KNOXVILLE, Tenn (WVLT) -- The Lady Vols will take the floor to play the Stanford Cardinal for the national championship -- the game starts at 8:30 p.m. Tuesday.

The team that takes the floor for the Lady Vols represents years of positive role models and influence on young ladies across Tennessee.

It's the 34th season of Lady Vol basketball which includes 982 wins and seven national championships. But equally impressive is the influence this program has had on countless lives and careers.

It's not always been this way, though.

Jill Prudden is the girls head basketball coach at Oak Ridge High School and says, "it was the first time they had organized girls basketball. So, I played one-year of high school before I had a chance to play in college."

Girls and young women haven't always had players, a team, or a coach in women's athletics to serve as role models like the Lady Vols.

Prudden says, "Because as I grew up, they were just really starting the women's game and, actually, I played in the A-I-A-W days."

But all that changed in the seventies, when Tennessee began its women's basketball program lead by then Pat Head. From those early days, word spread from backyard baskets in East Tennessee to, now-a-days, around the globe.

Shelley Collier is the girls head basketball coach at Webb High School. Coach Collier is also a former Lady Vol playing on the first national championship team in 1987 and says, "Growing up here in Tennessee in the small town of Lake City, watching the Lady Vols' program is something I remember very well."

And the positive influence of the Lady Vols has boys and girls, men and women everywhere taking notice.

Prudden says, "Its the buzz. It's the talk. Everybody knows who they are. You want to be a part of it."

One of Prudden's former players has dreamed it and is living it.

"I think of Nikki Caldwell who came and played with us, and now she's obviously on Pat's staff."

And Lady Vols basketball has youngsters thinking about more than just goals on the basketball court.

Rodniqua Minor is an eighth-grader at Robertsville Middle School in Oak Ridge. R.M., as her friends call her, is also the captain of the school basketball team and says, "I want to play through college, and then I want to be a marine biologist after that."

The Orange and White impact centers around one big key to success.

Collier says, "The discipline. The self discipline you know."

Minor says, "Make good grades. Do my chores. Be disciplined. Have respect for adults."

Rodniqua says making the Oak Ridge varsity teams next year is also on her list.