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Before she became a star, Kay Yow was just a girl playing horse on Gibsonville basketball courts with her friends.

Euell "Buzz" Griggs played the game a lot with Yow in the '40s and '50s.

"When we were growing up, there wasn't much to do except play ball," Griggs said. "She was like a sister," Griggs said. "We were all kin because our town was so small."

Gibsonville is mourning the loss of Yow, the N.C. State women's basketball coach, who died Saturday after a long fight with breast cancer.

"Anybody from Gibsonville, they talk about her with pride," Mayor Lenny Williams said. "We're all saddened this day. There's no question about it."

On four main roads into Gibsonville, signs welcome visitors to the "Home of Kay Yow."

Griggs said they'd play horse on the basketball courts outside Gibsonville United Methodist Church, which they attended as children, and Gibsonville High School, from where they graduated in 1960.

Hilton and Lib Yow raised the coach and her three siblings on Dick Street.

Yow was "straight-laced ... brought up in a Christian home," Griggs said.

In high school, she showed herself to be a natural leader.

Yow was the senior class president and yearbook editor and involved herself in many other activities. Classmates voted her most athletic and best all-around student.

"There was just never a shadow of a doubt in my mind that she'd be successful in her life," said former classmate Peggy Stallings, who lives in Graham.

Watching Yow coach, "you just feel your chest well with pride," Stallings said. "She does it with style, she does it with grace, she does it with caring."

Yow, who won five ACC championships and four ACC tournament titles and helped the United States win two Olympic gold medals, among other accomplishments, never forgot her roots or her childhood friends.

The 1960 graduating class, just 50 students, has stayed close. Every five years, the classmates have a reunion in Gibsonville. If Yow was in the Piedmont, she'd attend.

"Her roots were very important to her, as well as all of us," Stallings said.

Yow's friends also reflected on her strong faith.

"I want people to remember her as a basketball coach, but her character was so important, too, and her faith," said Charles Hursey, who lives in Elon.

At one class reunion, Hursey recalled, Yow said she really wanted to win a national championship, but if she had to choose, she'd rather lead one of her players to God.

"That goes to show what kind of faith she had," Hursey said.

And like people everywhere, people with ties to Gibsonville were impressed by Yow's fight against cancer.

"When I look at how she handled herself, I think she's been a great inspiration, especially to people with cancer," said Williams, a cancer survivor.

At the next class reunion, Yow's former classmates will set out an empty chair in her honor, Stallings said.

"I think Kay will always be a part of our lives," she said. "I think we'll remember her with great pride and a lot of love."

A public viewing will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday with the funeral to follow at 3 p.m. at Colonial Baptist Church in Cary. The burial will take place at 10 a.m. Saturday at the Gibsonville Cemetery. Donations may be made to the Kay Yow/WBCA Cancer Fund.

Contact Jamie Kennedy Jones at jamie.kennedy@news-record.com or 449-4610.