Sometimes the big weeks just kind of sneak up on you. Certainly, just a month ago, Debbie Yow had no idea what this week had in store.
She spent yesterday in Indianapolis, the night's scheduled speaker for a large group of NCAA interns. Yow had hoped it wouldn't last too long because she was itching to return to her hotel room, fire up the laptop and check on a basketball score.
Kay Yow, eight years older than Debbie, made her return to coaching last night, rejoining her North Carolina State women's basketball team for the first time since November, when her battle with breast cancer forced her to take indefinite leave from the game.
Even as Debbie Yow was talking with school administrators in recent weeks, hammering out the details of a contract extension that will keep her at the school through 2013, a part of her was somewhere else. Here she was trying to secure her future, each night saying a prayer for her sister's.
"She's a champion," Debbie says of Kay. "I'm just so blessed."
The footprints the Yow family has made on college athletics will be noticed for a long time. Certainly, around College Park, Debbie Yow's work can be seen everywhere: in the trophy cases, the graduation reports, the department's bank account, the talented roster of coaches, in the $125 million Comcast Center and in the planned $50 million renovation of Byrd Stadium. The superlatives are justified.
When Yow first set foot on Maryland's campus in August 1994, no one could have envisioned the success that today threads its way through the 27 Terps programs. The department was $42 million in debt, its teams weren't achieving the level of success its fan base expected and there was no real growth plan in place.
"I am coming to the University of Maryland because I believe that the athletic program can become one of the nation's best," Yow said when she accepted the job. And in the past 12 1/2 years, it really has.
Running an athletic department isn't simple. In fact, there isn't a hat rack big enough. Last night for the group of interns, Yow was a lecturer. Sunday at Comcast Center, she'll be a cheerleader. When she talks to boosters and alums, she's a fundraiser. Whenever she opens a checkbook, she's a chief financial officer. And when a coach wants more job security, she's chief negotiator.
And Yow wears all of these hats as though they were custom-fit for her head.
