Through grief and cancer, Southern Miss’ coach pulled off a decisive upset

In 2017, Joye Lee-McNelis began writing her obituary.

Where she was born. In the southern Mississippi community of Leetown.

Preceded in death by. Then an empty space, not knowing if she would die before her parents.

A thank you to her family, to the players she had coached, to the staff she had worked with and the administrations she had worked for.

McNelis had been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. As she thought about her death, she focused on how her life would be remembered. Her husband, Dennis, thought she was crazy. She assured him she wasn’t worried about dying. “I just want to plan it all,” she told him. “There’s no need for you and our children to worry about that.” She wanted it to feel like a party.

Now 61, McNelis is in her 20th season as Southern Mississippi’s head coach. She stopped looking at what she wrote. But one afternoon earlier this fall, McNelis and her father, Louis, sat outside on her patio talking about their upcoming funerals. Louis, 87, had Parkinson’s disease and congestive heart failure. Every artery in his heart had been bypassed. McNelis, meanwhile, was in the middle of a third battle with lung cancer. Her second came in late 2020. After being diagnosed again in August, she underwent chemotherapy for the first time this time.

They talked about gravestones. McNelis’ parents had already purchased and set up theirs. McNelis realized she should probably buy hers too, just to be prepared.

Their conversation turned to music. When she wrote her obituary six years earlier, she noted songs she wanted sung at her funeral. “Maybe I’ll die before you, and you need to know what my songs will be,” she told him. There was one on both of their lists: “What a friend we have in Jesus.”

The song is an old gospel hymn. Religion is one of the common threads that run through the McNelises. “There are two things in our family,” she says, “and that is trusting God and basketball.”

McNelis grew up on a farm in southern Mississippi. She learned to hitch a trailer and bottle-feed calves. Louis, who listened to the ministers on cassette tapes every night, told her that if she wanted to stop working their land, she could learn to shoot baskets in the dirt courtyard the family had set out on the grass. But before she could take jumpers, McNelis had to shoo the family’s cows off the track and scoop up the manure they left behind.

On November 24, a few weeks after their patio conversation, Louis died. McNelis says, “It went south the night before.” His breathing was labored until he stopped. McNelis’ father was her hero. “My first love as a child,” she says. After growing up in Leetown and playing for Southern Miss, she returned to the area 20 years ago to coach closer to family.

My first love, my hero and biggest fan have joined Earth to join our JESUS. Heartbroken. Funeral services for Louis Dempsey Lee, Sr., age 87, of Picayune, MS, who passed away on 11/24. Visitation will be held on Monday, 11/27 from 11:00 AM – 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, his funeral was held in nearby Picayune at Lee’s Chapel #2 Baptist Church. Her fourth chemotherapy session was scheduled for the next day. Southern Miss’ game against then-No. 19 Ole Miss loomed that Saturday. But her own fight and her team’s preparations could wait. She praised him and heard their song.

Do you have trials and temptations?
Is there a problem somewhere?
We should never become discouraged;
Take it to the Lord in prayer.

McNelis hopes her most recent chemotherapy session will be her last. To cope with her latest attack of stage 4, the treatments have taken place every three weeks since the end of September, each lasting about two hours. The effects last much longer. After her first treatment, she was a ‘sick cat’ for two weeks. She felt the impact of the second for nine days. On day 8 she started feeling better after her third. Six days after her fourth session, she finally felt like she was having 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 gets very tired, she sometimes vomits.

Through it all, McNelis has been resilient. She gets up every day. She says a prayer in bed and reads devotions with her coffee. If she is able, she goes to training or a match. That’s how her father wanted her to handle this season. Around the gym. With her team. Teaching, game planning, finding wrinkles for the Golden Eagles to attack. When McNelis missed Southern Miss’ Nov. 21 game against Valparaiso to visit him at Forrest General Hospital, where the roof of the Reed Green Coliseum was visible from his hospital room, he repeatedly told her, “This doesn’t make any sense why you ‘You’re in my bed and your team is playing.’

“Daddy, it’s okay, I’m where I need to be,” she said.

“A lot of people in life think that the world can’t exist if they’re not in it,” she says. “Well, guess what? It can happen. My team can keep running whether I’m there or not. … I’m just really grateful for the people who supported me and helped me get through it.”

In August, a PET scan revealed areas of activity in her left lung. Her doctors were surprised when her cancer returned. For more than two years she thought she was in remission. All her scans had come back clean, until they didn’t.

As in the past, McNelis was open with her team this summer about her diagnosis. “The only thing I can promise you is that I will give you my best. I don’t know what my best is, but I will give you my best,” she said. During the 2020-2021 season, that sometimes meant coaching while hooked up to a portable oxygen concentrator. She has missed several shootarounds this year to maintain her energy and get as much sleep as possible.

“We see Coach fight every day,” senior guard Dominique Davis said. “She’s fighting for her life, and while she does, she’s still fighting every day to be with us.”

McNelis feels called to the sidelines. She tries to teach her players about sacrifice through basketball. About assertiveness. “To help them understand what it takes to make a dream come true,” she says. “It is our responsibility to help them find a path.”

She adds: “You have the choice to be positive or you have the choice to be negative, and that’s every day you wake up. God gives you the opportunity to wake up and have another day.” She quotes the interpretation of another passage of Scripture in a song by Lynn Anderson.

I never promised you a rose garden.
Together with the sunshine,
At some point some rain has to fall.

On Saturday, Southern Miss hosted public enemy Ole Miss in its lung cancer awareness game. McNelis’ oncologist, Dr. Bo Hrom, was the honorary coach of the Golden Eagles. Leading up to tip-off, McNelis’ thoughts about her father were interspersed with questions about the game – the biggest of which was: How are we going to score?

Davis, one of two senior captains, said what she really wanted to do was win. For McNelis. For Southern Miss. “With all this going on, why not go faster?” says Davis.

The Rebels led by four points after the first quarter and even played against their opponent in the second quarter. Ole Miss extended the lead to 11 midway through the third, but the Golden Eagles clawed back and trailed by just five heading into the final 10 minutes. Southern Miss’ defense strengthened in the fourth quarter, allowing just 10 points. Davis finished with a game-high 25 points, including an acrobatic layup with 15 seconds to play, giving a three-point lead that Southern Miss would not relinquish. The victory kept the Golden Eagles’ undefeated season alive and marked their first victory over a ranked opponent since the 1999–2000 season.