North Carolina State University Athletics
PEELER: Credit Yow for Making Trice-Hill a Legend
3/7/2009 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
BY TIM PEELER
RALEIGH, N.C. Trena Trice-Hill wasn’t sure she was ever going to be a sophomore, let alone an ACC Legend.
And she has only one person to thank for both: late NC State women’s basketball coach Kay Yow.
As a Wolfpack freshman center in 1984, Trice-Hill was depressed, injured and miserable. Her mother, Bonnie Trice, was in the latter stages of cancer. Trice was out of the lineup, rehabilitating from the arthroscopic knee surgery that kept her off the court. The prep All-American from Deep Creek High School in Chesapeake, Va., became distraught when her mom, long her best friend, eventually passed away during her daughter’s first year at NC State.
She contemplated leaving school, until Yow sat her down for a three-hour conversation. They talked about challenges, about making her mother proud, about creating her own life.
“I still recall all the things she talked to me about then, about fighting and persevering,” Trice-Hill said.
Now an assistant coach for the Wolfpack, Trice-Hill recalled that life-changing conversation many times over the last five years, as Yow fought her courageous battle with breast cancer, which ended with her death on Jan. 24.
She also recalled another conversation that Yow had with her in 1988, not long after the coach was first diagnosed with breast cancer. Trice-Hill had just completed her All-American career, leading the Wolfpack to four consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances, two ACC Tournament championships (1985 and ’87) and the 1985 ACC regular-season title. Wearing her signature head band and the No. 15 jersey that is now retired, she scored 1,761 points and grabbed 984 rebounds in her career, numbers that still rank the top 10 all-time in NC State women’s basketball history.
And she was a finalist for the 1988 Olympic team, with Yow as the head coach.
She never expected that her relationship with the coach would give her an inside track at making the team, but Trice-Hill had represented the United States in a pre-Olympic tournament in Seoul, South Korea, in 1987, helping the team win a gold medal, and she knew what Yow was looking for in a center. She knew she had a chance.
And, as Trice-Hill recalls now, more than two decades later, the final roster spot on the Olympic team came down to her and Maryland star forward Vicky Bullet. The decision was not Yow’s alone, because there was a selection committee that included the entire coaching staff Sylvia Hatchell, Susan Yow, Barbara Gill to choose each player on the team.
As they read out the names of the players who made the cut, Trice-Hill was hoping to hear Yow call out her name. It didn’t happen.
Vicky Bullett made the team, along with Anne Donovan, Teresa Witherspoon, Cynthia Cooper, Katrina McClain, and Yow led the collection of superstars to the gold medal in Seoul.
“She pulled me aside after they made the announcement and told me I hadn’t peaked yet,” Trice-Hill said. “And she was right, as always. There is no doubt that they chose the right people to be on that team, because they won the gold medal. I can’t argue with that.”
But she let her disappointment be her motivation, and for the next 14 years, Trice-Hill traveled the globe playing professional basketball. She started in Spain, and played for teams in Italy, France and Brazil, where she met her husband Derrick A. Hill, an American college player who was also playing professionally in Brazil. She also played the first two seasons (1997-98) of the WNBA with the New York Liberty.
She finally peaked, she says, in her 14th professional season, while playing in France. And, despite the pleas from her teammates, she walked away from the game, ready to spend time with her daughter, Kiana, who grew up bouncing from foreign city to foreign city.
“It was time to go home,” she said. “I had accomplished all that I could playing basketball.”
She spent two years as an assistant coach at Hampton University in her hometown. Then, five years ago, she got a call from Yow to return to NC State as an assistant. Though her most of her time here has been defined by Yow’s fight with cancer, Trice-Hill treasures the opportunity to be back at her alma mater, from which she received a degree in communications in 1987.
And she treasures her time with Yow, as a player and a coach.
“If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t be here,” Trice-Hill said. “This has been a very emotional year, and this weekend will be very emotional for me because she won’t be here to see it. But I know that she will be there in spirit.”
Besides, earning the title ACC Legend, along with all her other accolades, is still secondary to the greatest moments of her life.
“I don’t think any honors or any awards come close to the opportunity that I had to know Coach Yow,” Trice-Hill said. “She has always been the mentor in my life. She has always been my surrogate mother. She has been a grandmother to my daughter. I don’t think anything could be better than that. It has been the best honor to have coached and played for Kay Yow.
“She taught me everything about basketball, about life, everything you can imagine. She has been a friend. She has been everything to me. I am grateful for all the opportunities she gave to me. I learned so much from her, not just about basketball but as a person, through her faith in God, how she helps people and how she is so willing to talk to people. I will carry those things with me every day as I continue to coach.”
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
