'When life kicks you, let it kick you forward:' A look back at Kay Yow's inspiring life, told by her family
"Women’s basketball wouldn’t be what it is today without her."
Monday, Feb. 5 marked N.C. State’s annual Play4Kay game, honoring the late and legendary coach Kay Yow, who led the Wolfpack from 1975-2009. After being diagnosed with breast cancer in 1987, Yow continued to lead N.C. State while putting on a brave face and inspiring all around her.
The Kay Yow Cancer Fund was founded in 2007 to fulfill Yow’s vision of supporting advanced research, serve the underserved and extend the quality of life for anyone battling cancer. You can donate to the foundation here.
Having attended N.C. State for four years, covering the women’s basketball team for most of my undergraduate career and growing up a Wolfpack fan, Yow’s mark on the university is undeniable. Without Yow, I wouldn’t be where I am today. The foundations of what she built starting in 1975 impact countless people and the mark she left on all those around her will flourish forever.
That’s why I felt honored to have the chance to tell this story. I connected with members of Yow’s teams and family, which are really one and the same, last summer while on assignment through Northwestern University. I wrote two stories on Yow, but thought I’d share this piece first.
Without further ado, here’s a look behind the curtain at Coach Kay Yow, a forever inspiration to all, told by some of those who knew her best.
Susan Yow: Kay Yow’s sister, a coach and former player who spent time at both the collegiate and professional levels.
Trena Trice-Hill: Player who played under Kay Yow from 1983-1987. She later joined Yow’s coaching staff and works for the Kay Yow Cancer Fund.
Nanna Rivers: Player who played under Kay Yow from 2000-2004 and now works for the Kay Yow Cancer Fund
Jenny Palmateer: Current CEO of the Kay Yow Cancer Fund and former player and coach under Kay Yow
Brenda Keene: Former N.C. State equipment manager
For anyone who watched her, Kay Yow bled for the Red and White of N.C. State. Yow is N.C. State’s winningest basketball coach of all time. Her 737-344 record is enough for a Hall of Fame nod, but she is more than basketball, according to her close friends, and her influence through the state of North Carolina and on the game of basketball is undeniable.
Yow’s former players and assistant coaches described her as a ‘warrior.’ She received her original cancer diagnosis in 1987. Her cancer went into remission before resurfacing in 2004. She died in 2009. She coached until just weeks before her death. On game days, you could find her ready to go to war no matter the circumstances. Yow was always decked out in her iconic red or white suits with a smile on her face. She had short, brown hair that later grayed and, despite her smaller frame, was a dominant athlete in her youth. Despite the smile on her face at seemingly all times, she was fierce, according to those close to her.
Nobody knew the pain she was going through for several years of her coaching career. She wouldn’t let them. Through it all, she stood tall and did what she had to do to win. This is the story of coach Kay Yow.
Susan Yow: Kay was born in 1942 and she was 12 years older than me. We grew up in Gibsonville, North Carolina with our parents, our other sister, Debbie, and our brother. I don’t remember her living at our house because of the age gap, but she went off to college when I was just a little girl. But she always stayed involved with my family. She never came back without toys for me to play with, whether that be dolls or stuffed animals, she never came back empty-handed. And that was my first impression of my sister.
As for Gibsonville, if you asked any of us that grew up here, it was a great town to grow up in. It was only a town of about 2,000 people. All of us went to Gibsonville High School, which was grades one through 12. It was a tight-knit community.
Sports were really big here and the only sport they had for girls was women’s basketball. That’s all they had. There was no other choice. And the town came out for it. And in Guilford County, the county that we played in, it never gave up girl’s basketball. It flourished in the community even when I was in school. Kay finished high school in 1960 and I finished in 1972. It was always big.
She played in high school. She actually made the East-West All-Star team in North Carolina in 1960. She was a very good player.
But, beyond that, I just knew she was special. She was a great sibling to our family to be the oldest. She was the first one to go to college. She went to college at East Carolina and got her degree in English. She was part of the Delta Zeta sorority there.
She had a passion for teaching English. She had a great high school teacher in English and that’s what inspired her. Debbie had the same teacher and they both ended up teaching English. There are a lot of similarities between Debbie and Kay. They’re very alike.
But Kay taught senior English in high school for four years at Allen Jay High School in High Point, North Carolina and she ended up coaching the girl’s basketball team. But after a while, she wanted to go to graduate school and so she quit teaching there. She ended up going to graduate school at UNC-Greensboro in 1970 to get her master’s degree in physical education but, as it turns out, her coaching career didn’t stop after Allen Jay.
I was going into my sophomore year of high school and my school, Gibsonville High School, didn’t have a coach for the girl’s basketball team. Well, Allen Jay just happened to be in the same county as Gibsonville High and so they were in our conference.
She played at Gibsonville, so small town, small conference, and they contacted Kay and just asked her if she'd be willing to coach the team. She actually coached my high school team, my sophomore year while she was in graduate school.
So that was my first experience playing for her. And of course as a 10th grader, I wasn't really thrilled about my sister coaching us. But it ended up being a marvelous experience, just an awesome experience for everybody that played on the team and for myself.
That’s really where this all got started.
She was all about team. When I was playing for her, I didn’t get any special treatment. Kay had given me a pair of tennis shoes that were leather. You know, people didn’t have tennis shoes back then that were leather because this was 1970. This was Adidas leather. The first ever leather shoes that ever came out and she gave them to me. I wanted to wear them so bad to play in. But she wouldn’t let me play in them. I had to play in the canvas tennis shoes that the rest of the players played in.
She said, 'I know I gave them to you but they’re not to be worn during the games.'
Those were the best shoes you could have at the time. I had to play in the Chuck Taylor canvas tennis shoes because that’s what everyone else wore at the time and she didn’t want anyone to feel left out.
The only incident that I had with her that would have been a bad incident was my sophomore year, my first year on the team.
Our center at Gibsonville High School got injured and she was out for a week. I was like a two guard. I was 5-foot-10. As a 10th grader, I had the impression that you weren’t very good if you were playing the post. And she was wanting me, because I was the best player on the team, to play the post until our center returned. Well, I had a really bad attitude about that. I displayed it. I wasn't trying. It was really bad. I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to be doing and she sent me home from practice that day. She asked me to leave the gym because of my attitude.
I went home at 5:30 p.m. and my parents, my mother and dad were sitting at the kitchen table eating and they said, 'You’re home early, what’s going on?'
I said, 'Kay kicked me out of practice.'
My dad asked, 'Well, why did she do that?'
And of course I said, 'Well, I don’t know.'
About 30 minutes later, Kay drives over and came by the house before she went to Greensboro. She went to UNC-Greensboro where she was in graduate school. She lived in an apartment out there. And she came to see me after that. And of course, my parents found out what the deal was.
And she said, 'You can come back to practice tomorrow, but you can’t come back with that attitude.'
She explained to me why she wanted to put me in the post. I was so upset about it. Well then, she told me I had to apologize in front of the team and I just couldn’t believe it. The next day I go to school and I’m so embarrassed.
All the players asked me, 'You’re coming to practice today, aren’t you?' I came to practice and when it started, Kay sat the team down on the bench, on the sideline and she told them, 'Susan has something to say to you.'
And so I apologized to the team. I made sure I didn’t have a bad attitude again. But it turns out, she didn’t put me back in the post. Can you believe that? She put someone else in the post. It was never discussed. It was never mentioned. It was never brought up.
I don’t remember her ever praising me or another player. It was all about the team. She was just happy for how we did as a team and what we accomplished on and off the floor.
I just wanted to be like her. I just wanted to model her. She seemed to do everything right. It was always the right way. She was always so considerate of other people. I wore No. 14 because she wore it.
I did ask her one time why she chose No. 14 and it was because of a player that she watched at Gibsonville High School play that she admired. All three of us wore 14. If Debbie and Kay wore it, then I was gonna wear it. We always joked about this but they retired that number after I finished. They said they retired it because of all three of us but that wasn’t really the case.
She also had an impact on Debbie, I mean Debbie followed her to East Carolina University. Debbie’s four years older than me. But she didn’t stay at East Carolina. She dropped out and went to work in a 7-Eleven and then realized that wasn’t what she wanted to do. So Kay helped her apply to school and Debbie also got her degree in English. Debbie taught senior English in high school and she coached the girl’s basketball team just like Kay.
Debbie coached at two different high schools and took one of her teams to the state championship game, but she lost in overtime.
Kay had an impact at an early age because she was the first born. She set a high standard. She was good at it. She was really good at it. It’s her way with people. She’s an excellent teacher. She studied the game and knew the game. She could get somebody to do pretty much anything. I played in college with her, we would’ve done anything or run through any wall that she asked us to.
Kay had a special way with people. She was special, I don't know any other way to say it.
This was a unique trait that I’ve seen time and time again, Kay could be with an 80-year-old and have the best conversation. She could be with a 5-year-old and be right in their element. It did not matter. Male, female, it didn’t matter, she could relate to any age. I’ve seen so many people who would enjoy being in her presence and have the best time. It could be a teenager, an adult, she could relate with anyone. I think that’s remarkable.
She could do that at any time, even at a young age.
There was a family in Gibsonville when Kay was playing high school ball and they had a daughter who played. She may have been a year or two younger than Kay. And she came out for the basketball team.
The girl’s brother told me this later on as an adult. His sister was born without a hand. She had her arm but not a hand. And she came out for the team. When it came time to make cuts for the high school team, she was going to be cut for the team. And Kay went to the coach and asked him to reconsider cutting her.
Kay said she didn’t think the basketball coach should cut the girl. Evidently, the girl wasn’t that bad, she just didn’t have a hand. It’s amazing what people can do when they’re born like that. Her brother said she never forgot that because the coach put her back on the team.
After coaching Susan at Gibsonville High School, Kay was presented with the opportunity to become a Division I head coach at Elon University in North Carolina.
Susan Yow: Well, she was at Elon. So it really wasn’t a choice for me out of high school for where I was going to go. I was going there because that’s where she was. Some people go through the process of trying to decide, I didn’t have that option. Not that that wasn’t good, I just knew where I was going. And so I did.
Debbie eventually came and played two years with me at Elon too before she graduated.
When I was at Elon, Kay got the opportunity to go to N.C. State, she wasn’t actually looking for that, Elon was the best team in the state at the time.
To explain this, we were in the AIAW years, before the NCAA had women’s basketball. So states were divided up into Divisions I, II and III and so Elon was Division I. N.C. State was Division III. We never competed against N.C. State.
Well, N.C. State came and approached Kay, they were looking for a coach. And Kay goes and has an interview at N.C. State. She told me she was going to interview there and when she came back she told me, 'Susan, if they offer me this job, I’m going to take it.' She had fallen in love with the campus and within days, she accepted a position they offered her.
Well here I am at Elon, ready to go into my senior year. A lot of us were at Elon because of her. She would’ve taken as many people that wanted to go with her to N.C. State. As it turned out, only two of us wanted to go. There was a third who wanted to go, but her fiance was at High Point so she moved to be with him.
Then we had a player coming in at Elon by the name of Christy Earnhardt and she was going to be the first scholarship athlete at Elon ever. It wasn’t until 1975-76 that they gave scholarships. And so, Christy goes to N.C. State with us after Kay goes. Three of us end up going there. She gave up her scholarship at Elon to go with Kay.
N.C. State had a good mathematics program. Christy was a math major so that worked out. Sherri Pickard was my other teammate who transferred with us and she was a math major too. But I was a physical education major and they didn’t have that at N.C. State. There wasn’t a major for me at N.C. State for me to finish my degree.
But both administrations worked it out, and in today’s era it would be so easy, but I ended up taking 12 credit hours and Elon allowed those credits to transfer.
Kay would have never left me at Elon, let’s put it that way. There’s no telling what she did or the people she spoke to to make that happen.
Of course, we came to N.C. State and won the state championship that year. She took a hodgepodge group of people and won the state championship. I certainly didn’t want to lose my senior year and so we won it in her first year. Not only that but she started volleyball at N.C. State and she ended up coaching softball. They didn’t have either team before her. Back then that’s what you did, that’s how much the game has evolved and changed. At Elon, all five starters played volleyball too. She loved coaching. I don’t think there’s anything she couldn’t have done.
Brenda Keene: I came to N.C. State in August of 1982. In the first couple of years, I worked in all sports. But as time progressed, I traveled with women's basketball and was the equipment manager, and traveled with women's basketball and took care of all their needs and situations there. All I can say is that those 27 years that I worked with coach Yow, from the very beginning to the very end, I wouldn't trade a moment of it.
Coach Yow was just a special, special person and she would be the first to say that she would give all that was in her spirit to the Lord. That's where she got all of her energy, all of her confidence, her bonus, her righteousness. She would be the first to say that. And she was definitely a great mentor to me.
I was an athletic equipment manager, that's not the job that everybody wants. Everybody's not knocking down doors to be an equipment manager. But she made it feel like it was just as important a job as any job for any other member of her staff that traveled or worked with her. I mean, there was definitely no difference in how she treated us and everything.
Before I came to N.C. State, I was an assistant equipment manager at East Tennessee State University with her sister, who was the head coach there, Susan Yow. And that's kind of how Kay and I met and how I came to N.C. State. I was, like I said, the assistant equipment manager there.
In the summer of ‘82, Susan said, ‘Come on down and you work at Kay's (basketball) camp.’ That’s what she called her. And I've never called coach Yow that unless I'm telling a story that Susan would say. I go, 'Work camp? I mean, what does an equipment manager do at camp?' But it ended up being a great situation.
I came to work camp and I handled all the equipment needs for them during camp, setting up the gym, balls, etc. The first time I met coach Yow was at that camp and at that time, to me, she was just a coach at N.C. State. I had been around coaches, I had worked four years in athletics. But one thing that stood out to me was how she handled her staff at camp.
She had the staff compete against the campers every day. She had to win. It could be layups or intensity drills, she competed in everything. She could talk to anyone, too.
I’ve been at a lot of camps for young kids and she was at camp every day. She didn’t come up and introduce herself and demand me to do all these things. She was there from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. She would watch the games, she’d go around and teach camp. She did all the little things. And she made me feel special.
That, and then she would always have a devotional for players and coaches to attend. Optional devotion for campers and staff and that made a big impact on me. I knew then that she was somebody I would want to work with. You didn’t think she was the head coach at N.C. State. She was just like me and you.
Coach Yow didn’t have an aura around her. She was a genuine person. She loved N.C. State, the players and the campers.
And then sometime after camp, she called Susan up and said, 'Hey, do you think Brenda would like to come to N.C. State? We're getting ready to hire someone as an assistant equipment manager for women's sports.'
Wow. I mean, that was unbelievable, because there weren't any equipment managers for women's teams back then. And Susan answered, 'I don't know, I’ll present it to her.' And it was presented in the way that I would come down and, Mr. Willis Casey was the athletic director at the time, and he would give me the position.
So I went down, but Mr. Casey, he was in a difficult position, he had already promised someone else to be the assistant football equipment manager and they weren’t looking to add more staff after all. And so he told coach Yow that they couldn't hire me.
During that time, that’s where I wanted to go. I never interviewed there. She invited me there and of course I prayed about it, but that was the reason I wanted to go, her genuineness. That never changed.
Well coach Yow demanded that I be there. She saw something in me.
Mr. Casey honored me coming down there and gave me a 12-month internship. The Lord works in mysterious ways. It sort of worked out in a better way. I started up in their offices, not in the equipment room. I was doing other things like mailing letters, doing little things in the office and I was taking care of softball, women’s basketball and volleyball.
When I was working with the other office members for those programs, we’d smile and say, 'Yeah coach Yow, go ask me, I’ll jump through the door for you.' If you’d ever met her, she would’ve thought you were the most important person in her atmosphere at that moment because she treated you with respect.
Trena Trice-Hill: My first impression of coach Yow was that she was a genuine person. My mother picked that up before I did. When you’re in high school, you’re not really paying attention to characters, you’re just happy someone is recruiting you. And so I committed to play for her at N.C. State starting in 1983.
Coach Yow was a mother figure for us all. She cared about us and gave us life lessons that we carry throughout today. For me personally, my mother passed away when I was in college and coach Yow played as my surrogate mom in college. She was that motherly figure for myself as well as other players at N.C. State. She just kind of took you up under her wing and she got you and gave you parental advice.
She was just a true leader in all areas, not only on the court, but in the classroom. And, as a surrogate parent, she was a caring person, that person who you could just feel comfortable going to her as you would if it was your parents. Her door was always open. She always was the person who would try to fix the problem if she could fix it. And if she couldn’t, she would definitely try to find the person who could fix the problem.
She’s someone who I truly admire, someone who has made a tremendous impact in my life, just by the life lessons that she has taught me.
But, going back to my recruitment, my mother picked up that she was caring and she knew that coach Yow would be the one to take care of me. I felt comfortable with my mom passing the torch to coach Yow. I didn’t know my mother would have this illness, this disease, and die while I was in college. But somehow she found a person to take her place in coach Yow. She was genuine. She was a Christian. She didn’t have any biological children, she just adopted her team as her children.
Susan Yow: A lot of it comes back to her upbringing. Coaches can have such an impact on players. I don’t know that there's many professions where you can have as much of an impact on a person as coaching because you spend so much time with your players and they get to know you.
It’s something that, over time, you see their actions and how they treat you and how they handle situations. You don’t even know that you’re learning things. You think back on it when you’re coaching and making decisions, you think back on the things that they did even if you don’t realize that you’re learning at the time. She treated everyone individually.
I think it has a lot to do with our upbringing. She had a great relationship with my parents. My mother had a great relationship with all of us. My dad did too but my dad was a proud father and very outspoken, I would’ve liked for him to be a little quieter. But he was very proud.
My parents were blue collar workers but they entertained a lot. We had people in the home a lot. My parents loved people too and they loved individuals. That was in our family, we were exposed to that.
Kay was originally diagnosed with cancer in 1987, but right after that, my mom was diagnosed with cancer about a year and a half later. Can you imagine? My mother’s diagnosis was not good. She battled it and did really well. After she got diagnosed, she lived another six years and three of those years were really great years.
But I mean, Kay was involved with all of it. She was there all the way. Debbie and I were there but not like Kay was on a day-to-day basis. She’s just remarkable.
My parents depended on her in a lot of ways. Particularly when she was an adult and out working. Kay was looked up to by the family and very much depended on by the family. I think she enjoyed that role. When my parents got up there in age and I was out of the state and Debbie was out of the state, Kay was the primary caretaker for them while she was coaching at N.C. State and never, ever complained about it. She was the primary caretaker. She was handling that, coaching and battling cancer at the same time. She did that very well.
Through her diagnosis, coach Yow continued leading N.C. State to never-before-seen success in the postseason.
Trena Trice-Hill: In 1987, we were down a few points against Virginia in the ACC Tournament and I didn't have a very good game. Coach Yow came to me and said, 'Trena, what are you doing? This is the ACC Tournament, how could you not perform the way you’re capable of performing?'
I saw that fire in her, that determination. Like we have to get us to that edge and help us win the championship. That was my senior year. But she was very competitive, very fiery. I saw it in her eyes.
She sent one of the assistant coaches over because she felt like she wasn’t getting her point across to me. She was getting across to me but I had a good poker face. I remember her squatting next to me and saying, 'We’re down Trena! What are you doing? Come on Trena.'
Then she sent the coach over and he said, 'Look at her. Coach Yow wants this and she deserves it. We deserve it, so come on now.'
So we went back out there for the final plays and I scored the final two baskets and we won the championship. We were so close to losing that game.
When we won, she was in shock. I can still see her, she was looking around and someone jumped on me but I was trying to get to her and she was just looking around trying to find someone to embrace. She was in shock. It was an unbelievable moment. That’s one of the most memorable moments I’ve had with her.
She celebrated but she was always thinking, 'What can I do next? What’s next?' She was married to basketball. She took her little vacations and lived in the moment but there wasn’t too long of a break because the court was her home. It wasn’t like going back to work, it was her home. That court was her home. It was where she found her love and partly where she found her energy to fight her diagnosis. Her other energy came from the Lord.
Brenda Keene: Her faith was the cornerstone of everything she did. I would be 100% positive about this, but she never did anything first without Him helping her arrive at a decision or a path. A player recruiting, a hiring, a decision, she asked Him for it all. That sustained her through her younger years, middle years and the end when she needed it most.
In Galatians 5, it’s about the fruits of the spirit. Those nine fruits of the spirit, coach Yow had them all: Goodness, kindness, self-control, gentleness, longsuffering, patience, peace, love and joy. She had all those. And when you have all those, you can spread that to others in jobs that have pressure and are expected to win. And she was expected to win just like everybody else.
She was a competitor. And during all that she had the patience and the self-control to be a competitor that never disrespected her fellow coaches or players because she had those fruits of spirit in her soul.
Yow coached the American junior national team in the years leading up to her diagnosis. In 1988, just one year after being diagnosed with cancer, she was named the head coach of the 1988 women’s Olympic team.
Susan Yow: She had coached the top teams for four years for the junior national team before coaching the Olympic Team. The first of those four years, she was an assistant coach under Pat Summitt. They were all successful teams. They all medaled.
After that success, we thought she might be offered the Olympic position, but we weren’t sure. When she did, as a family, we were all thrilled for her. But it was even more exciting when she ended up winning the gold, and I got to work with her. I was there. You don’t always know that you’re going to be selected. But she was.
There again, she didn’t plan on it. Just like she never planned on coaching high school, she didn’t take coaching classes, she didn’t plan to coach USA Basketball. She didn’t plan for anything, it just happened. She didn’t plan on being in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. She never dreamed of it. You know when you’re little and you say you dream of this or that? She never dreamed of it, but she did it.
Jenny Palmateer: When coach Yow was recruiting me and my sister in 1988, I think for us, here's a head coach that just won the Olympic gold medal. I was from my very small, humble town in South Amboy, New Jersey, and she came to our house. And I think the immediate thing for all of us was if you didn't know who she was and her history of just winning the gold medal and all her wins at N.C. State, you would never know it.
She was somebody that made you feel so comfortable right away. She was just somebody that we connected with immediately, as somebody that puts others first has everybody's best interest in heart.
She said, 'Oh, by the way, we're gonna win a lot of games and have a lot of fun doing it.'
Yeah. That was her right. We committed to play for her immediately after she left.
In 1989, I was a freshman with two other players, my identical twin sister and another player, Danielle Parker, we were freshmen together. Being from New Jersey, I was nine hours away from home. Going from the north to the south, adjusting to college life, to being away from home, adjusting to the high school game versus the college game.
And coach Yow was fresh off an Olympic gold medal. As you can imagine, her schedule was crazy. She had so many speaking opportunities and luncheons, and awards and things to do.
And yet, what I remember most is that she took the time after practices to sit with my sister, Danielle, and I, and just talk for about an hour. The men always came down to practice after us. And so when we were done practicing, we literally would go over to the cooler, grab a Gatorade, the four of us and sit and talk. And sometimes we were talking about the men and what they were doing in practice, sometimes it was about our families and how they were doing. Sometimes it was about how classes were going and what our schedule looked like. Sometimes it was about our own personal basketball, skill-related things on the team.
It was a really cool thing that I think maybe at the moment, I didn't really understand until years after how big a deal that was. Right? Like the gift of time, coach Yow’s willingness to do that. Because I didn't know all the other stuff she had going on. She never ever let on that she had all of that stuff going on but she was willing to take the time to make sure that we were OK and that we were doing well and I think that's who she was, she was a servant leader and so that's one of the things that she did to make us feel so special as players.
Brenda Keene: As years went on and as I experienced and watched her, I saw how she advocated for everything. Women’s sports didn’t have equipment managers, N.C. State was one of the first. She would always advocate. She would advocate for women’s basketball because that was her baby. She never left anyone behind. She knew the better women’s basketball got, the better softball would get, the better volleyball would get and the better track and field would get.
She was respectful of the men’s programs and she was happy for what they had but she wanted the women to have that same respect. She didn’t complain or quit. She just advocated and advocated and advocated. She would say to you, she didn’t do it on her own. She always said, 'You can’t advocate and get things without wanting to be the best you can be. Who wants to come and watch you if you don’t want to be the best?' There were a few games we got to be on TV and she wanted all that.
She would be overjoyed with the state of women’s basketball today. I think she would say, 'We want to be where we are today but we don’t want to make the same mistakes the men made.' We want our sports to be respected, thought highly of and have credit be given where credit is due in every area. She would be excited about the viewership numbers. I wish she could’ve seen the 9.9 million viewers we had for women’s basketball in the 2023 championship.
Back in the early 1990s, Reynolds Coliseum could fit 12,400 people before they renovated and we would have crowds of 3,000-5,000 for most games.
We had anywhere from 1,000 to 1,500 if it were games everyone thought we would win by 40.
In 1991, N.C. State women’s basketball was playing the University of Virginia. Virginia was No. 1 and we were No. 2. Reynolds was packed. I mean it was 12,400 people and then some. She came up from the locker room downstairs a little before the crowd got there. She went back down later and came back up with the team right before the game after the crowd got in.
When she got to the top of Reynolds, she had tears in her eyes. She said, 'The gym is packed. Reynolds is packed.'
She smiled and said, 'We’re going to give them a show tonight.'
Then we gave them one of the best shows that’s ever been in Reynolds. Three overtimes. We lost, but that was one of my most special moments with coach Yow. To see her, coach of the Olympic team, she had great moments, but that small moment that most people didn’t get to see, was so very special to her and to me.
Nanna Rivers: When I was being recruited in 1999, my final decision was between N.C. State and UNC. And fortunately, during that time, coach Yow actually did a home visit first. And right away, I just knew she was where I needed to be because she cared.
She came to my house. My parents had cooked and everyone was eating dinner together, that kind of thing. You know how when you have company over to your house and your company feels like company? It’s the way you sit up a little more or are more uptight. They feel like a guest. Well when coach Yow came, it felt like she was family already. My family got the same feeling, they felt she belonged in our space.
I had a lot of coaches that just talked about the game. They just talked about what I was going to do for the game and what I was going to bring to the team. Coach Yow first asked me, ‘What kind of person are you going to be? How are you going to build your character?’
Coach Yow was about taking a girl and building a woman that will be of great service to the world, not a basketball player. That was the thing that told me. I came to N.C. State because of coach Yow.
I didn’t even take my visit to Carolina because during the process, I just felt like they were about nothing more than the game. There’s nothing wrong with that but for me, I needed somebody to be just for me and not just what I was contributing to the game. Coach Yow’s willingness to help me grow as a person and as an individual weighed heavily on my decision. There’s nothing like having somebody who cares for you.
Trena Trice-Hill: Coach Yow didn’t have to say anything to persuade me to join her coaching staff. I knew when I got into coaching after I retired from playing, my goal was to get back to my alma mater.
I was at Hampton University at the time. Me and my husband were in the bed sleeping and I got a phone call and it was coach Yow and I was really shocked. She woke me up. I shot up straight and answered it. I said out loud, 'It’s coach Yow!' to my husband. I pretended like I wasn’t asleep and said, 'Hey coach Yow, how are you doing?'
She said, 'Well, Trena I’m fine. I just wanted to call to see if you would be interested in a position, I have a position open for you and I wanted to see if you would be interested in being an assistant coach.'
Without asking my husband, I immediately said yes. I thought about what I said as I said it and she said, 'Trena, you don’t want to ask your husband?'
I said, 'No, no he’s going to be fine.'
My husband is looking at me like, 'Really? Like… OK.'
She said, 'Well talk it over with your husband, but if you do, come and work my summer camp and we’ll talk about it even more.'
So we got off the phone and my husband and I talked. He understood why I said yes. He wanted me to consult him first and he was a little offended but he was OK. He was OK.
Some of the former players hit me up and asked me if I was going to accept the position because they heard she had offered it and I told them it was a no-brainer.
I said, 'If it were you, wouldn't you accept the position?'
I remember meeting her, we didn’t go too much into the logistics, but she was mainly concerned with if my husband was OK with me accepting the position. I said yes. She was the reason why I came to N.C. State the first time so of course she would be the reason I would come back.
She was a legend. It was an opportunity to learn even more from her. It’s a lot that I learned from her that I carried into my own coaching career. She was the main reason I came back to N.C. State and my alma mater.
She was also the reason I fell in love with North Carolina. Now, my sister plays for N.C. State.
Susan Yow: Well, she loved her state. I mean, she's very proud of where we grew up. Being in Gibsonville, North Carolina. She never forgot her hometown. Never.
I think she spent her entire career in North Carolina. She never left the state of North Carolina whereas Debbie and I did. She didn't have to. She knew the state motto. She knew the poem of the state of North Carolina.
She was not boastful, but just very proud to be from North Carolina. She liked the beaches and the mountains. She just liked the state itself, the people. But I mean, she never forgot her hometown ever. There were so many events that occurred here at N.C. State, events that she was always a part of.
Trena Trice-Hill: She was a true North Carolinian. Someone who takes pride in being from North Carolina, the state she was born and raised in and she was very proud of North Carolina and what it had to offer. She always complimented it.
Yow’s cancer went into remission for a few years in the ‘90s but, in November of 2004, her cancer recurred and she began radiation treatments in the following month.
Nanna Rivers: Coach Yow was the first person close to me that I witnessed battle cancer. I had never seen that before. But I needed to see that. I needed to see coach Yow’s fight. I needed to see coach Yow make the choice to fight. And then, it’s so interesting because then my mom was diagnosed with cancer.
Watching coach Yow battle allowed me to take a different perspective with my mom. A lot of times when it comes to cancer patients, their energy or their attitude during the fight, a lot of time makes or breaks their fight. And so witnessing coach Yow’s fight, I was then able to go back and help my mom in her fight against cancer. I let her know that she did have a choice in how to fight this thing and to not allow it to change her life and her outlook and love and faith. She didn’t have to allow it to do that because I saw that within Kay Yow.
That’s why I needed to be at N.C. State. I didn’t know that at the time but life set it up in that way for me to be under coach Yow. But coach Yow, her fight is unbelievable.
It all goes back to her competitiveness. She was competitive about the little things and it allowed her to fight anything in her way.
I think one thing that people wouldn’t necessarily know if they weren’t close to her is that coach Yow was very competitive. Say for instance we were playing H.O.R.S.E., she wanted to win. She would do anything to win. She showed her best in anything she did.
People say, 'Oh coach Yow is so sweet!' Well she is, but she was an athlete at heart. It could be checkers or Connect Four. It didn’t matter, anything she had to play, she wanted to win.
There was this time where we were in camp. It was a summer camp with a lot of kids. She wanted me to take a picture with a camper and back then, I’m telling my age, but there were these box cameras. They had paper around them and you had to send them off to get the pictures developed. I had one of those and I was taking a picture of her.
I was like, let me take this picture, it wasn't serious to me. You could hold those cameras with one hand because they were so small. My wrist was limp and I was like, whatever, it’s just a picture.
She stopped me and she said, 'If you’re going to take this picture, make sure it’s the best picture you’ve ever taken.'
'Put both hands on the camera and hold it straight.' She was directing me on how to take this picture the best way possible. That’s just how she was for anything.
She said, 'If you’re going to do something, make sure it’s your best, because it could be your last.'
Toward the end of her life, in 2007, Yow had to take a leave of absence from coaching.
Trena Trice-Hill: To see her go through her battle and her leave of absence, it was heartbreaking. As a child of hers, as a player, as a coach. However, I knew she was competitive and she was strong. She didn’t want people to see her suffer and she hid a lot of it. I saw her suffer, though.
When we were in New York and getting ready to play Columbia University, she was in so much pain but she found a way to coach that game. Another moment is when her hands were burning from the chemo and I would look at her with the gloves on. She hid her hands because she didn’t want anyone to see how much her hands were burning.
I shook my head and said, 'I don’t know if I could do that, I don’t know if I could be as strong as she is.' Her strength was remarkable.
Jenny Palmateer: Coach Yow came back from her leave of absence in January and in mid-February, N.C. State had a big game against No. 2 North Carolina, coach’s most hated rival but also her favorite game. She didn’t know it at the time, but we had all gotten together with the athletic department at N.C. State to name the home floor in Reynolds Coliseum after her. But she got sick the night before and had to go to the hospital.
As fate would have it, she got out in time and was determined she was not missing that game. And so long story short, she makes it to the game and she’s got gloves on because her hands are burnt from radiation, her wig is on and now here she is. Nobody would ever know what the last 24 hours had looked like for her. We won that game by a lot.
Yow returned to the role in a full-time position despite her cancer worsening and coached the team to a 34-30 record over the last two seasons of her life.
Brenda Keene: I traveled with the team for 25 years everywhere. I mean, she didn’t know why she had cancer and when you have something like that, it’s OK to wonder why. But she said, 'I do have cancer, there must be a purpose, so let me do as much as I can to fulfill my purpose.'
She coached the team. We went to California for the playoffs and she would just persevere. She was in pain. Of course she was. Speak to cancer patients, you can’t possibly explain how she felt but you can know that energy and perseverance and strength that the Lord gave her.
There is no doubt in my mind that every day she asked the Lord to give her strength to get her through the day. That’s where her strength came from. It’s the path she had to walk. She had to walk through that pain. During the last year or six months of her life, she persevered a lot.
Coach Yow passed away due to her breast cancer in 2009. Her fight with breast cancer has been documented by her close friends and family after her passing. The NCAA now honors Yow with the annual Play4Kay game, an opportunity to raise awareness and money for fighting breast cancer. After her passing, Susan, Nanna, Brenda, Jenny, Trena and several other former coaches, players, friends and family members founded the Kay Yow Cancer Fund, dedicated to fighting breast cancer and generating money for the cause.
Nanna Rivers: I still don’t think she lost her battle to cancer. She still beat cancer. I guess what I envision is, you know how in a boxing match, it comes to an end and all the scores are tallied up and all the points are even at the end of the match? By unanimous decision, I feel like God called coach Yow home because that’s where she needed to be. Not because she lost, but because He needed her for something else. If you were there, there’s no way you would see that fight and think she lost that fight.
Brenda Keene: Her passing brought people together. It brought family and friends together. It’s up to everyone to keep that unity and togetherness. Coach Yow was all about unity and bringing people together and she did. Even then, that time where we were all hurting pretty badly.
She was a person that did so much for N.C. State that I don’t know that they could ever forget that. She was an ambassador for N.C. State. It’s not that she just got the awards, it’s just that women’s athletics just wasn’t what it is today and she still got all those accolades. She worked for the university and was loyal. She could’ve gone somewhere else, I’m sure she could have, but she never wanted to go anywhere else. She was happy and fulfilled and content where she was.
I retired a year after her passing and some of it had to be that I really missed her. It wasn’t the same. I was due to retire but that year was tough.
Nanna Rivers: If you were fortunate enough to be a part of coach Yow’s story, she was able to plant seeds in all of us. She left her mission within all of us. She did a lot of the groundwork and there are times when we need to persevere or fight whatever it is in life, we can use her sayings.
She would always say, ‘You have 100% control over how you respond to things you have no control over.’ If you look at life that way and take it into your own hands, a lot of that she instilled in a lot of us. With the Play4Kay game we have at N.C. State, that gives a lot of women hope. Women that she had never even met before are inspired by her culture.
Jenny Palmateer: I spent my entire adult life with coach Yow. First, as a player, then as a coach and then now, working for the Kay Yow Cancer Fund. Her lessons and sayings are what stuck with me the most. She would always say, ‘We have zero control over what happens to us in life but we have 100% control over how we respond.’
Trena Trice-Hill: The quote that stuck to me the most is 'Be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger.'
I was that person that would cut you off in a conversation because I wanted to say what I wanted to say and not listen to what you were saying. I had to learn how to be patient and make sure someone finished their statement before I cut across them. And if I didn’t agree with it, be slow to anger. Sometimes I could have an attitude if I didn’t get things my way.
But that was one of the life lessons I learned from her that I teach to people and people similar to me when it comes to not being able to listen and reacting in an angry manner. I coach and use that saying. I also tell people other things she told me.
She would say, 'When life kicks you, let it kick you forward.'
She also used to say, 'You can’t wallow in self pity. You have to swish your feet and get out.'
I use those to this day.
Susan Yow: Since her passing, I have really learned the impact she’s had on people’s lives. I always thought it was big but I bet I don’t go a month where, if people find out my name, they come out of the woodwork and ask about her.
She has had an impact. I love hearing their comments. It keeps her spirit alive. When I walk away from it, I just say to myself, 'I can’t believe it! They know her and she meant this much to them.'
She has a great legacy. Women’s basketball wouldn’t be what it is today without her.