NORFOLK, Va. – The phone call from Dawn Staley came as DeLisha Milton-Jones was loading her bags into a bus. The Old Dominion women's basketball coach was preparing to take a flight to Spain where she was to help coach the USA Women's Basketball U19 World Cup team.
But the words she heard froze her in her tracks. "Dee, it's Dawn. Nikki's gone. Nikki's passed," said Staley, the former Virginia women's basketball star and head coach at South Carolina.
She meant Nikki McCray-Penson, the 51-year-old former ODU head coach whom Staley and Milton-Jones had known for more than two decades. They'd been teammates, opponents on the court and had coached together.
Milton-Jones and Staley won a Gold Medal with McCray in the 2000 Olympics, and they've been close ever since.
McCray served on Staley's staff at South Carolina where they won a national championship before she came to coach at ODU. When McCray left ODU, Milton-Jones replaced her, in part because she vowed to bring the same kind of work ethic to Norfolk that McCray had instilled.
The trio spoke weekly or more and suddenly, one of them was gone.
McCray had recently survived a second round of breast cancer. But then it came back, and she could not beat it a third time.
Milton-Jones did not know how sick McCray was. Few people did. She was a very private person.
"It was such a gut punch," Milton-Jones said. "My world just stopped."
McCray's death, on the eve of her departure, left Milton-Jones with a difficult choice.
Nikki McCray-Penson was a fiery competitor who quickly reinvigorated ODU's women's basketball program.
"I knew if I got on that bus, I wouldn't be able to see Nikki's (funeral) service," she said. "But if I didn't, I knew I wouldn't be able to serve, to coach, like I was supposed to do."
She doubled over in pain and began to sob. She made some calls, including one to Dr. Wood Selig, ODU's director of athletics. Most encouraged her to get on the plane.
"She was in tears," Selig said. "She was so broken up."
Yet she mustered the strength she needed and got on the bus and made the trip to Spain. And Monday night, she returned to Norfolk only hours after hoisting a championship trophy.
Playing in Madrid before a partisan home crowd of 7,023, Team USA defeated Spain in the final of a nip-and-tuck championship game, 69-66, on Sunday to finish the two-week tournament 7-0.
Milton-Jones said that everyone in the Team USA contingent, from the players to head coach Joni Taylor of Texas A&M and assistant coach Teri Moren from Indiana, knew she was grieving.
"Everyone gave me space," she said. "But I needed to be around people.
"I would go into my room and cry and try to get myself to the mental place where I needed to be to perform.
"Eventually, I told everyone, 'It's OK to come check on me.' Some of my toughest moments were in my room when I was alone.
"I'm usually able to compartmentalize things. But it wasn't easy. Everything about USA Basketball reminded me of Nikki. She's deeply woven into the fabric of who I was as a player, as a coach. She had a tremendous influence on me in so many ways."
Milton Jones with Team USA Coaches Teri Moren and Joni Taylor
In her short time at ODU, McCray also made a huge impact on the program and people here.
Football coach Ricky Rahne was on vacation when she passed but Tweeted: "I have an extremely heavy heart today. Nikki was an amazing resource and a good friend during my first year as a head coach."
She touched the lives of so many people. Rodney Harmon, a communications tech in the athletics department, walked into sports information to show us videos of McCray singing the national anthem before a game.
"She reached out to me every year on my birthday," he said.
McCray and I bonded early-on because of similar experiences with cancer. Both she and her mother had overcome breast cancer. I was just coming off three months of radiation treatment when she was hired in 2017 and had lost a brother and my father to cancer.
We both knew that cancer is a ticking time bomb that can always return.
Alas, her mother, Sally Coleman, came down with breast cancer again in 2018. McCray spent much of that summer caring for her mother, who had cared for her five years earlier when McCray had cancer.
When she asked Selig what she should do, he didn't hesitate. "Go home and take care of your mother," said Selig, who had recently lost his Mom.
Nikki McCray Went Home to Care for Her Mother
McCray shed tears through most of my interview with her shortly after she returned to Norfolk. The hug we shared afterwards lingered for several moments.
Nikki McCray sings the national anthem before an ODU women's basketball game.
Yes, she had a tender heart, but nothing about her was soft. The two-time All-American, who would star in the WNBA and is in the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame, played for Pat Summitt at Tennessee. Summitt was a tough as they come.
McCray demanded the best from her players and all those around her.
"She was a fierce woman, a monstrous competitor," Milton-Jones said. "She was cut from the same cloth as Pat Summitt. She wanted the best for everyone sharing space with her."
McCray took a program in disarray and quickly built ODU into a winner. The Monarchs were 8-23 her first season, and given the dearth of talent, that may have been McCray's best year as a coach. ODU was 21-11 in 2018-19 and was clearly on the rise.
The Monarchs were 24-6, including a win at Auburn, and were in Frisco, Texas preparing for the 2020 Conference USA Tournament when the pandemic shut down the nation. With a couple of wins in the C-USA tournament, Selig said he feels like that team would have gone to the NCAA Tournament. The Monarchs never got the chance.
McCray left shortly thereafter for Mississippi State, but resigned for health reasons after a season. She was entering her second year as an assistant at Rutgers when she passed away.
McCray and Milton-Jones often saw each other at camps or on the recruiting trail and had run into each other only a few months earlier.
"She looked darker, thinner and the texture of her hair was different," Milton-Jones said.
"She didn't want to talk about it. She wanted to put the best light on everything.
"I know now she was taking a pill form of chemo. But she was always in good spirits. I never saw her down. Ever."
Milton-Jones said the Monarchs will wear a commemorative patch in honor of McCray on one set of new uniforms this season .
The team will also debut uniforms that honor former ODU All-American Anne Donovan, who passed away in 2018. Those uniforms will display Donovan's name on the back and will have a patch honoring All-American Medina Dixon, who died last July after a long battle against cancer.
Now that she's home, Milton-Jones says she is planning a trip to see McCray's husband, Thomas, and Thomas Penson, Jr., their 10-year-old son. McCray's husband eschewed work much of her career to take care of their son so that she could focus on basketball. And he was steadfastly by her side when she battled cancer.
"Thomas was perfect for her," Milton-Jones said. "It was a beautiful thing to see how he helped Nikki be Nikki.
"It will be so good to see them. Thomas Jr., he was always a part of our FaceTime conversations. He's such a neat kid.
"The toughest moments for them are yet to come. That will happen in a couple of months when everything calms down, and people stop coming around. I want to be there when they need me.
"That's what Nikki would want me to do."
Both Milton-Jones and McCray have been inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame.
Milton-Jones is a Christian and a spiritual person who said she felt McCray's presence while she was in Spain, especially during the championship game.
"I remember sitting on the bench right before tipoff saying to myself 'Nikki's going to show up in here today.' " she said. "And sure enough, she did.
"There was a point in the first half when we took a shot and there's no way that ball should have rolled in, but it did. At that moment I knew Nikki was in the building and making sure we had an angel watching over us.
"Of the more than 7,000 people there, we probably had 50 people cheering for us. The most important one was Nikki."
Milton-Jones said she returned home exhausted and feeling sick, but was grateful for the experience.
"Going through this entire process was heart-wrenchingly painful," she said. "Yet it was gratifying.
"I grew from this experience in many ways. I realize now that I have strength in me I never knew was there."
Contact Minium at hminium@odu.edu or follow him on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram
Minium: ODU's DeLisha Milton-Jones Grieved for Nikki McCray While Helping Team USA Win a Gold Medal
