It may have happened more than 19 months ago, but the passing of Wittenberg women’s basketball coach Pam Evans Smith is still fresh in the minds of many of the coaches and student-athletes who continue to don the Red and White.

For current head coach Sarah Jurewicz, who played for Smith, the memories came flooding back last Saturday morning when she learned of the passing of North Carolina State basketball coach Kay Yow.

Like Smith, Yow was a tremendously successful college women’s basketball coach who dealt with the scourge of cancer for many years before finally succumbing to the disease. The two were kindred spirits in many ways – between them they won more than 1,100 college basketball games and more than two dozen conference championships, much of the time while suffering from an almost identical form of cancer.

Smith coached at her alma mater for 21 years until her death in June 2007.

Members of the women’s basketball coaching fraternity for years, Smith and Yow naturally became distant friends, although it wasn’t until Yow was recognized at an Athletes in Action event called Night of Champions in Xenia, Ohio, in May 2006 that they sat down face-to-face to discuss their shared experiences.

After Smith’s death a little more than a year later, Jurewicz was asked to speak at the Kay Yow Breast Cancer Fund roll-out event at the April 2008 Women’s Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) national convention. Afterward, Jurewicz and Yow shared a conversation that still means a great deal to the young Wittenberg coach.

Just hours after she learned of Yow’s death, Jurewicz guided her Tigers last weekend to a most unlikely of victories – a dramatic 73-72 home win over North Coast Athletic Conference rival Ohio Wesleyan. After Wittenberg rallied from a double-digit first-half deficit to win the game on a last-second shot from sophomore Katherine Hueter, Jurewicz couldn’t help but think that perhaps more than one guardian angel was looking out for her team.

“There was a confidence in the team on Saturday that I felt was infused by something bigger than the players themselves,” said Jurewicz, who became Wittenberg’s all-time leading scorer under Smith. “In the locker room following the game, I told the team that it was very apropos that they achieved this victory today in such a courageous way – in a way that this program has seen modeled by coach Smith.”

A typically civic-minded Wittenberg graduate, Jurewicz would probably faithfully participate in WBCA breast cancer awareness programs even without her close personal relationship with Smith or her cherished opportunities to meet Yow. She has become more than a bystander, however – she is a full-fledged cancer-awareness advocate, not only organizing but actively promoting events like the February 14 Pink Zone event scheduled for the Tigers’ home game against Wooster.

“Both coach Smith and coach Yow would love to know that the basketball community is rallying around such an enormously important cause,” Jurewicz said. “Both women, being unbelievable pillars of strength within their respective communities, would be proud to know that we will continue to celebrate their lives by trying to raise awareness and make others’ lives better.”

Pink Zone, a program started in 2007 under the name Think Pink, is the WBCA’s “global, unified effort…to assist in raising breast cancer awareness on the court, across campuses, in communities and beyond.” More than 1,000 colleges and high schools participated in the program during the 2007-08 basketball season, including Wittenberg, which recognized breast cancer survivors during a halftime tribute ceremony.

The event will annually pay tribute to Smith, and will be held in the arena that was named a year ago in Smith’s memory. All gate receipts from each year’s Pink Zone game are donated to Wittenberg’s Pam Evans Smith Memorial Fund, which now has grown to more than $75,000 and provides scholarships to deserving female senior students who demonstrate leadership and academic abilities.

T-shirts will be sold again at this year’s Pink Zone event, and a breast cancer awareness information table will offer literature. The event will also coincide this year with Take a Kid to the Game Day, a new initiative by the university’s student-athlete advisory committee.

Ryan Mauer is sports information director at Wittenberg.