The old saying goes that you should leave something better than you found it. For NC State Director of Athletics Debbie Yow, who will retire from her post next week after nine years, that goal has definitely been accomplished.
The Wolfpack’s various programs have made tremendous strides on and off the field since Yow was hired in 2010. When she came in, NC State was No. 89 in the Learfield Director’s Cup Standings, which measures the collective success of a school’s athletic programs. In the most recent update, NC State was No. 14.
“I just have such a sense of belonging from day one and of real obligation to do everything as a leader in athletics that I could do,” Yow said. “That’s part of changing the culture. You can’t have two sports be very, very successful and 21 doing horribly and think that you’re going to have anything other than a dysfunctional environment. That’s not the culture I wanted to create. I wanted us to celebrate every success, however small.”
For Yow, coming to NC State wasn’t just about taking on a new challenge and a new job; it was about coming home. Originally from Gibsonville, just an hour outside Raleigh, Yow came into an NC State program that was as familiar as could be to her and her family.
Her sister Kay Yow had a historic 34-year career as the Wolfpack’s women’s basketball coach, and her name adorns the court in Reynolds Coliseum to this day. Kay Yow’s legacy runs through NC State, as the Kay Yow Cancer Fund and Play4Kay Game are constant reminders to the NC State community of the remarkable impact of Kay Yow, who passed away after a battle with cancer in 2009. For Debbie Yow, coming to NC State was coming back to her roots.
“This job opened and it was home,” Yow said. “The headhunter called and seemed mildly surprised that I would be interested. I explained to him, ‘This is not just professional; it’s personal to me. My family has deep roots at that school.’ I said I’ve always wondered from afar why across the board they couldn’t do better, because I remembered the ‘70s and the ‘80s, early ‘80s, when we were really pretty special. I was old enough that I could remember all that, and so it was different from any other call I’d gotten from the headhunters.”
The timing was right for Yow, too. With former Maryland President C.D. Mote Jr. retiring, she was open to a change after 16 years leading the Terrapins as the ACC’s first female athletics director.
When former NC State AD Lee Fowler stepped down in 2010 and the university approached Yow, she knew where she wanted to be. She knew taking over at NC State in what was likely to be her last AD job would bring a unique challenge, but it was one she was ready to meet.
“So I met Dr. Woodson, and after I met him, I knew: I want to come home,” Yow said. “NC State wants me. I was toward the end of my career in a sense. I wouldn’t recommend it for everybody. You better have one heck of an energy level to bite this off at that juncture in a person’s career. But I do have that energy level and still do. So it was a real blessing; it was the right job at the right time, at least from my perspective.”
So Yow came in and got straight to work on improving NC State’s teams across the board. She replaced the couch and TV in her office with a whiteboard and round table on day one in order to start problem solving. She looked at the heads of every major part of athletics, from compliance to finance to sports supervisors, and saw what changes needed to be made and where.
“You start looking at results,” Yow said. “It’s not complex, in my mind, but you have to stick with it. So that kind of the approach is, ‘Where are we and how do we think about ourselves? What do we think about ourselves? Are we thinking we should be winning?’ The sports turned out to be underfunded in a material way. That was part of why we couldn’t win. We didn’t have the basics of what we need in place, whether they were the right coaches in some cases. In some cases, we had the right coaches but we didn’t have any critical mass of resources that would even allow us to try to do something better. So you just plow in.”
And plow in is what Yow did. Along with boosting play on the field across the board, Yow invested time and resources into improving NC State Athletics from a facilities standpoint as well. There’s a lot that has been accomplished over Yow’s tenure, but she has two crowning achievements that stand out above the rest: the renovation of Reynolds Coliseum and the building of the Close-King Indoor Practice Facility for football.
The renovations changed Reynolds Coliseum, a 66-year-old building that was falling apart, into a beautiful facility that hosts some of NC State’s most successful sports and a building that Yow says she still gets more compliments on than anything else. Yow remembers going to an outdoor practice in the freezing rain, and knowing something needed to be done.
“One of my favorite projects is the indoor practice facility,” Yow said. “I told the two men who gave the naming rights money for that, the leadership gifts, that if I could hug a building, I would hug that building … I remember thinking, ‘This is a need. This is not a want. This has to happen somehow. We can’t keep asking them to do this [practice in bad weather].’ And then those two donors came forward. That’s why I feel so strongly about the building. It changed our lives as a football program to have that building.”
Another part of Yow’s tenure at NC State that has stood out has been her willingness and desire to engage with an incredibly passionate fan base, one that will let its voice be heard if things aren’t going so smoothly. From her engaging wittiness on Twitter under the username “#1 state fan” and handle @gopacknow to her genuine interest in meeting and talking to fans at events, being open and respectful of her fan base is something that Yow hasn’t taken lightly in her time as AD.
“I think anytime we drop a contest that by rankings we were supposed to win, it’s bad because they’re passionate,” Yow said. “I don’t see how we fault them for that. One of the things that you always have to remember with the fan base is that they’re not in a position of authority. They can’t make any choices. They can’t decide who’s hired, who’s fired, who’s rewarded as coaches and staff. They can’t decide what ticket prices are, what our schedules are like. It’s just a matter of respect to share information with them when I can. I can’t always, but when I can, I want to.”
While football and men’s basketball are going to get the “lion’s share” of resources and attention at most schools, and NC State is no different, Yow wanted to make sure every sport was successful, and she has achieved that goal.
Women’s basketball is coming off back-to-back trips to the Sweet 16. Men’s swimming and diving has finished fourth at NCAAs five straight years, and the women finished seventh this year. Wrestling finished fourth at NCAAs last season and had an individual national champion in Michael Macchiavello. Women’s soccer has made it to at least the NCAA second round for three straight years, and men’s soccer is coming off its first NCAA Tournament win since 1994.
Baseball has made the NCAA Tournament three straight years, softball is on the rise with a first-year coach, both tennis teams have enjoyed strong seasons, volleyball won its first NCAA Tournament game in program history in 2017, gymnastics has qualified for back-to-back NCAA regionals and the list goes on.
“That’s part of changing the culture,” Yow said. “We can’t have two teams being successful and 21 being miserable. What you’ve got then is huge jealousy looking at the other two. There’s a difference in what you need to be successful and what you want. Absolutely you’re dedicated to everything a sport needs.”
The way Yow got all of those sports to the places they are now was by bringing in talented coaches who were willing to strive for anything they could do to raise the level of their sports.
She challenged everyone within the program to go above and beyond what had been done before them and not settle for anything less than the highest level of success.
“It’s a legacy more of people thinking bigger when they get here as coaches; thinking bigger than what NC State’s done before,” said head swimming and diving coach Braden Holloway. “I think she created a standard of not being OK with just being mediocre. I think before she got here there was too much, and I’m an alum saying this and this doesn’t make me feel good to say, but I feel like NC State got into a comfort zone of just being OK. Her legacy is she came in and challenged us, challenged us to want more and to think bigger. I think that’s the biggest legacy that she leaves behind.”
Yow is undoubtedly setting up incoming AD Boo Corrigan in a strong position.
She’s got a few options for what comes next: traveling, consulting, maybe writing or teaching. Fans can still expect to see the familiar @gopacknow handle pop up on their Twitter feeds, though perhaps not quite as frequently as before.
Yow’s not quite sure exactly what the next chapter will bring, and she’s OK with that. What is certain is that her legacy at NC State as a builder and leader is secure. If Yow’s ultimate goal was to leave NC State Athletics better than she found it, she’s done that and then some.
