Playing for Keeps : Darlene May Won So Many Battles on Court, but Now Cancer Is Her Toughest Opponent

By ARA NAJARIAN

Aug. 20, 1994 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

It’s haunting.

Darlene May did everything right.

She has always done everything right. You don’t get 500 coaching victories and three national titles any other way.

Almost by herself, she coached the Cal Poly Pomona women’s basketball program into national prominence.

But it doesn’t mean anything now.

May learned last month that she has breast cancer, that it has spread to her liver, that she has six months to five years to live.

Cancer?

It didn’t seem possible. At 53, she exercised religiously, ate well and was in great health. She has never smoked, didn’t drink to excess.

Breast cancer didn’t seem possible. She’d had a mammogram last year. Same as every year.

Sometimes, it doesn’t seem real, even now. It would have been discovered before. How could this happen? Dammit --she did everything right.

But it wasn’t anything she did.

A year ago, May came home and found a message to call her doctor regarding her mammogram. That could only mean bad news.

It was too late to call that evening, though, and May didn’t sleep much that night.

When morning finally came, May called.

“No problem, you’re fine,” the nurse told her.

May remembers that call perfectly because the information she got was perfectly wrong.

The test result had remarks written by the radiologist: Instruct the patient to follow up with more specific tests.

Whether the person on the other end had looked at the wrong chart or read it incorrectly, the wrong information was given.

Shortly thereafter, May’s doctor died of a heart attack. May theorizes that he never saw her mammogram results. When she found another doctor, his office assumed that she had followed up as directed by the radiologist’s notes.

But May never knew about the notes.

Had she known, she could have had surgery to remove the cancer before it spread.

“If I have any message,” May said softly, still weak from chemotherapy treatments three days earlier, “it is: You get tests taken regularly and ask to look at the results.”

May, who declined to discuss whether she was considering legal action, now lives in Oregon, near doctors and facilities she trusts.

If she was coaching, she would be back in her routine: In the office by 8 every morning, in the gym shortly after that, setting up schedules, making sure players have classes and wading through the paper work.

In Oregon, she has no routine.

“I just wake up thanking God that I’m still here,” she said. “I took so much for granted for so long. It’s tough--I’m just so scared, basically.

“I wake up and ask, ‘Is this still here? Yes it is, it didn’t go away this morning. . . . It didn’t go away overnight. . . .”

Anyone who knows someone who has cancer knows it is not a good fight.

The odds are not good.

The chemo treatment is hell.

Essentially, you take poison to kill the cancer cells. They tell you it’s in tiny amounts, but it makes you sick.

In the short term, the recovery from chemotherapy is awful.

Imagine going into a room with 20 other cancer patients once every three weeks, so you can have three needles stuck into your arm, or depending on your cancer, an intravenous drip of saline solution and drugs to kill the fastest-growing cells in your body.

That’s why your hair falls out--hair grows quickly.

You have to be brave to pick up your hair and look in the mirror. By then you know the truth even if you feel fine.

You’re fighting a monster.

So you keep going to treatments every two or three weeks.

You do this knowing that for 72 hours afterward you might suffer severe headaches, fever and vomiting--as long as you have something to vomit. Then it’s just retching. The sleep you get is born of exhaustion.

You’ll get anti-nausea medicine, but it’s overmatched.

After three days, you’ll feel better. But you’ll still be exhausted. Then you get to look forward to your next treatment.

The battle becomes mentally exhausting.

It makes you appreciate a good game of cards.

Twenty-one years ago, May was hired to coach women’s basketball at Cal Poly Pomona.

“Actually I kind of stumbled into coaching,” she said. The former coach (Judy Brame) took another job (at Cal State Northridge), and I knew some people. No one had the job and it was getting pretty late, so they called me in August and asked if I was interested. I was, but I didn’t know what to expect.”

She only knew that she loved the game, was intense and hated to lose.

She did very little of that.

May took over a team that had been 6-16 in 1973-74 and turned it into a 16-6 team. The next season, Pomona was 20-6.

Then things really started to roll.

In the third year, the Broncos joined the conference they dominated for the next 18 years, the Southern California Athletic Assn., which became the California Collegiate Athletic Assn. in 1981.

May’s conference record is 195 victories and eight losses.

“When I looked at that the other day, even I thought, ‘Oh my, that’s a heck of a record,’ ” May said. “I think people can get to 500 victories by hanging around long enough, but that conference record is pretty good. A lot of people will have trouble doing better than that.”

She got her 100th victory in only her fourth season. And she averaged 26 victories a season in building a 519-119 overall record.

Only two other women’s basketball coaches have more than 500 victories, Pat Summitt of Tennessee and Jody Conradt of Texas.

In 1982, May won the first of three national titles.

“That really has to be the high point--it was so special,” May said. “The first one is always different for some reason. I remember walking off the court with my arm around (former player) Jackie White, happy as two hogs in mud.”

Although the team lost seven games with its 28 victories that season, May says it might have been the best in terms of talent and what the players got out of their talent.

“There were very few teams that could have beaten us that year and I don’t care what division,” she said. “We were good and we played at a very high level.”

May’s teams won titles again in 1985 and ’86 and finished second three other times. Pomona remains the only team to have earned berths in every NCAA women’s tournament at any level.

“In my eyes, she is a legend,” said La Habra’s Paula Tezak, who played for May on the championship teams of 1985 and ’86. “I was close to her as a player. She would do anything she could for her players and we felt that we would do anything for her.”

That was the attitude that bred such success.

Four of May’s players were chosen Division II player of the year, White in 1983, Vickie Mitchell in ‘86, Debra Larsen in ‘87, and Cathy Gooden in ’89. White, Mitchell and Larsen were selected to the NCAA Division II all-decade team as well. Sixteen of May’s players were selected as All-Americans.

“Coaches like Darlene May come along about once in a lifetime,” said Karen Miller, Pomona’s athletic director. “Her contributions to women’s basketball and women’s athletics are too immense to measure.”

That has not gone unrecognized. May has won two Women’s Basketball Coaches Assn. (WBCA) national-coach-of-the-year awards and been voted CCAA coach of the year four times.

Significant indeed, but not good enough to earn places on her wall.

That’s for the Olympics.

May also is a widely respected and experienced basketball referee. Her officiating career reached a high point when she was selected to work the South Korea-Australia women’s basketball game in the 1984 Olympics.

That made her the first woman to referee an Olympic basketball game.

The Olympics are special for her because records might be broken, but no one will replace her as the first woman basketball referee.

As usual, she did everything right and was subsequently selected to referee the bronze-medal game between China and Canada.

“That had a lot of meaning,” May said. “It was something that I worked a long time for--traveling to a lot of countries and working international games. It may sound glamorous, but believe me, there’s nothing glamorous about being the only woman referee, stuck with all foreigners who are yelling at you, and every one being a man.”

Her experience as a referee helped make May one of the game’s most knowledgeable coaches. Her teams were smart too. She had them take referee tests every year, and passed along her knowledge.

She was often accused of intimidating referees.

“If that’s true, what can I tell you except that it is not my fault?,” she said. “If they are intimidated, what am I supposed to do? The other coaches scream at them too.” *

It fell to assistant Paul Thomas to call the players and tell them about May’s retirement.

“They responded just like I did, maybe just like everyone,” Thomas said. “It was very much a shock. We all think we’re invincible--we all thought she was invincible. But we all know she’s going to do what she taught us. She’s going to fight.”

Thomas has become interim coach, a difficult position if only because he is following a legend.

“Personally, I feel what Darlene has accomplished can’t be matched,” he said. “But I cannot be Darlene May. No one can.

“From a personal and coaching standpoint, I miss just having her around: The time in the office, the time on the road, before and after games, meals and scouting--the whole process. But you have to look at it this way: I’ve spent the last four years learning from the best.”

May said that the calls and notes from those who heard about her illness have been touching.

“You know, it’s amazing,” she said. “I never knew how many friends I had out there. I’m going to miss the camaraderie.”

She is surprised by what she already misses.

“You don’t think you’ll miss the kids because there are so many problems: getting them in the right classes, injuries, boyfriends and all those kinds of things. But you even miss that.

“I miss every day going to the gym. This definitely was not part of my plan--I should be in that gym with Paul, running the basketball camp. The wins and losses, well, I’m sure I’ll miss the competition.

“And you know, that’s why I’m going to beat this thing. Even when I’m playing cards, I’ll beat you. If I don’t, I’m going to throw the cards all over the place.”

In this fight, May still is doing everything right.

Darlene May By the Numbers

A look at Darlene May’s coaching career at Cal Poly Pomona:

* 18 Conference championships

(13 CCAA titles from 1982 to 1994)

(5 SCAA titles from 1977 to 1981)

* 6 NCAA Division II finals appearances

(1982, ‘83, ‘85, ‘86, ‘87, ‘89)

* 4 CCAA Coach of the Year awards

(1985, ‘87, ‘88, ‘91)

* 3 NCAA Division II Championships

(1982, ‘85, ‘86)