In 2017, Joye Lee-McNelis started writing her obituary.
The place she was born. Within the southern Mississippi group of Leetown.
Preceded in dying by. Then a clean house, not figuring out if she would die earlier than her dad and mom.
A observe 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. Whereas fascinated with her dying, she targeted on how her life could be remembered. Her husband, Dennis, thought she was loopy. She reassured him she wasn’t involved concerning the act of dying. “I simply wish to plan all of it out,” she instructed him. “There’s no want having you and our youngsters 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. However 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. Each artery in his coronary heart had been bypassed. McNelis, in the meantime, was within the midst of a 3rd 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 could die earlier than you, and you’ll want to know what my songs are going to be,” she instructed him. There was one on each of their lists: “What a Good friend We Have in Jesus.”
The music is an previous gospel hymn. Faith is among the many threads that run via the McNelises. “There’s two issues in our household,” she says, “and that’s trusting God and basketball.”
McNelis grew up on a farm in southern Mississippi. She discovered 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 might be taught to shoot baskets on the grime courtroom the household had stamped out on grass. However earlier than she might 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 couple of weeks after their patio dialog, Louis died. McNelis says, “Issues went south” the earlier night. His respiration was labored till it stopped. McNelis’ dad was her hero. “My past love as a child,” she says. After rising up in Leetown and starring at Southern Miss as a participant, she returned to the realm twenty years in the past to teach nearer to household.
My past love, my hero and largest fan has joined earth to hitch our JESUS. Heartbroken. Funeral Providers for Louis Dempsey Lee, Sr., age 87, of Picayune, MS, who handed away 11/24 Visitation can 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 dying, 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 towards then-No. 19 Ole Miss loomed that Saturday. However her personal struggle, and her staff’s preparations, might wait. She eulogized him and heard their music.
Have trials and temptations?
Is there bother wherever?
We should always by no means be discouraged;
Take it to the Lord in prayer.
McNelis hopes that her most up-to-date chemotherapy session can be her final. To take care of her newest bout of stage 4, the remedies have occurred each three weeks since late September, with every lasting round two hours. The consequences linger for much longer than that. After her first therapy, 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. “After I really feel like I can’t get my head off the pillow,” she says. When she will get actually drained, she typically throws up.
All through all of it McNelis has been resilient. She will get up every day. She says a prayer in mattress and reads devotions together with her espresso. If she’s ready, she makes her method to apply or a recreation. That’s how her dad would have needed her to deal with this season. Across the fitness center. Together with her staff. Instructing, recreation planning, discovering wrinkles the Golden Eagles can assault. When McNelis missed Southern Miss’ contest towards Valparaiso on Nov. 21 to go to him in Forrest Normal Hospital, the place the roof of Reed Inexperienced Coliseum was seen from his hospital room, he repeatedly instructed her, “This doesn’t make sense why you’re laying in mattress with me and your staff’s enjoying.”
“Dad, it’s OK, I’m the place I must be,” she stated she responded.
“Lots of people in life assume that the world can not exist in the event that they’re not in it,” she says. “Nicely, guess what? It might occur. My staff can proceed to run whether or not I’m right here or not. … I’m simply very grateful for the individuals who have supported me and have helped me via it.”
Again 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 up to now, this summer time McNelis was open together with her staff about her prognosis. “The one factor I can promise you is I provides you with my finest. I don’t know what my finest is, however I provides you with my finest,” she stated. In the course of the 2020-21 season, that meant typically teaching whereas hooked as much as a conveyable 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 struggle day-after-day,” senior guard Dominique Davis says. “She’s preventing for her life, and whereas she’s doing that she’s nonetheless preventing to be with us day-after-day.”
McNelis feels referred to as to the sideline. By means of basketball, she seeks to show her gamers about sacrifice. About assertiveness. “To assist them perceive what it takes to dwell a dream,” she says. “It’s our duty to assist them see a path.”
She provides: “You will have decisions to be optimistic or you have got a option to be adverse, and that’s day-after-day you get up. God is providing you with the chance to get up and have one other day.” She cites a Lynn Anderson music’s interpretation of one other passage of scripture.
I by no means promised you a rose backyard.
Together with the sunshine,
There’s gotta be a bit of 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. Main 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, considered one of two senior captains, stated she entered desirous to win particularly badly. For McNelis. For Southern Miss. “With all of this occurring, why not go more durable?” 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 via 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 stored the Golden Eagles’ undefeated season alive and marked their first win over a ranked opponent for the reason that 1999-2000 season.
Within the locker room, gamers doused one another with water. They leaped in euphoria. However the celebration was nonetheless emotionally tough for McNelis. After each recreation, she would name her dad and mom. McNelis FaceTimed together with her mom, Nell, who watched the win on TV, as quickly as she acquired to her telephone. However 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 end result remained on McNelis’ thoughts when she awoke at 7 the subsequent morning. Straight away, she requested her husband, “Is that this actual?”
“Sure, it’s actual,” 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 passion for flowers. One caught out, a Cypress plant that had been a present, already embellished with Christmas ornaments. She thought of how as a baby, 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 therapy for most cancers a 3rd time, others within the basketball group have been a supply of assist. DePaul girls’s basketball gamers and employees signed a poster that learn, “On this battle, no one fights alone.”
At the moment, I obtained a Massive Shock from @CoachBruno, employees and staff.
Introduced tears to my eyes as I considered all the nice reminiscences DEPAUL @DePaulWBBHoops @coachpizzotti VS MEMPHIS. Friendships are eternally in our recreation. Humbled by your thoughtfulness . Thanks #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’ girls’s program, recorded a video backing the motion. So too did Ole Miss’ Yolett McPhee-McCuin.
@UKCoachCalipari | @KentuckyMBB pic.twitter.com/tHJzikllMy
— Southern Miss Woman Eagle Basketball (@SouthernMissWBB) December 3, 2023
These are simply among the small, but significant gestures. With the assist of the varsity, she’s elevating cash for the Hospital Affected person Navigation Program at Forrest Normal to help different most cancers sufferers in want. “I’ve actually been blessed,” she says. “There’s lots of people which were form to me.”
McNelis nonetheless takes medicine. On the finish of the month, she’ll bear a scan to see if she wants extra chemotherapy, and if not, how she’ll course of. However she stated she isn’t afraid of dying. She thinks concerning the celebration. And concerning the hymns she desires performed at her funeral.
I’ll cherish the previous rugged cross,
Until my trophies finally I lay down;
I’ll cling to the previous rugged cross,
And alternate it sometime for a crown.
(High photograph of Joye Lee-McNelis: Courtesy of Southern Miss Athletics)
