WRAL Sports Fan

North Carolina State University

Sidney Lowe remembers Kay Yow

Jan 24, 2009

“She was always, even when I came back, she was always Coach Yow,” the NC State men’s coach said here yesterday, on the day Coach Yow lost her battle with cancer. “She was never Kay to me. She was always Coach Yow because that’s what she was when I was playing.”

Lowe recalled getting to know Yow when he was playing for the Pack and noted they developed a friendship back then that endured over the decades.

“She was the first one to come over and actually close my door and sat me down and talked about the dynamics of the job,” He said of his first day back as the new coach. “She told me that it was the toughest job in the country, with the other two schools right down the road and Wake Forest right down the road and the expectations. She told me ‘it’s the toughest job in the country but you can do it,’ and she said, ‘just run your club the way you know how to run it; there’s going to be folks that are going to have opinions and thoughts and coaching your team but you’ve gotta coach your team.’”

Asked if Yow was right, Lowe smiled and said, “Was she right? She couldn’t have been more right in her life.”

He added: “She and I were close when I was a player. She would always stop and talk to me because she told me I was like a coach on the floor and she loved that I never turned the ball over. She always talked about that.”

Asked about her passing, Lowe said, “I can’t really put that into words. You’re talking about somebody that’s been there a long time, that’s accomplished a lot, that really became the face of NC Statye when you talk about sports, for a long time, people talk about Coach Yow; and not just the basketball community, but just the community in general, for what she did in the community, obviously, with the cancer research and things. I mean, she’s going to be missed tremendously.”