North Carolina State University Athletics
TIM PEELER: Yow Celebrates 'Great, Fun' Season
6/25/2007 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
BY TIM PEELER
RALEIGH, N.C. Tuesday morning, as part of her annual summer basketball camp, NC State coach Kay Yow will conduct a lecture, just one component of the skills instruction the hundreds of pre-teen and teen-age campers will receive from the Hall of Fame coach, her staff and the volunteers who work for her during the week-long camp.
The title of Yow’s lecture will be “Attitudes that Build Winners.” Everyone who knows about the coach’s inspirational struggle in dealing with her recurrence of breast cancer over the last nine months knows that the coach won’t have to dig far to find examples.
Her very visible fight with her illness was one of college athletics most inspirational stories in recent years as she returned from a two-month leave of absence to lead her team to victories in eight of its final nine regular-season games, to the ACC Tournament Championship game and into the NCAA Tournament Sweet Sixteen.
“It was a great, fun year for me,” Yow said. “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.”
Yow relived the 2006-07 season Monday afternoon with hundreds of campers in the ballroom of the Talley Student Center on NC State’s campus, as CSTV aired a sneak preview of its tribute to Coach Yow’s efforts this season. Today at 8 p.m., CSTV will premier an exclusive interview with Yow, as well as interviews from her staff and players, during a half-hour special that airs at 8 p.m. EDT on Time Warner Digital Cable Channel 327. Time Warner Cable also presented Coach Yow a $1,000 check for the "Hoops for Hope" charity to help breast cancer awareness.
The special will kick off CSTV’s week-long celebration of 35th anniversary of Title IX, the landmark legislation that afforded equal opportunity for women to pursue college athletics. Yow, who was hired by Willis Casey to begin women’s athletics at NC State, arrived just before Title IX was approved to coach women’s basketball, volleyball and softball.
In recent years, Yow has fought three significant battles with breast cancer, beginning in 1987 and again in 2004 and 2007. While she coached the United States to an Olympic gold medal the year after she was first diagnosed with breast cancer, even that didn’t quite compare to the events of this past season, as the Wolfpack players were inspired to post unlikely victories over second-ranked North Carolina and top-ranked and previously unbeaten Duke, all of which is high-lighted in the interview conducted by former NC State player and CSTV announcer Debbie Antonelli.
Yow was refreshed anew by seeing what her team accomplished.
“It was very moving when it all happened the first time, but when you go back and relive it, it brings back all of those good memories,” Yow said. “Yes, there are still lots of tears these days, but a lot of them are tears of joy.”
Yow has reason to be excited as she kicks off another year of summer camp: she’s gotten good reports from her monthly tumor cell count tests. She’s been off chemotherapy for nearly five weeks and is going through hormonal therapy, which isn’t nearly as taxing on the energetic Yow.
“It feels so good to have a lot of my energy back,” Yow said. “Two months ago, because of the toxicity in my body, we had to stop the chemotherapy. My tumor count had gotten under control and it was a time that we could stop so I could go on hormonal treatments.
“Every day I am away from chemo, it seems I have more and more energy. It feels so good to be able to do some things and not be short of breath and really tired and feel like I have to sit down. It is a wonderful feeling.”
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
