Though the women’s basketball game against Virginia Sunday at 3:30 p.m. will be the fourth annual Hoops 4 Hope game in Reynolds Coliseum, it will be the first since the passing of legendary coach Kay Yow Jan. 24. When Yow finally succumbed to her 22-year battle with cancer, she became the third iconic N.C. State basketball coach to have fallen victim to the disease.
Both Jim Valvano, the coach of the 1983 national championship team, and Everett Case, the father of ACC basketball, had their lives cut short by cancer. On Sunday, the stands of that venue they all knew so well, Reynolds Coliseum, will once again be filled with Wolfpack fans who will come to honor Yow’s life and to raise money in support of cancer research.
Nora Lynn Finch, senior woman administrator and associate commissioner for basketball operations for the Atlantic Coast Conference, said all three of those individuals will be present at Sunday’s game in some way. Finch, who has known Yow since her days as coach of Elon’s basketball and volleyball teams, admitted there would be something missing without Yow’s physical presence at Reynolds.
“Kay’s spirit is there. Everett Case’s spirit is there. Jim Valvano’s spirit is there,” Finch said. “They are still there in many ways. But you don’t lose Kay Yow and not have a void.”
The game has been sold out, and organizers expect the 8,544-seat coliseum to be filled to capacity. The game will raise proceeds for the Kay Yow/WBCA Cancer Fund, a charitable organization committed to funding the fight against women’s cancers. Athletics Director Lee Fowler said Hoops 4 Hope will continue to be an institution at N.C. State, although Yow is gone.
“Cancer is still going on,” Fowler said. “Until we cure that, I would assume there would be a game each year.”
In the wake of Yow’s death, those who knew her have had time to reflect on what she meant to the sport of women’s basketball. Betty Jaymes, the first executive director of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association, first met Yow in 1981 when the WBCA was in its formative stages. She said Yow was “instrumental” to the creation of the organization.
“During the early 80s, she would show intent on making sure the coaches stayed unified,” Jaymes said. “We were all over the place, and she felt like if we could just have a house, a home, an association, we could survive together for the betterment of the game, then that would be a dream come true. And she put so much time and effort into it.”
Before Finch took over her position at the ACC, she was the athletic department’s senior associate director and senior woman administrator. Finch’s history has been intertwined with Yow’s for three decades. Yow’s first season coaching basketball and volleyball at Elon was Finch’s first season coaching those same sports at Wake Forest. Finch’s volleyball team played Yow’s five times that first season in 1971.
In 1973, Finch helped Yow start her first basketball camp at Elon College, and when Yow was hired by Everett Case in 1975, Finch was the athletics director at Peace College, and the two of them shared a house together. According to Finch, Yow was the first full-time woman hired by an Athletics Department in the state.
“She was a pioneer in many ways,” Finch said. “She didn’t take the move from Elon on a tenured-track position in teaching to a non-tenure-track athletics position lightly. That was a serious position, and frankly she was led by the Lord at the time. She was not a Christian at the time, but she was still led by him to go to N.C. State and be there, and aren’t we glad she did.”
Finch said Yow began coaching in an era when the attitude toward women’s athletics could be hostile, because many were resentful of the affect Title IX had on men’s athletics programs.
“It was not easy, because the general attitude toward Title IX was that women were stealing from men by having funds put into women’s programs,” Finch said. “If you’re going to change somebody’s attitude toward you, and gosh, there were so many people who felt girls and women should not be playing organized sports, that it was somehow a gender detriment, you just spend a lot of time talking with people answering their questions and asking them questions.”
Fowler said the current state of women’s athletics would not be possible if it were not for people like Yow, who were the great advocates and salespeople of their sports.
“She was a pioneer,” Fowler said. “She was hired at a time when there were a lot of Title IX issues. They were putting sports in to give women the same opportunities men had. I think it was just the way that coach Yow did business then, and all the way up to the day she passed away. She did it in a way that made people feel good about what she was involved in.”
Finch emphasized the sheer amount of time it takes to begin a program and try to grow a sport. Finch said Yow tirelessly worked to get media, fans and the University invested in N.C. State women’s basketball.
“Kay was able to maneuver the N.C. State program for television, radio, a coaches show, some regular coverage with the News & Observer before anyone else did,” Finch said. “And it became the standard, kind of the gold standard, of how you build a program.”
According to Jaymes, Yow has been a force of unification for women’s basketball coaches on two separate occasions in her life – once to create the WBCA and the second to start the Kay Yow/WBCA cancer fund.
“She has just been very instrumental to two huge organizations,” Jaymes said. “Her vision was incredible, and the way she presented it verbally and in written form was always an amazing thing to me.”
Finch, who will be in Reynolds Coliseum for the Hoops 4 Hope game, said the annual game will be a lasting testament to Yow’s spirit and her desire to help others.
“Kay Yow was that kind of individual that brought people together,” said Finch. “She was a consensus finder. She was a bridge builder. Hoops 4 Hope is a bridge, a consensus, for an effort that enriches a community and will improve health.”
