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Kay Yow's list of accomplishments was long: high school basketball star, high school coach and teacher, college coach, international coach, ACC champion, Olympic gold medalist, North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame member, cancer fighter, inspiration.

But Yow, who died Saturday in Raleigh after a long battle with cancer, also was a missionary.

The closest Yow came to a scandal was in 1986, when she helped smuggle Bibles into the Soviet Union during the women's basketball world championships.

"This should never have occurred," said William L. Wall, then the executive director of the Amateur Basketball Association of the United States. "I disapprove 100 percent."

Yow, who had recently been named coach of the 1988 U.S. Olympic team, didn't seem to mind. She had revealed her activities to the congregation of Morris Chapel United Methodist Church in Walkertown on Nov. 9, 1986.

She told the church she and her assistants gave the Bibles and other religious materials to members of the Christian underground, who had approached the women as they were sightseeing in Red Square in July 1986 during the Goodwill Games.

In a diary she kept for the News & Record, Yow identified one of the Soviet Christians as "Iya, wonderful Iya."

Yow said the Soviet woman initiated the contact: " 'Americans?' she asked. 'Yes,' we said. 'Christians?' she asked. 'Yes,' we said.

" 'We must talk,' said Iya, a short, frail woman. ' ... We must walk. If we stand here, we will draw attention. We must walk.' "

That's when Iya told Yow and the others, including North Carolina women's coach Sylvia Hatchell, about the needs of the Soviet Christians.

"What a fascinating woman, what a fascinating story," Yow wrote in her diary. "We would walk again with Iya."

Yow told the Walkertown church that Iya was a marked woman, that she couldn't get work because of her faith. She said the Soviet Christians also needed food and clothing.

She said that her Sunday School class in Raleigh had underwritten the Bible project and that a pastor in her hometown of Gibsonville had handled some of the logistics.

Yow said she and others had smuggled the Bibles, translated into the Ukrainian language, into the Soviet Union in an unmarked box.

"We thought we were going to lose that box," Yow said. "We didn't think we were going to get it in. But the box is in."

Hatchell, in a 1986 interview, said Soviet officials didn't check them very closely because they were part of a basketball team. She called the effort low-key.

"We were there, first of all, to win basketball games," Hatchell said at the time. "Kay was cool about it."

Yow said she later learned that others had been arrested for what she and her group had done. They faced a maximum sentence of 20 years.

"I am not sure I will ever take anything for granted again," Yow told the church. "I have to believe that the Lord placed me in the Soviet Union this summer. There were a lot of miracles."

Contact Donald W. Patterson at 373-7027 or don.patterson@news-record.com