By Aaron Beard
Associated Press
RALEIGH ó Bob Davis and his wife, Judy, always followed the North Carolina State women’s basketball team, from buying season tickets to making the hourlong drive to Greensboro each year for the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament.
It was for the same reason that they showed up at Reynolds Coliseum on Wednesday night: Kay Yow.
“She’s an angel walking among men,” the Raleigh retiree said before a campus tribute to Yow, who died Saturday after a long fight against cancer. “She was so much more than human and so much more than basketball.”
Davis, like many of about 2,500 fans who attended the hourlong ceremony, came wearing a pink T-shirt and a pink ribbon ó the color of breast cancer awareness ó affixed to his red N.C. State hat. The tribute was designed to be a celebration of Yow’s life, and even included the pep band playing the Wolfpack fight song and featured a campus a capella group that was a favorite of Yow’s.
“She was a teacher as much as she was a coach, and this was her classroom,” N.C. State athletics diretor Lee Fowler said. “She was N.C. State through and through. … This is a celebration tonight and let’s make it that.”
Still, it was an emotional night, starting with the sight of seeing an N.C. State jersey hanging on Yow’s empty seat on the Wolfpack bench. Soon, the team and coaching staff filed in wearing pink N.C. State T-shirts and carrying pink roses that they placed one-by-one on Yow’s chair.
At the end, the players and coaches Yow left behind stood on the court that bears her name to mingle with fans who offered hugs, consoling words of support and their own stories of how Yow had inspired them.
It was appropriate, interim coach Stephanie Glance said, considering how important the fans were to Yow.
“She won’t be able to say that to you anymore,” Glance told the crowd, “but I hope you will, as we will, hang onto her words and know how important all of you have been in her life as well.”
Yow won more than 700 games in 38 seasons, 34 coming with the Wolfpack. She also coached the U.S. Olympic team to a gold medal in 1988, won four ACC tournament championships, earned 20 NCAA tournament bids and reached the Final Four in 1998. Her resume was good enough for her to be inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame in 2002 and for the school to dedicate “Kay Yow Court” in Reynolds 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 was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 1987; the disease recurred during the 2004-05 season and lingered until her death over the weekend.
Assistant coach Jenny Palmateer, who played for Yow in the 1990s, remembered her coach as “the kind of person who wrote a thank-you note for a thank-you note.” She then read a poem Yow gave her about five years ago that ended with the line, “God broke our hearts to prove to us, he only takes the best.”
“Kay Yow lived in a way most of us can only aspire to,” chancellor James Oblinger said. “And because she chose to do so, North Carolina State University and all the lives she touched will be forever changed. … Thank you Coach Yow for being you and sharing with us the incredible gift of your life.”
The tribute is part of an emotionally wrenching week for the Wolfpack. The team returned to practice Tuesday for the first time since Yow’s death and will play its first game tonight against Boston College.
“I think a perfect night for (tonight) would be fans supporting us just as they would as if Coach Yow were here and then us going out and playing a hard-fought game and coming out with a victory,” said senior Shayla Fields, a former star at Salisbury.
Yow’s funeral is scheduled for Friday, with the burial coming the next day in her hometown of Gibsonville.
BC assistant coach Stephanie Lawrence Yelton, who played at rival North Carolina, and director of basketball operations Chris Brann were among those who attended the tribute Wednesday night.
“She was a role model for all of us in the coaching profession: how to treat your players, how to treat the people around us, how to motivate each other and how really to care for each other and be a team and a family,” Yelton said. “Obviously, all of us respect her for that and living the example of how to do that.”