On New’s Year’s Eve of 2003, I had a chance to combine work with pleasure and take a little road trip as a bonus. I traveled to Raleigh to cover the Appalachian State women’s basketball team as they took on the Wolfpack of North Carolina State in a mid-season non-conference game. The trip also afforded me a chance to spend the night in Chapel Hill with old friends on New Year’s Eve.

If you’ve followed ACC and Southern Conference basketball for any length of time, you realize that SoCon teams play teams like Carolina, Duke and N.C. State mainly for the exposure and for that rare shot at an upset.

That an upset was not in the making became clear very early in the first half of the game at Reynolds Coliseum that New Year’s Eve. First-year head coach Adrienne Shuler had mentally prepared her hoopsters to play N.C. State, they just didn’t have the physical size and speed to compete with the Wolfpack that day.

N.C. State head basketball coach Kay Yow, seen here speaking to the crowd at Reynolds Coliseum on Dec. 31, 2003, died of breast cancer last weekend at the age of 66. Her high profile struggle with the disease increased awareness and raised thousands of dollars to combat and treat breast cancer. Photo by Jeff Eason

The final score was NC State 82, ASU 42. Despite the lopsided margin of victory, both squads played hard and both coaches used the opportunity to see what kind of talent they had on the bench.

After the game, I packed up my camera and pulled out my tape recorder for the interview part of the assignment. Reporters were ushered into a small old classroom adjacent to the arena part of Reynolds Coliseum to ask coaches and players some post-game questions about turnovers (they’re against them), rebounds (they indicated they needed to block out better), and the rest of the season (they need to get better before the conference tournament).

Despite the fact that I was the only reporter covering the Mountaineers that day, and despite the fact that all the other reporters wanted to talk to the NC State coach, and despite the fact that Adrienne Shuler was a rookie coach at ASU—despite all of these things, Coach Kay Yow insisted that Adrienne Shuler, as the guest coach, answer questions first.

When Shuler was done with questions, Yow thanked her for bringing her team to Raleigh and then took the podium to answer questions. During the interview she treated everyone the same. She didn’t care if you were from The Mountain Times or The New York Times, she remained cordial and respectful and answered her questions as such.

The way Kay Yow treated Coach Shuler and the reporters that day five years ago always struck me as what college sports is all about. Or at least what it’s supposed to be about. You have to remember, at that time she was already a Hall of Fame coach with over 600 wins to her credit. She had also coached the U.S. women’s basketball team to a gold medal in the 1988 Olympics despite being diagnosed with breast cancer in 1987.

After a twenty-plus year battle with breast cancer, Kay Yow died early on Saturday, January 24, 2009. She was 66.

I only met her that one time but her courtesy and grace made a singular impression on me. It was only later that I learned of her courageous struggle against cancer. She used her 34-year college coaching career and Hall of Fame status as a springboard to both increase awareness about breast cancer and raise money to find a cure for the disease.

Earlier this week Bill Clinton, whose mother Virginia Clinton Kelly died of breast cancer at the age of 71, spoke in Raleigh of Yow’s fight with cancer and abilities as a basketball coach. “I admired her enormously,” said Clinton who was in the state capitol to speak about national and international policy.

Sadly, many victims of breast cancer don’t live to be 66 or 71. It can strike much earlier and without early detection can be incurable. Linda McCartney, musician and wife of Beatle Paul McCartney, succumbed to the disease when she was just 56. Paul’s mum, Mary Mohin McCartney died of breast cancer when her son was only 14.

Hattie McDaniel, the first African-American actor to win an Academy Award, died of the disease at age 57. She won the Oscar for her portrayal of Mammy in Gone With the Wind and appeared in over 300 films. Another Oscar winner, the beautiful and witty Judy Holiday, was lost to us at age 43. She won the Best Actress Oscar for the role of Billie in the 1950 film Born Yesterday and also played Doris in one of my favorites of all time, Adam’s Rib.

The list of other notable women who died prematurely due to breast cancer includes Cecilia de la Hoya (mother of boxer Oscar de la Hoya) at age 35, actress Jill Ireland at age 54, and singer Minnie Ripperton at age 31.

Fortunately, it seems as if awareness about the disease is leading many women to have frequent checkups, mammograms and blood tests. The list of famous women who have survived the disease includes Brigette Bardot, Suzanne Somers, Sheryl Crow, Christina Applegate, Olivia Newton John, former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Gloria Steinem and many, many others.

For the remainder of the college basketball season you are going to see tributes to the faith and spirit of Kay Yow in the form of pink uniforms, pink basketball shoes and pink ribbons worn by players and fans of college basketball.

So if you see me wearing pink any time soon, it’s not because I look good in the color but because I’m trying to honor Kay Yow and breast cancer survivors everywhere. On second thought, maybe I do look good in pink.