The ambulance backed up to the doors of Reynolds Coliseum, ready to take NC State Hall of Fame Coach Kay Yow to Rex Hospital. She had collapsed during practiced the day before her team was supposed to play No. 3 North Carolina, on a court that would be named in her honor in pregame ceremonies.
Surrounded by the team’s trainer and the coaching staff, Yow was in pain laying on the bench that she had occupied for the last 32 years as head coach of the Wolfpack.
That season 10 years ago, however, was unlike any other she ever experienced. Never in her four decades of coaching in high school, at Elon College and at NC State did Yow live her motto of “When life kicks you, let it kick you forward” like she did that season.
In November, the cancer that she had temporarily beaten twice before had progressed aggressively. In 1987, when it first occurred, she had a modified radical mastectomy and returned the next summer to lead the U.S. Women’s National Team to a gold medal at the Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. In the winter of 2004, cancer returned and Yow managed it with alternative dietary modifications.
Its aggressive return in November 2006 was different. Cancer attached itself to her skeleton and to her liver. Her long-time oncologist, Dr. Mark Graham, wanted treatments that were every bit as aggressive as the cancer itself.
Encouraged by her family, she took a leave of absence to focus on her health. She missed 16 games from November through January, placing her players in the hands of her associate head coach Stephanie Glance and her veteran staff while she was receiving both chemotherapy and radiation treatments.
The team went 10-6 in her absence, ending with a 21-point loss to No. 2 North Carolina.
Yow just showed up at practice one day in late January, with her doctors’ blessings, and reclaimed leadership of her team.
“The staff had been talking about the fact that she might be able to return,” Glance said. “But we didn’t know when. We didn’t want to tell the team to get their hopes up. It was such a roller-coaster season anyway.
“Then one day she just walked in the door to practice.”
The entire team stopped dead in their tracks during a full-court drill, let it register that Yow was returning to coach and swarmed her with hugs and shouts of joy, similar to the way the 1974 men’s team dropped everything in the second half of the NCAA regional final game against Pittsburgh when David Thompson walked back in after his near-fatal fall.
Yow came back just in time to beat an old rival, Virginia, and dear friend and fellow cancer survivor, Cavalier head coach Debbie Ryan, in her first game back.
Her next game was the second-annual Hoops4Hope, the fundraiser that has now morphed into a nationwide cancer awareness effort called Play4Kay that benefits the Kay Yow Cancer Fund.
Her team — a talented squad anchored by six seniors — won the first six games after her return before losing at Georgia Tech, setting up a mid-February rematch with the second-ranked Tar Heels.
However, her emotional return had taken its toll on her body. Her mouth was filled with painful sores. It could take her up to an hour to eat a bowl of oatmeal. Her heartrate and blood pressure would spike from the effects of three toxic drugs that were supposed to heal her body but sometimes killed her will to get up in the morning.
She never lost focus on her team. As she lay on the bench, waiting for paramedics to arrive and take her to the hospital, she listened to practice.
“They are really talking on defense,” she told Glance.
The players, faced with a situation few college athletes ever experience, followed the example of their coach.
They began to fight harder.
What happened over the next month was one of the most emotional periods in the history of NC State athletics. Yow was released from the hospital three hours before the UNC game. She made it through the pregame ceremonies recognizing the floor at Reynolds Coliseum Kay Yow Court, an announcement made earlier in the day by the NC State Board of Trustees.
The Tar Heels never had a chance that night. Yow’s team jumped out to a 27-point lead in the first half and held on for a 72-65 victory.
“It was an amazing day, and she didn’t even know if she was going to get to participate,” Glance said. “She was released from the doctor’s clinic at 4 o’clock. After the game, before she could to the press conference, she went into her office and had a full IV of fluids so she could go talk to the press.”
Even more inspired, the Pack won the final two games of the regular-season, and went to Greensboro for the 2007 ACC Championship feeling like something special was going to happen. However, that changed when Yow was readmitted to the hospital ,and Dr. Graham debated her ability to continue as coach.
He cleared her just before the team left for Greensboro. When the team arrived for its game against Florida State, Yow was greeted with a standing ovation from every fan in the Greensboro Coliseum. They held up signs of support, blew her kisses and cheered every time the Wolfpack scored on its way to a 27-point win over the Seminoles.
In the second round, Yow and her team faced top-ranked and undefeated Duke, a team that looked like it was en route to the school’s first women’s national championship. The Blue Devils, though, couldn’t keep up with the Pack’s emotional performance, and State won 70-65 to advance to the ACC title game.
North Carolina took a six-point win, but there was no doubt that Yow and her team would continue their season with their fourth consecutive trip to the NCAA Championship. Their end-of-season success was rewarded with a No. 4 seed and a chance to play their first two games at PNC Arena.
Then, the Monday the tournament pairings were announced, Yow received a telephone call informing her that her father, Hilton Lee Yow, had died at his rest home in Cary.
Before she could concentrate on the tournament, the coach had arrangements to make. She had to call her brother and two sisters, every member of her father’s Sunday School class and a cousin in Burlington who ran a funeral home. Tuesday was taken up by making more arrangements.
On Wednesday, she celebrated her 65th birthday with a bag of chemotherapy, a cake made by her team and a three-hour receiving line at the funeral home for her father.
On Thursday, she joined her family in Gibsonville for the funeral. By the weekend, Yow’s routine was nearly back to normal. She attended a press conference and practice on Saturday, and was on the sidelines for her team’s opening-round win over Robert Morris.
Two days later, playing on emotion and with three sick players, the Wolfpack beat No. 19 Baylor in overtime to qualify for its first appearance in the Sweet Sixteen since 2001.
“At that point, the team was playing at an unbelievable level,” Glance said.
To keep playing, though, was challenging. The Pack had to fly across the country to Fresno, Calif., for its meeting with fourth-ranked Connecticut.
Yow was evaluated, yet again, by Dr. Graham. The morning the team was to leave, the players, the staff, the pep band and the cheerleaders all boarded a chartered plane for California and were waiting for Yow to be released.
There was a small window of time for the plane to depart, and Glance waited worriedly on the plane to hear if Yow could join the team. When the coach appeared through the door at the last minute, along with the nurse who traveled with the coach throughout the season, the cabin erupted in cheers. The nurse hung an IV bag, oxygen-mask-style, from the overhead bin for the transcontinental flight.
Still, Dr. Graham was so concerned about her well being that he flew to Fresno on his own. Between practice and the game against the Huskies, he made arrangements to have her treated at a local cancer clinic and to monitor all of her vital signs.
The emotionally charged game paired one of women’s basketball’s pioneers against one of the most successful coaches in any sport, Geno Auriemma.
The Wolfpack led by seven early in the game, but a five-minute lull early in the second half allowed the Huskies to build an eight-point lead. With eight minutes left, the Wolfpack was within three but could get no closer in a 78-71 loss to UConn, ending the team’s dream of sending the coach to the second Final Four of her career.
“The team was very disappointed after that loss,” recalled Glance, who is now the executive director of the Kay Yow Cancer Fund. “They were all trying to do everything they could for her, to get her back to the Final Four again.
“She realized that and started doing what she could to lift them up again. Thanking them for all their efforts and how they persevered. Trying, again, to make them feel better and lift them up. It was what she always did.”
After the game, Yow said it was a team that would always stand out for what it accomplished during an eventful and trying season.
“This will be a team that will never be forgotten,” she said. “They lost tonight, but they put their heart and soul and everything into every game I've been around in. I couldn't be more proud of them. I wish they could have won tonight, but in the loss I'm really proud of everything they did.''
Later that summer, Yow received the inaugural Jimmy V ESPY for Perseverance, named in honor of Yow’s former co-worker at NC State and long-time friend Jim Valvano. She accepted the award on stage during the ESPYs, which was broadcast live from Los Angeles. Yow noted that on this trip to California, she needed neither a nurse nor an IV bag.
“It was a great, fun year for me,” Yow said in wrapping up that season 10 years ago. “I know some people think ‘How could that be? You were battling cancer.’ And that really was hard. When I was at the games, I didn’t have a lot of energy. But when I look back, it really was a joyous year for me.”
Few people have ever been kicked harder, or farther forward.
Certainly, the Wolfpack's run at the end of the season, going 14-3 after Yow's return, captured the attention of the basketball world, especially the players and coaches who had been touched by her competitiveness and kindness.
Current Wolfpack head coach Wes Moore, a former Yow assistant, brought his Chattanooga team to Raleigh to face Baylor in the game that followed the Pack's win over Robert Morris.
"Obviously, the players wanted to go on a great run for her," says Moore, whose team opens play on Friday at noon in this year's NCAA Championship. "And they got hot at the right time.
"It was great to see. Everybody in women's college basketball loved Coach Yow."
Tim Peeler is a regular contributor to The Wolfpacker and can be reached at tmpeeler@ncsu.edu.
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