Sandra Kay Finally Falls to Cancer

Sandra Kay Yow went to be with the lord on Saturday Morning January 24th 2009. It ended a nearly twenty two year battle which Kay fought until her last breath.

I had meet Kay Yow several times at Wolfpack meetings over the years,but I never appreciated her until a June in 1993.

At the time I was working for a radio station in Fayetteville. I had just been named the radio voice of the Fayetteville Generals baseball team. There were no games being carried on the radio, but I was my job to create for the station the sponsorship to get the games on the air.

We were also a member of the Wolfpack Sports Network. There was a radio meeting at Carter-Finley Stadium for all affiliates to hear about the upcoming football and basketball seasons.

Just about five minutes before the meeting started the phone rang in Finley fieldhouse and it was Dick Sheridan saying that he would not be able to attend.

He was suppose to be the main speaker to get everyone fired up about the up coming football season. In walks Kay Yow, she is going to fill in for him.

After a few minutes of radio talk about the network Kay stood in front of our group and gave the most inspiring speech that I have ever heard. She talked Wolfpack and how great it was to be a Wolfpacker for thirty minutes.

When it was all over I was ready to play football for the pack.

As we have found out that is the way Kay was all the time. I have met her through the years several times and each time it was like she was so glad to see me, even though I knew as she was talking to me she probably had no Idea who I was. She might have recognized the face but no way she could remember my name.

By the way that day when Sheridan had called to say he wasn't going to be able to be at the meeting was the day that he resigned as football coach at State.

N C State hired Kay Yow to be the women's basketball coach before Title IX was even thought about. In the old days there was no NCAA women's basketball but North Carolina had a State Championship that just about every four year college play in.

Elon had won the Championship twice with Kay as coach. Willis Casey then Athletic director at N C State hired Kay to really start the basketball for women at N C State.

N C State dominated women's basketball in North Carolina until 1982 when the NCAA mandated by Title IX started women's basketball where all schools had to give women equal number of scholarships as men.

Kay was so well respected as a coach she was an assistant coach to Pat Summit in the 1984 Olympics and she was the head coach in 1988.

August 5th 1987 Kay was told of her breast cancer. By the time the season started in December she was on the court coaching.

Off and on for the next twenty some odd years Kay fought the fight the way she talked to us that day in June 1993. She gave it all she had.

The only women's basketball coach in N C State history has gone on to be with the lord. She leaves foot prints too big for most of us to even attempt to step in.

But, she has effected every one of us in some way.

God Bless you Kay Yow.