North Carolina State University Athletics
PEELER: Pack Women Miss Yow, But Charge Ahead
1/7/2009 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
BY TIM PEELER
RALEIGH, N.C. The difference for Stephanie Glance in being Kay Yow’s associate head coach and NC State’s interim women’s basketball head coach is about three inches.
That’s the distance she has shifted over on the bench in the four games that Yow has been absent as she continues to battle cancer. But it’s a move that is more permanent since Yow announced on Tuesday that she will not return to the sidelines this season.
Glance and the remaining staff have contact with Yow, who is re-energizing off campus, multiple times a day, as they update her about what is going on with the team. The players send her e-mails and text messages to keep her upbeat.
But no one expects Yow, who will watch all remaining games on television or listen to them on the radio, to hover over anyone on the team, coach them from afar or second guess what they are doing.
“She wouldn’t do that,” said Glance, a Wolfpack assistant for 15 years who filled in as interim head coach when Yow missed 16 games two seasons ago. “She doesn’t want to interfere, even though we don’t see it as interfering. She is like the teacher who has taught students and now she is stepping away and letting the students show what they have learned.
“She is not a person that hovers. She is a person who gives you a task and then she steps back and lets you do it to the best of your ability. Everyone really appreciates that. It shows a great confidence that she has in all of us. She trusts that we will do our best and she steps back and lets us do that.”
It’s been a difficult couple of weeks for the Wolfpack women as they deal with Yow’s absence and look ahead to a future that doesn’t include the only full-time coach NC State’s program has ever known.
But the players and staff have drawn inspiration from the Hall of Fame coach’s positive outlook, which Yow proudly wears like a pair of jangly earrings or the whistle around her neck.
“Anyone who knows Coach Yow knows that she just always sees the glass as half full,” Glance said. “She doesn’t look at anything in her life as a downer or a bummer. She is taking on cancer as an unbelievable opponent. She has taken punch after punch after punch from cancer, and she always stays true to who she really is.
“She is always positive and always at peace. She just always sets an unbelievable example for all of us in the midst of her toughest battle.”
The Wolfpack opens ACC play this weekend, traveling to play No. 2 and unbeaten North Carolina in Chapel Hill. It’s the first game that the team will be certain that Yow will not attend.
“It’s a tough situation, but I think all our players and coaching staff are handling it the best way we can,” said leading scorer Shayla Fields, the only senior on the Wolfpack roster. “It’s a very emotional experience. I just think we have been very positive and uplifting to each other.”
Fields is one of the few players here for Yow’s last prolonged absence.
“It’s different because now we know that she is not coming back this year,” Fields said. “Two years ago, we didn’t actually know. Our job is to respond the way we did two years ago we have to stick together as best we can.”
In 2007, the Wolfpack was rejuvenated by Yow’s return, winning 12 of its last 15 games, including a run to the ACC Championship game and to the Sweet Sixteen of the NCAA Tournament. It was a remarkable, inspirational run that captured the attention of the women’s college basketball world.
Now, many of those same fans have expressed their concern and said a quick prayer for the ailing coach. In less than 24 hours, more than 500 fans sent an on-line message to the coach via this link on GoPack.com. Phone calls and e-mails have been pouring into the women’s basketball office from all over the country.
But now it is Glance’s responsibility to refocus the team and get the Wolfpack players ready for the rest of the season. She doesn’t think that will be difficult, mainly because no one on the team will want to let down the coach they came to play for.
“I think that she can take pride and peace in knowing that she has taught us well and she knows that our staff and our players will represent her and her spirit,” Glance said. “She has to have confidence in that because she knows how much we care about her and love her and how much she has given to us over al long period of time. She has left so much here for us, and in her absence, we still have that.
“I hope that would be encouraging to her. There is a part of coach Yow in all of us and there will be forever.”
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
