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 U.S. U19 World Cup team.
The words she heard froze her in her tracks. "Dee, it's Dawn. Nikki's gone. Nikki's passed," said Staley, the head coach at South Carolina and former U.Va. star.
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 ODU. When McCray left ODU, Milton-Jones replaced her, in part because she vowed to bring the same work ethic to Norfolk that McCray had instilled.
McCray had recently survived a second round of breast cancer. But then it came back.
Milton-Jones did not know how sick McCray was. Few people did.
"It was such a gut punch," Milton-Jones said. "My world just stopped."
McCray's death left Milton-Jones with a difficult choice.
"I knew if I got on that bus, I wouldn't be able to see Nikki's 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 and began to sob. She made some calls, including one to ODU Athletic Director Wood Selig. Most encouraged her to get on the plane.
"She was in tears," Selig said. "She was so broken up."
"It was such a gut punch. My world just stopped." - DeLisha Milton-Jones, on learning about the death of Nikki McCray-Penson
Yet she mustered her strength and made the trip to Spain. She returned to Norfolk hours after hoisting a championship trophy.
Playing in Madrid before a partisan crowd of 7,023, Team USA defeated Spain 69-66 in the championship game 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."
In her short time at ODU, McCray also made a huge impact on the program and people here.
She took a program in disarray and quickly built ODU into a winner. The Monarchs were 8-23 her first season, but ODU went 21-11 in 2018-19 and was clearly on the rise.
The Monarchs were 24-6 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 that team would have gone to the NCAA Tournament.
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 died.
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 died in 2018. Those uniforms will display Donovan's name on the back and will have a patch honoring All-American Medina Dixon, who died in 2021 after a long battle against cancer.
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."
A longer version of this story is on the ODU Athletics website.