will fall into play. [And] to always keep dreaming.”

Summons always did. 

In 2007, the two-time MDC Endowed Teaching Chair Award recipient was tabbed as one of the Top 100 Most Influential Sports Educators by the Institute of International Sport. Six years later, she was inducted into the National Junior College Athletic Association Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame. 

She retired from MDC with a 622-445 record.

“Over the next year, you may see me surface,” Summons said. “But wherever it is, you can believe that I will be creating champions, impacting people to be champions and reminding people to be all you can be and be the change that you want to see in this world.”