Joye Lee-McNelis still finds a way to smile through it.
The longtime Southern Miss women’s basketball coach sat down to endure her third of four chemotherapy treatments at Forrest General Cancer Center to combat her third battle with lung cancer last Wednesday.
But McNelis is encouraged for two reasons, and the first is that she feels fortunate. Yes, fortunate.
She’s fortunate that she still gets to live her dream of coaching college basketball at her dream school. The other reason is that she looks forward to watching her team playing an exhibition game later in the night.
“I love the game, and I love what I do,” McNelis said as she reflected back on why she still chooses to coach despite another cancer diagnosis.
The Pine Belt News shadowed McNelis as she underwent her most recent chemo treatment and the five days leading up to the Lady Eagles’ season-opener against William Carey. With Southern Miss coming off a season that included 21 wins and a share of the regular-season Sun Belt title, this year’s expectations have been significantly raised.
As McNelis bounces from place to place, the love, respect and admiration she commands from the people she touches offers a testament to her impact.
“I’M PRAYING FOR HER”
McNelis and her husband arrive late to their scheduled 8 a.m. appointment due to receiving a call from her cardiologist, who requests an unexpected appointment for 1 p.m. later that day.
But for now, the coach heads to the second floor of cancer center for her two-hour chemo treatment.
When McNelis and her husband Dennis walk through the doors, they rarely meet strangers. McNelis is greeted by some familiar faces and some unfamiliar who her treat as if they have known her for years.
Sitting across from McNelis in the waiting room is an older woman sitting with her presumed husband, who tells the basketball coach about a recent interview of hers that she loved. The two share a casual conversation about their doctors in a waiting room filled with hats and beanies meant to warm the heads of balding cancer patients on a chilly 37-degree morning.
The woman, proudly from Bay Springs, casually mentions that she’s battling breast cancer and that it has spread all over her body. The two carry on their conversation about chemotherapy before McNelis is called to see her doctor.
Not much later, the older woman’s name is called. As she leaves, she tells the reporter writing in his notes, “Please tell her I’m praying for her.”
After she leaves, a clanging of metal against the floor is heard. It’s a man in a yellow jumpsuit wearing handcuffs with a pair of armed guards escorting him to the waiting room. The older prisoner and his escort find something to laugh about despite the circumstances, but still, the image is a reminder that cancer has no boundaries.
The only part of her time in the hospital that McNelis despises is being injected with needles, and for each shot, her body tenses.
“This is the day that’s helping you heal,” she says. “When I come in here for chemo, it helps me lift my spirits about myself because I know I’m not as bad as I may be.”
Normally, McNelis plans her future tasks in a binder that puts college textbooks to shame. The binder helps her coordinate her basketball life, her cancer treatment, and the responsibilities of caring for two parents, Louis and Nell Lee, who are 87 and 82 years old. Her father has Parkinson's and a history with heart disease leading to several open-heart surgeries, while her mother is on an oxygen tank due to congestive heart failure and chronic respiratory issues. But both still make it to their daughter’s Lady Eagle basketball games.
The care she gives her parents and the time she has spent inside of hospitals for her cancer treatments through the years led her to learn about elderly patients who are forced to miss cancer treatment appointments because they are unable to drive. This inspired McNelis to help promote Forrest General’s Navigation Program, designed to provide patients with a form of transportation to their hospital appointments.
After chemo, McNelis meets with her second doctor and learns that she now has aortic stenosis, which is when the aortic valve narrows, and blood flow to her heart does not flow properly. It will require either surgery or a procedure, but because McNelis is receiving chemotherapy, her immune system is too weak to handle surgery. At the time of publication, her doctors are still trying to figure out a course of action.
Later that night, McNelis finally gets to watch basketball, although her chemo treatment keeps her off the court. The Lady Eagles make quick work of Mississippi College as McNelis writes down notes throughout the game.
Yet the victory on the court is somewhat short-lived as she breaks the news about her health to her coaching staff in a brief meeting after the game.
AN EXPERIENCED STAFF
After the team enjoys a day off, the program gets back to work on Friday to prepare for William Carey.
It’s a good day for McNelis, not only because she physically feels well, but because her job is an escape from her health problems.
Her coaching staff, which consists of Jack Trosper, Barbara Farris, Jessica Barber, and Director of Operations Mack Gardner, is arguably the most experienced group of assistant coaches in the Sun Belt, as every single member boasts head coaching and college coaching experience. They are the main reason why she can take needed breaks without any mental stress.
Barber and Farris were both hired this past spring, but watching the entire group break down the film and interact with one another, one might think they have been together for years.
Luckily, on Friday, instead of having to run to the bathroom because of nausea from the chemo, a regular issue since the beginning of McNelis’ treatment, she can instead enjoy some of the little moments. After watching film with the team, Gardner hands out ornaments the group made during their glass-blowing Halloween party.
Elle Blatchford holds the door for an injured teammate but instead drops the newly made ornament. Without hesitation, assistant Jessica Barber yells, ‘Two hands Ella!’ The red-faced freshman scrambles out of the room in an embarrassed hurry.
McNelis then leads her team’s practice with the aid of a medical mask to protect her weakened immune system and the occasional need to sit in a chair as she coaches. It’s uncommon for her team to verbally acknowledge the battle McNelis endures.
But they show they care. Midway through the two-hour practice, junior guard Brikayla Gray, without thought, runs over to tie her head coach’s shoe.
“My mother had breast cancer twice,” Farris said. “I had a grandmother that had lung cancer twice, so I know what chemo and radiation does to the body and how it makes you more susceptible to everything.
“Despite how broken down and battered her body might feel, she finds a feeling of peace being here where she’s not thinking about that. In her mind, it gives her kind of like a comfort and distraction.”
By the end of practice, McNelis’ body is exhausted, and she takes a nap on her couch before going home and falling asleep at an early 7:30 p.m.
“I try to make decisions that she would want us to make and to kind of take some of that off of her plate,” Barber said. “She loves taking care of the players. She loves the Xs and Os. She loves all of it. If we can put out little bitty fires before they get to her, then she can focus on loving our players more versus disciplining them.”
McNelis needs extra sleep because of her weakened state from the chemo treatment. She can take it without guilt because she has a clear mind, knowing that her assistant coaches can keep the program running smoothly. On Saturday, McNelis is too nauseated to leave home, which she knew was to be expected.
McNelis constantly battles a cycle of fatigue and nausea with her diet, mostly consisting of saltine crackers and Sprite. Since starting chemo, she has struggled to keep food down. As a result, she is more fatigued than she already would be.
“I think this one has been more physically taxing because of the chemo,” said Trosper, who was on the staff during her second battle with cancer. “It’s just tough to watch when her body is not allowing her to be here.”
From an Xs and Os standpoint, Trosper, who filled in for McNelis on Wednesday, is her right-hand man. But each coach finds a way to aid McNelis, whether it be holding players accountable, watching film individually, recruiting or telling their boss that she needs to give her body a break.
“Even when she is here, it’s a collaboration of all of our ideas,” Trosper said. “I think a lot of it sounds like if Coach McNellis was here because a lot of our ideas and what we want to do have been discussed.
“I think Coach is a reminder that life is bigger than just basketball.”
FAMILY JOINS THE FIGHT
With McNelis home on Saturday, her son Connor takes advantage of the time.
Connor, who is now an unpaid volunteer assistant at Southern Miss, quit his job as an assistant coach at Arkansas State this past October to take care of his mother and grandparents.
“Family is important,” Connor said. “With as much as my grandparents come (to Hattiesburg) for hospital visits and stuff like that, just being able to take care of them takes a little load off of her, to where she can relax and rest more.”
He spends the day moving the rest of his belongings from Jonesboro back to Hattiesburg. Altogether, it’s 10 hours of driving, not including the amount of time it takes to load the rest of his belongings in a U-Haul. It’s a bittersweet decision since he has put his career on hold so that he can return home. But even as little as driving his mom to work is worth it for him.
On the court, having Connor as an unpaid volunteer is worth its weight in gold, given that he has four years of experience coaching in Division I basketball.
“I’ll have opportunities in the future to find another job,” Connor said. “You can’t take back this time. If something really severe bad were to happen, I would want to be here.”
McNelis’ daughter, Whitney, is also like a coach, but in the health profession. Whitney happens to work as a nurse practitioner with radiation oncology, which works closely with same field of medicine her mother has to see for her cancer.
Whitney not only regularly checks on her mom’s health but was able to simplify the medical terminology for her mom and dad when she joined her parents on Wednesday’s doctor meeting.
“I try to keep a good face for her,” Whitney said. “I try to keep my emotional stuff down. I have my moments, but I tried to keep it together for her and not show her my emotions. My husband gets all that.”
As Whitney checked in on her mom during Wednesday’s chemo treatment, her smile and positivity help cover up the fact that she was the one to break the news to her mother that her cancer returned for a third time. But when asked if she thought it would be best for her mom to step down, it was a notion she quickly shot down.
“I couldn’t see my mom stepping away,” Whitney said. “Yeah, there are times that I wish she would slow down some for her own good.
“For her to just sit at home would probably be more harm to her than it would good. It’s like what I say to my patients when they ask me if they should stop working. And the answer is no. We want you to be as active as possible.”
GAMEDAY
With an 11 a.m. tip on Monday, McNelis uses extra hours to sleep so that she can be rested while her staff arrives at 7 a.m. to ensure things run smoothly.
As pregame arrives, McNelis’ speech to her team is simple but effective. She tells them to, “stay true to yourself and true to your team.” They are words that she embodies herself.
Throughout the week, she or her staff never said a word about her health to use as motivation. The medical mask she wears as she recaps the game plan is the only reminder the team needs that they are playing for something bigger.
Right before tipoff, in a span of minutes, every reason she continues the fight against her cancer passes her by.
She reviews her playbook one more time and then meets and says a prayer with her mentor and former longtime Southern Miss coach Kay James. Together, the duo still find reasons to thank God together.
Finally, she hugs her grandkids, and Connor tucks in her shirt to make sure she looks ready before she finally steps on the court to embark on her 20th season as head coach with the program.
“I don’t consider this work,” McNelis says after an 88-46 win against William Carey. “Southern Miss Lady Eagle basketball is a large part of who I am.
“At the age of 15, my dream was to play college basketball at Southern Miss. I’m 61 years old, and I still get to live my dream. Not many people can say that.”
To donate to Forrest General’s Navigation Program click the link here.
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