WRAL Sports Fan

North Carolina State University

Glance recalls Yow's 'last gift to the team'

By Dane Huffman

Jan 27, 2009

Raleigh, N.C. — N.C. State University interim coach Stephanie Glance knew how sick Kay Yow was, and Glance had known since a trip to New York in December that Yow’s illness had a different feel.

So she warned the team, before a visit to see Yow in the hospital last week, not to have high hopes.

But when the team arrived Wednesday, Yow was sitting in a chair, alert and eager to talk to the players.

“I had tried to prepare the team for what they might see, that she was weak,” Glance said in an emotional news conference at NCSU Tuesday. “I didn’t want them to be surprised.

“So when we went in – she had to have mustered up every bit of energy she had left – she was sitting up in the chair, she was alert. She talked with them, she joked with them.

“They took her a gift, and she talked about the gift and she loved the gift.”

The gift was a teddy bear that made the sound the team gives as a cheer: “Wolfpack Women – on the way to No. 1 together!” Wolfpack sophomore Tia Bell said the team also gave Yow a pink pocketbook stuffed with notes from the team and a pink hat.

“And then we left and went to Miami,” Glance recalled of an ACC game Thursday in Coral Gables, Fla. “And the team, they thought, ‘Wow, she was better than we thought she would be.’ They were very encouraged and uplifted.

“It was like her last gift to the team. Even at the final days, she was still giving and she found it within herself, with the Lord’s help, to speak to them and talk to them and give something to them. And that was an amazing, incredible thing.”

Yow died Saturday morning at WakeMed Cary Hospital at the age of 66. The loss of the school's only women’s basketball coach came as a shock to the Wolfpack, even though she had battled breast cancer since 1987.

Yow had extremely low energy on that trip to New York and did not coach the Wolfpack on Dec. 22 at Columbia. She vowed to return, but practices and games passed without her presence on the sidelines.

“I knew that it was different in New York, on the New York trip,” Glance said. “But you still always think, ‘OK she’s battled back so many times. You can never count her out.’

“But things looked different in New York. Still, we didn’t know how it would go, if she would rally again. We didn’t know that.”

Tuesday afternoon, N.C. State held its first practice since Yow’s death, and the squad has an emotional week ahead. There is a campus tribute to Yow on Wednesday at 7 p.m. that is open to the public. State plays Boston College Thursday at 7 in Reynolds. Yow’s funeral is Friday at 3 p.m. Both the tribute and funeral will be broadcast live on WRAL.

Glance said the team had an outing together Monday, going shopping to get things to wear for the funeral. The team also had dinner together Monday, and Glance said the emphasis for the coaches has been giving everyone on the team a chance to talk about their feelings.

Glance spent much of the news conference praising a woman who mentored her and many others.

“The impact Coach Yow has had on us and so many people from afar is incredible,” she said. “It runs so deep. She touched so many lives.

“She is such a giver. She spent a lifetime of giving. And we are the recipients of so many gifts she left for us.”