Life's lessons willingly given

All those years ago, in the backyard of the family's simple Gibsonville home, Kay Yow never envisioned herself as a trailblazer.

No matter how often she shot at the tall goal on the telephone pole, Yow assumed that her high-scoring basketball career would end before high-school graduation. That was the way of the times.

She planned to teach English or perhaps run a school library, positions that would make her a leader in children's lives. That was a conventional path for career-oriented females as the 1950s faded into history.

Yow made history. Long before she died yesterday at 66, Yow transformed her fragile plight as the cancer-stricken N.C. State coach into a sturdy platform. She became a trailblazer for women's basketball and for a woman's right to live fully through even the worst episodes of breast cancer.

In the 22 years after the original diagnosis and surgery, Yow became a proponent rather than a victim, a symbol of the relentless human spirit rather than a sadly tragic bystander.

Her philosophy, rooted in bottomless Christian faith, evolved as she recovered from a partial radical mastectomy and coached the U.S. Olympics team to a gold medal in 1988.

"I think I've learned more fully what it means to live each moment to the fullest," she said in an interview with the Journal. "I wasn't totally unaware of that before, but the feeling is deeper. I understand the point that I should not let the urgent get in the way of the important.

"I've undoubtedly grown as a person. That's what my thing is about anyway, the search for meaning. How could any of this have been meaningless? I've learned things this year. Even in losing this year, I grew a hundredfold."

Yow discussed religion and cancer openly, confronting the disease with a battalion of players and friends and strangers supporting her. She was free of cancer throughout the 1990s but, by choice, she was never free from cancer.

That quality endeared Yow to a diverse cast of admirers that included Coach Jim Valvano, ostensibly her boss as the N.C. State athletics director. Valvano and Yow's mother, Lib, both died from cancer in 1993. One of Kay Yow's charities operates under the V Foundation umbrella, and Duke's Mike Krzyzewski serves on the foundation board.

"The great thing about her," Krzyzewski said yesterday, "is that she had the courage to fight her battle in public and, as a result, she not only fought for herself but for everybody that has cancer, will have cancer, and for the families who are involved."

Basketball made Yow a public figure. As a lanky Guilford County girl with dark hair, she never imagined such a thing.

She came by basketball passion naturally. Her mother played at Gibsonville High before starting a family and a beauty shop. Her father, Hilton, played in the textile leagues. He was a machinist at the P. Lorillard tobacco factory in Greensboro and a Gibsonville businessman.

A relative, Virgil Yow, coached High Point College and the Hanes Hosiery women's teams of Winston-Salem that won national AAU championships.

Brother Ronnie played football at Clemson. Sister Debbie played and coached college basketball, eventually becoming the ACC's first female athletics director at Maryland. Sister Susan transferred from Elon to play for Kay Yow at State. She now coaches Belmont Abbey.

When Kay Yow left home for East Carolina in 1960, the school didn't field women's teams. After graduation, Principal Doyle Early of High Point's Allen Jay High School offered her a teaching job with an asterisk. He wanted Yow to coach the girls' basketball team.

She was baffled. "I only played in high school," Yow replied. "I don't know anything about coaching."

She read a book. She learned. She won a conference championship by concocting a special double-team defense that clamped down on Gibsonville's star -- little sister Debbie.

Yow coached four years at Allen Jay and one year at Gibsonville before taking over at Elon.

In response to the federal law known as Title IX, N.C. State started a team. Athletics Director Willis Casey named R.R. "Peanut" Doak the coach for one season and began the search for a program builder. He asked Smith Barrier, the sports editor of the Greensboro Daily News, if he knew any female coaches. Barrier mentioned Yow.

Casey conducted one interview and hired Yow in 1975. She set the standard in North Carolina, recruiting superior players and winning.

Yow eventually became the third woman to coach 1,000 games at the same college and the fifth woman elected to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. Her teams won five regular-season races and four ACC Tournaments, and she reached the Final Four in 1998.

Her record (737-344 at both schools, 680-325 at State) seemed secondary after the disease returned in 2004. Yow missed two games but gradually regained strength and resumed coaching. In November 2006, she needed a leave of absence and more aggressive treatments that included blood transfusions.

Yow came back again, counseling players that they would have to carry on regardless of her condition on a given day.

"One day they take me out on a stretcher in an ambulance, and they were just practicing," Yow said. "I mean, they went and practiced right on. I did what I had to do. They did what they had to do, and then we meet up again. So, I think it inspires me to be back with them. It's a mutual thing."

In February 2007, N.C. State named the Reynolds Coliseum court in her honor. She coached the Wolfpack past second-ranked Carolina 72-65, triggering a celebration that bordered on delirium.

During the ACC Tournament that March, fans from every school stood and cheered the first time Yow walked to the bench. She was astonished. Her team was astonishing, beating Florida State and upsetting No. 1 Duke before losing the final.

"The thing is, there are so many lessons in this -- life lessons -- and I know the team has got it," Yow said. "I know they've got it. We have good times in this life. We have bad times in life, but we have blessings around us all the time, and we can't forget that. But we've got to know what we've got when we have it.

"We just have to persevere. Perseverance is a major thing in the attitude that we take toward it. Like, I can't control that I got cancer, but I can control my attitude toward it. They can't control that I can't be there at that time, but they control their determination, their focus, their energy, everything."

She will not run practice anymore, but she will always be there. Kay Yow, plainspoken yet wise beyond eloquence, made that her life's work.

■ Lenox Rawlings can be reached at lrawlings@wsjournal.com.