North Carolina State's Yow dies after cancer battle

RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina State’s Kay Yow, the Hall of Fame women’s basketball coach who won more than 700 games while earning fans with her decades-long fight against breast cancer, died on Saturday. She was 66.

Yow, first diagnosed with the disease in 1987, died Saturday morning at WakeMed Cary Hospital after being admitted there last week, university spokeswoman Annabelle Myers said.

“Everyone who had the privilege of knowing Kay Yow has a heavy heart today,” N.C. State athletics director Lee Fowler said in a statement. “She faced every opponent, whether on the basketball court of in a hospital room, with dignity and grace. She will be greatly missed.”

The Wolfpack’s game at Wake Forest on Monday was postponed to Feb. 10. Its next game will be Thursday at home against Boston College. Plans for a memorial service were incomplete.

Yow had a record of 737-344 in 38 years — 34 years with the Wolfpack — in a career filled with countless milestones. She coached the U.S. Olympic team to a gold medal in 1988, won four Atlantic Coast Conference tournament championships, earned 20 NCAA tournament bids and reached the Final Four in 1998.

She also was inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame in 2002, while the school dedicated “Kay Yow Court” in Reynolds Coliseum in 2007.

But for many fans, Yow was best defined by her unwavering resolve while fighting cancer, from raising awareness and money for research to staying with her team through the debilitating effects of the disease and chemotherapy treatments.

She served on the board of the V Foundation for Cancer Research, which was founded by ESPN and her friend and colleague, former N.C. State men’s coach Jim Valvano, who died of cancer in 1993.

“Kay taught us all to live life with passion and to never give up,” said fellow board member George Bodenheimer, president of ESPN and ABC Sports. He said the network would remain committed to a research fund established in Yow’s name.

“She’s just been a great friend to so many people; obviously left her footprints all over the place with the kids she has taught and molded,” Tennessee coach Pat Summitt told ESPN. “And she is a woman that had fought such a hard fight, but it was always about everyone else, never about Kay.”

At Duke — one of N.C. State’s closest ACC rivals — there was a moment of silence to honor Yow before the men’s basketball game against Maryland on Saturday.

In her final months, Yow was on hormonal therapy as the cancer spread to her liver and bone. But she never flinched or complained, relying on her faith as the disease progressed. She commonly noted there were other patients with “harder battles than I’m fighting” and said it was inspiring for her to stay with her team.

“We’re all faced with a lot of tough issues that we’re dealing with,” she said in a 2006 interview. “We know we need to just come to the court and let that be our catharsis in a way. You can’t bring it on the court with you, but we can all just think of basketball as an escape for a few hours.”

Yow announced earlier this month that she would not return to the team this season after she missed four games because of what was described as an extremely low energy level.

The team visited Yow in the hospital before leaving Wednesday for a game at Miami. Associate head coach Stephanie Glance — who led the team in Yow’s absences — met with the team Saturday morning to inform them Yow had died, Myers said.

Dr. Mark Graham, Yow’s longtime oncologist, remembered how Yow always took time to talk to other patients when she came in for treatments in recent years.

“She could have tried to come into the clinic and be completely anonymous,” he said. “She just wanted to be another patient. She was very open to sharing her experiences with others and being encouraging to others.”

Yow’s fight was never more public than when she took a 16-game leave to focus on her treatments during the 2006-07 season. After her return, her inspired Wolfpack won 12 of its final 15 games with wins against highly ranked rivals Duke and North Carolina in a run that attracted plenty of fans wearing pink — the color of breast-cancer awareness. Her players also wore pink shoelaces.

Yow always found ways to keep coaching even as she fought the disease. She spent most of games during that emotional 2007 run sitting on the bench while current interim coach Stephanie Glance stood to shout instructions at players or help a weakened Yow to her feet.

“She’s the Iron Woman, with the Lord’s help,” Glance said.

Born March 14, 1942, Sandra Kay Yow originally took up coaching to secure a job teaching high school English at Allen Jay High School in High Point in the 1960s. Her boss, along with the boys’ coach, agreed to help her plan practices and to sit on the bench with her during games. Midway through the season, Yow was on her own.

She spent four years there followed by another year in her hometown at Gibsonville High, compiling a 92-27 record. She moved on to Elon, going 57-19 in four seasons before being hired at N.C. State in 1975.

Her original cancer diagnosis came the year before coaching the United States to the gold in the Seoul Olympics. She had a mastectomy as part of her treatment, then discovered a lump in November 2004 close to where cancer was first discovered. She had surgery that December and started on a regimen of radiation and daily hormone therapy. Still, the cancer came back again and again.

She missed two games of the 2004-05 season while attending an eight-day nutritional modification program, which called on her to eat an organic-food diet free of meat, dairy products and sugar. She stayed on the diet for eight months, losing 40 pounds by keeping junk food and Southern favorites like biscuits and gravy off her menu.

Still, she cheated on her organic diet during home recruiting visits because she didn’t want to offend anyone by passing on a home-cooked meal.

Over the years, Yow never lost her folksy, easygoing manner and refused to dwell on her health issues, though they colored everything she did almost as much as basketball. Ultimately, her philosophy on both were the same.

“If you start to dwell on the wrong things, it’ll take you down fast,” Yow said in ’07. “Every morning, I wake up and the first thing I think of is I’m thankful. I’m thankful for another day.”