Reynolds quiet on day Yow passes
Jan 24, 2009
Reynolds Coliseum is quiet this Saturday afternoon, a cool, overcast day that marks the end of a beginning.
Kay Yow’s time here is evident in the rafters. The banner marking her team's AIAW appearances - six times, in fact - serves as a reminder there was no NCAA Tournament for women in her early years at N.C. State.
This is a building with dual soul. It's where David Thompson played and Everett Case and Jim Valvano coached, a place associated with the glories of the men's teams.
So I, like perhaps many, thought it odd that the floor was christened Kay Yow Court in 2007. While the men's banners now reside in the RBC Center, Reynolds was the program's spiritual home. Naming the court for the women's program seemed to overlook the men's traditions here.
But my early view was a shallow one. Coach Case gave birth to the building and built a men's program that launched the ACC to men's basketball greatness.
Yow did the same in the women's game. Her early teams were among the ACC's best and she demanded her sport be taken seriously. I remember sitting in the upper reaches of Reynolds as a high school student watching the Wolfpack play a ferocious game with Old Dominion.
The Wolfpack's 123-120 loss to Virginia in triple overtime here in 1991 remains one of the great moments in local sports, coming in a packed and raucous Reynolds. Even in defeat that day, Yow argued intensely that women's basketball deserved more media coverage.
Yow was like that - she just saw beyond the game. She was smart, relentless and tough, but her perspective made her special.
Her battle with cancer was typical of that, as she always seemed to persevere. But you knew it was a fight she couldn't win.
After she missed a Wolfpack game in New York City on Dec. 22, I called her on her cell phone the next day.
"I'm doing better today," she said. The cold in New York, she said, had simply knocked her out.
But her voice was halting, and she battled to breathe. She said she would make the next game, but she never did return. I soon knew that brief conversation with her might be my last.
I came to two N.C. State games after that, and it was an odd feeling. No Yow, no news on her condition, no certainty she would return. It felt as if everyone knew what was coming, and early Saturday morning an email announced one of N.C. State's greats was gone.
So it’s quiet here now on the floor at Reynolds Coliseum, only the soft hum of machines in the background. It's a time to celebrate the dual soul of Reynolds, to appreciate how Kay Yow's personality and program kept the building vibrant long after the men's program left.
Kay Yow Court it is, and so it should be. But those words can’t capture the spirit she brought this place.
