[Deathwatch] Kay Yow, basketball coach, 66

[Deathwatch Central <cdw@slick.org>]

Again, thanks to a long time reader

January 25, 2009
Kay Yow, Hall of Fame Women?s Basketball Coach, Dies at 66
By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN

Kay Yow, the Hall of Fame basketball coach who became an inspiring
figure while continuing to coach the North Carolina State women?s team
during a long battle with cancer, died Saturday in Cary, N.C. She was
66.

Her death, at WakeMed Cary Hospital, was announced by the university.
She left the team this month to undergo treatment, turning the coaching
over to her chief assistant, Stephanie Glance.

Yow had surgery for breast cancer in the summer of 1987, but the cancer
returned in November 2004, requiring further surgery. She learned in
November 2006 that the cancer had progressed to her liver and took a
16-game leave of absence, but returned to take the Wolfpack to the
Round of 16 of the 2007 N.C.A.A. tournament.

In a collegiate coaching career dating to 1971, when women?s basketball
was barely noticed as a national sport, Yow won 737 games, No. 6 on the
women?s career list. She coached North Carolina State to four Atlantic
Coast Conference tournament championships, 20 appearances in the
N.C.A.A. tournament and one Final Four, in 1998.

Yow coached the United States women?s team to gold medals at the 1988
Seoul Olympics, the 1986 world championships and the 1986 Goodwill
Games. She received the Wooden award as the Division I women?s
basketball coach of the year in 2000 and was inducted as the fifth
women?s coach in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame at Springfield,
Mass., in 2002. Her career record was 737-344.

For all her accomplishments, it seemed that nothing surpassed the
determination she displayed in returning to her coaching post after a
two-month leave early in the 2006-7 season to undergo cancer treatment.


Upon her return, Yow?s players, and sometimes their opponents, wore
shoelaces in pink ? the color for breast-cancer awareness ?and the
Wolfpack played with passion, hoping to give Yow a long-sought national
championship.

Yow reached the 700-victory mark with a triumph over Florida State in
early February 2007 and coached the unranked Wolfpack to a victory over
No. 2-ranked North Carolina on the night that the basketball court at
Reynolds Coliseum on the N.C. State campus was named Kay Yow Court. Her
team upset unbeaten and No. 1-ranked Duke in the A.C.C. tournament.

The day the N.C.A.A. tournament field was announced, Yow?s father,
Hilton, died at 87. But she carried on, taking N.C. State to a
semifinal game in the Fresno Regional, a loss to Connecticut. She was
accompanied by her oncologist and a nurse on the flight to California.

Yow persevered that season while undergoing chemotherapy and blood
transfusions, her voice hoarse, her toes numb, requiring Glance to help
her stand at times during games. She was carried off the court on a
stretcher in February 2007 during practice when she nearly fainted from
an adverse reaction to medication.

Yow refused to feel sorry for herself in her long struggle with cancer.


?I don?t think, Why me?? she told The New York Times in March 2006. ?I
think, Why not me? I don?t think anything. It?s life. And as you go
through life, it?s just, to me, inevitable that you?re going to face
tough times.?

Sandra Kay Yow, a native of Gibsonville, N.C., the daughter of a mill
worker, began playing basketball as a youngster with her two sisters in
the family?s backyard, where their mother, Cora Elizabeth, who played
for a mill team, provided pointers. After graduating from East Carolina
University in 1964, she coached high school basketball for five
seasons, then became the head coach at Elon College of North Carolina,
where she had a record of 57-19 for four seasons.

Yow was named N.C. State?s head coach in 1975. She helped make the
state of North Carolina a focus for women?s college basketball,
ultimately battling for recruits with Sylvia Hatchell, the North
Carolina coach, and Gail Goestenkors, then the coach at Duke.

?I came and I think we began to set a standard and a level,? Yow once
said, ?and other people began to try to match that. And so now, they?ve
not only matched it, they?ve gone right to the top.?

Yow, who never married, is survived by her sisters, Debbie Yow, the
athletic director at the University of Maryland, and Susan Yow, the
women?s basketball coach at Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina;
and a brother, Ronnie. Her mother died in 1993.

After N.C. State?s tournament loss to UConn in 2007, forward Khadijah
Whittington marveled at her coach?s courage.

?The season was up and down, but we still had our leader believing and
inspiring us,? a tearful Whittington told The Times. ?It teaches you to
never give up. When you want something, pursue it.?

Many thanks to Deathwatch Central for posting this obituary