In 2017, Joye Lee-McNelis started writing her obituary.
Where she was born. In the southern Mississippi group of Leetown.
Preceded in death by. Then a clean area, not realizing if she would die earlier than her dad and mom.
A be aware of because of her household, to the gamers she had coached, to the staffs she had labored with and the administrations she had labored for.
McNelis had been recognized with stage 4 lung most cancers. While fascinated by her death, she centered on how her life can be remembered. Her husband, Dennis, thought she was loopy. She reassured him she wasn’t involved concerning the act of dying. “I just want to plan it all out,” she instructed him. “There’s no need having you and our children worrying about it.” She needed it to really feel like a celebration.
McNelis is now 61 and in her twentieth season as Southern Mississippi’s head coach. She hasn’t seemed again at what she wrote. But one afternoon earlier this fall, McNelis and her father, Louis, sat outdoors on her patio speaking about their potential funerals. Louis, 87, had Parkinson’s illness and congestive coronary heart failure. Every artery in his coronary heart had been bypassed. McNelis, in the meantime, was within the midst of a third struggle with lung most cancers. Her second got here in late 2020. Having been recognized once more in August, this time, for the primary time, she was present process chemotherapy.
They talked about tombstones. McNelis’ dad and mom had already bought and arrange theirs. McNelis realized she most likely can purchase hers too, simply to be ready.
Their dialog turned to music. When she wrote her obituary six years earlier, she jotted down songs she needed sung at her funeral. “I may die before you, and you need to know what my songs are going to be,” she instructed him. There was one on each of their lists: “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”
The track is an outdated gospel hymn. Religion is among the many threads that run by way of the McNelises. “There’s two things in our family,” she says, “and that is trusting God and basketball.”
McNelis grew up on a farm in southern Mississippi. She realized to hitch a trailer and to bottle-feed calves. Louis, who listened to ministers on cassette tapes each night, instructed her if she needed to get out of doing work on their land, she may be taught to shoot baskets on the dust courtroom the household had stamped out on grass. But earlier than she may take any jumpers, McNelis needed to run the household’s cows off the courtroom and shovel the manure they left behind.
On Nov. 24, a few weeks after their patio dialog, Louis died. McNelis says, “Things went south” the earlier night. His respiratory was labored till it stopped. McNelis’ dad was her hero. “My first love as a kid,” she says. After rising up in Leetown and starring at Southern Miss as a participant, she returned to the realm 20 years in the past to coach nearer to household.
My past love, my hero and largest fan has joined earth to hitch our JESUS. Heartbroken. Funeral Services for Louis Dempsey Lee, Sr., age 87, of Picayune, MS, who handed away 11/24 Visitation might be Monday, 11/27 11:00 -1:00 pm at Lee’s Chapel #2 Missionary Baptist Church. pic.twitter.com/tW3aFqbuct
— Joye Lee-McNelis (@CoachMcNelis) November 25, 2023
The Monday after his death, in close by Picayune, his funeral was held at Lee’s Chapel #2 Baptist Church. Her fourth chemotherapy session was scheduled for the subsequent day. Southern Miss’ matchup in opposition to then-No. 19 Ole Miss loomed that Saturday. But her personal struggle, and her staff’s preparations, may wait. She eulogized him and heard their track.
Have trials and temptations?
Is there bother wherever?
We ought to by no means be discouraged;
Take it to the Lord in prayer.
McNelis hopes that her most up-to-date chemotherapy session might be her final. To cope with her newest bout of stage 4, the remedies have occurred each three weeks since late September, with every lasting round two hours. The results linger for much longer than that. After her first remedy, she was a “sick cat” for 2 weeks. She felt the second’s affect for 9 days. On Day 8, she began feeling higher following her third. Six days after her fourth session, she lastly felt like she would have a “good day.”
It’s the nausea and fatigue that weigh on her. “When I feel like I can’t get my head off the pillow,” she says. When she will get actually drained, she generally throws up.
Throughout all of it McNelis has been resilient. She will get up every day. She says a prayer in mattress and reads devotions with her espresso. If she’s in a position, she makes her approach to observe or a recreation. That’s how her dad would have needed her to deal with this season. Around the gymnasium. With her staff. Teaching, recreation planning, discovering wrinkles the Golden Eagles can assault. When McNelis missed Southern Miss’ contest in opposition to Valparaiso on Nov. 21 to go to him in Forrest General Hospital, the place the roof of Reed Green Coliseum was seen from his hospital room, he repeatedly instructed her, “This doesn’t make sense why you’re laying in bed with me and your team’s playing.”
“Dad, it’s OK, I’m where I need to be,” she stated she responded.
“A lot of people in life think that the world cannot exist if they’re not in it,” she says. “Well, guess what? It can happen. My team can continue to run whether I’m here or not. … I’m just very grateful for the people who have supported me and have helped me through it.”
Back in August, a PET scan revealed areas of exercise in her left lung. Her docs have been shocked when her most cancers returned. For greater than two years, she believed she was in remission. All her scans had come again clear, till they didn’t any longer.
McNelis led Southern Miss to a program- and career-defining upset of Ole Miss. (Courtesy of Southern Miss Athletics)
Like she had been previously, this summer time McNelis was open with her staff about her prognosis. “The one thing I can promise you is I will give you my best. I don’t know what my best is, but I will give you my best,” she stated. During the 2020-21 season, that meant generally teaching whereas hooked as much as a moveable oxygen concentrator. She has missed a number of shootarounds this yr to protect her power and sleep as a lot as she will.
“We watch Coach fight every day,” senior guard Dominique Davis says. “She’s fighting for her life, and while she’s doing that she’s still fighting to be with us every day.”
McNelis feels referred to as to the sideline. Through basketball, she seeks to show her gamers about sacrifice. About assertiveness. “To help them understand what it takes to live a dream,” she says. “It is our responsibility to help them see a path.”
She provides: “You have choices to be positive or you have a choice to be negative, and that’s every day you wake up. God is giving you the opportunity to wake up and have another day.” She cites a Lynn Anderson track’s interpretation of one other passage of scripture.
I by no means promised you a rose backyard.
Along with the sunshine,
There’s gotta be a little rain someday.
Saturday, Southern Miss hosted in-state foe Ole Miss in its lung most cancers consciousness recreation. McNelis’ oncologist, Dr. Bo Hrom, served because the Golden Eagles’ honorary coach. Leading as much as tipoff, McNelis’ ideas about her father have been interspersed with questions associated to the competition — the largest being, how are we going to attain?
Davis, one in all two senior captains, stated she entered eager to win particularly badly. For McNelis. For Southern Miss. “With all of this going on, why not go harder?” Davis says.
The Rebels led by 4 factors after the primary quarter and performed their opponent even within the second. Ole Miss stretched its result in 11 halfway by way of the third, however the Golden Eagles clawed again and trailed by solely 5 heading into the ultimate 10 minutes. Southern Miss’ protection stiffened within the fourth quarter, permitting simply 10 factors. Davis completed with a game-high 25 factors, together with an acrobatic layup with 15 seconds to play to offer a three-point lead Southern Miss wouldn’t relinquish. The win saved the Golden Eagles’ undefeated season alive and marked their first win over a ranked opponent because the 1999-2000 season.
In the locker room, gamers doused one another with water. They leaped in euphoria. But the celebration was nonetheless emotionally troublesome for McNelis. After each recreation, she would name her dad and mom. McNelis FaceTimed with her mom, Nell, who watched the win on TV, as quickly as she received to her telephone. But she couldn’t inform her dad about Davis’ late basket, or freshman guard Morgan Sieper’s game-high 4 3-pointers, or junior guard Nyla Jean’s steal to seal the win.
The consequence remained on McNelis’ thoughts when she awoke at 7 the subsequent morning. Right away, she requested her husband, “Is this real?”
“Yes, it’s real,” he replied.
“It was a historic win and my week was an emotional whirlwind,” she says.
She seemed round her home and noticed numerous bouquets that had been dropped off at her father’s wake earlier within the week. Like her father, McNelis has a fondness for flowers. One caught out, a Cypress plant that had been a present, already adorned with Christmas ornaments. She thought of how as a youngster, she and her two youthful brothers would go into the woods with their dad and mom to search for a Christmas tree.
This fall, whereas McNelis has obtained remedy for most cancers a third time, others within the basketball group have been a supply of help. DePaul ladies’s basketball gamers and employees signed a poster that learn, “In this battle, nobody fights alone.”
Today, I obtained a Big Surprise from @CoachBruno, employees and staff.
Brought tears to my eyes as I considered all the nice recollections DEPAUL @DePaulWBBHoops @coachpizzotti VS MEMPHIS. Friendships are ceaselessly in our recreation. Humbled by your thoughtfulness . Thank you #mcnelisstrong pic.twitter.com/qkNGj9VuqG— Joye Lee-McNelis (@CoachMcNelis) November 18, 2023
Texas coach Vic Schaefer had #McNelisStrong T-shirts made for his program. Kentucky males’s basketball coach John Calipari, who coached at Memphis whereas McNelis led the Tigers’ ladies’s program, recorded a video backing the motion. So too did Ole Miss’ Yolett McPhee-McCuin.
@UKCoachCalipari | @KentuckyMBB pic.twitter.com/tHJzikllMy
— Southern Miss Lady Eagle Basketball (@SouthernMissWBB) December 3, 2023
Those are simply among the small, but significant gestures. With the help of the varsity, she’s elevating cash for the Hospital Patient Navigation Program at Forrest General to help different most cancers sufferers in want. “I have truly been blessed,” she says. “There’s a lot of people that have been kind to me.”
McNelis nonetheless takes remedy. At the tip of the month, she’ll bear a scan to see if she wants further chemotherapy, and if not, how she’ll course of. But she stated she isn’t afraid of death. She thinks concerning the celebration. And concerning the hymns she needs performed at her funeral.
I’ll cherish the outdated rugged cross,
Till my trophies finally I lay down;
I’ll cling to the outdated rugged cross,
And alternate it sometime for a crown.
(Top photograph of Joye Lee-McNelis: Courtesy of Southern Miss Athletics)
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