Yow continues recovery; team continues to play

When the time comes, Stephanie Glance will be happy to slide back into the shadows. For now, Glance is serving as head coach for the N.C. State women’s basketball team, but it will be a good day when she returns to her role as associate head coach.

That will mean that the legendary Kay Yow has returned to the team after her latest battle with breast cancer. Three weeks ago, Yow announced that she would be stepping down indefinitely as State’s head coach while she underwent treatment for a disease she was first diagnosed with 17 years ago. She had a reoccurrence of the disease two years ago, and then again this past November.

“The team is responding as well as they can to Coach Yow’s absence,” Glance told reporters in a teleconference Tuesday. “It’s been very difficult for them as well as the staff, but everyone has made a commitment to step up and to do our best to keep things together and to represent Coach Yow and NC State during her absence.”

The team has actually responded very well on the court, winning five of the six games with Glance in charge. But, for now, winning games has become secondary to getting Yow healthy again.

“When she’s out because of a life threatening disease, I think that makes it tough for everyone,” Glance said.

The interim head coach said her boss is doing as well as can be expected, with some good days and some bad days. She will continue with chemotherapy for a while, then some more tests will be run. As for her return, Glance said the doctors and Yow will make the determination after the tests.

“Her approach to this whole thing is just kind of reflective of her approach to life,” Glance said. “She just takes on obstacles and adversity and just meets them head on and she never gets too high or too low in any situation, that includes the wins and the loses.”

Yow definitely has the respect of everyone around the women’s game. She’s now in her 32nd season at N.C. State, having led the Wolfpack to five regular-season conference titles, 10 Sweet 16 trips and a Final Four appearance. The hall-of-fame coach also guided Team USA to a gold medal in 1988.

But it’s her passion for teaching, as much as coaching, the game that has earned much respect from others

“She’s one of those people who got into the game back when there was really no money, there was no prestige in it, there was no glory in the game,” Mechelle Voepel, who covers women’s basketball for the Kansas City Star and ESPN.com, told ACC Nation. “She got into it because she loves to teach. And if you talk to any of her former players, I think, almost universally, what they’ll say is, she’s a teacher as much as a coach. She’s somebody who always wanted to pass on life lessons as much as basketball lessons.”

In a statement released by the University last week, Yow said there are more good days than bad ones, but it seemed she was more concerned about the pressure placed on her staff by her absence.

“My staff has been able to take a great burden off of me,” Yow said in the statement. “At the same time, it has also been a great burden on them. One of the things about the diagnosis is that it happened so quickly. We didn't really have time to talk about it.”

She first met with her doctor on the Saturday before Thanksgiving and had the results of the tests by the following Tuesday. The team was scheduled to leave Wednesday, Nov. 22, for a two-game road trip out west. Yow didn’t go, and her staff had to take over immediately.

Virginia coach Debbie Ryan battled pancreatic cancer in 2000, and, while she didn’t miss any games, she still had to rely heavily on her staff to do a lot of the things, including recruiting, that she would normally do.

“Obviously a staff is hugely important in a situation like this,” Ryan said when asked about the N.C. State program. “I know that I leaned on my staff when I had to be operated on and treated for cancer. So it’s hugely important to have a very good staff in place. I know that Kay does have an excellent staff and they’re doing a tremendous job and I don’t think she has any worries (about who’s running her team). I think she can step out and take care of her health and then step right back in and she won’t miss a beat.”

In the meantime, the Wolfpack staff will continue to lead the team, which doesn’t play again until Dec. 20. Glance said no timeline has been established for Yow’s return, but that everyone hopes it’s sooner rather than later.

Said Voepel, “I think everybody is very worried and concerned and hopeful that she is back on the sidelines, because she is really one of the … I would say one of the icons of the game because people admire her so much for the person she is as well as the coach she is.”

- Patrick Hite