Born March 14, 1942, Sandra Kay Yow originally took up coaching to secure a job teaching high school English at Allen Jay High School in High Point in the 1960s. She spent four years there followed by another year in her hometown at Gibsonville High. She moved on to Elon, going 57-19 in four seasons before being hired at N.C. State in 1975.

Her original cancer diagnosis came the year before coaching the United States to the gold in the Seoul Olympics. She had a mastectomy as part of her treatment, then discovered a lump in November 2004 close to where cancer was first discovered. She had surgery that December and started on a regimen of radiation and daily hormone therapy. Still, the cancer came back again and again.

She missed two games of the 2004-05 season while attending an eight-day nutritional modification program, which called on her to eat an organic-food diet free of meat, dairy products and sugar. She stayed on the diet for eight months, losing 40 pounds.

Still, she cheated on her organic diet during home recruiting visits because she didn’t want to offend anyone by passing on a home-cooked meal.

Over the years, Yow never lost her folksy, easygoing manner, and refused to dwell on her illness, though it colored everything she did almost as much as basketball. Ultimately, her philosophy on both were the same.

“If you start to dwell on the wrong things, it’ll take you down fast,” Yow said in ’07. “Every morning, I wake up and the first thing I think of is I’m thankful. I’m thankful for another day.”

Yow is survived by a brother, Ronnie, and sisters, Debbie and Susan. Debbie Yow is the athletics director at Maryland and Susan Yow is the coach at Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina.

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Mark J. Terrill / AP

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