Flour
Bluff's Busby Retiring
Cancer
survivor started teaching 34 years ago
Nancy Busby, Flour Bluff
Junior High School P.E. teacher, outlines
the rules for a volleyball game using a huge blue rubber ball.
Longtime Flour Bluff teacher Nancy Busby loves coaching her
seventh- and eighth-grade girls in basketball, volleyball and track and field.
But after 34 years of shaping students' lives, the 57-year-old cancer survivor
will hang up her whistle and retire at the end of the school year.
"Coaching has been everything to me," said Busby, who also
teaches physical education at the junior high. "I love children, and I love
watching them grow. I don't have any kids, so I care about them like they are my
own."
She gets involved in her students' lives any way she can. Rather than
instruct students during a recent P.E. class, Busby danced in place with them to
the tune of "Pump Up The Jam."
Flour Bluff Junior High School
physical education teacher Nancy Busby
dances with her students during a Friday P.E.class.
"(Coach Busby) knows how to work with us, and she really cares about
us," seventh grader Sara Alves said. "I like the way she pushes me to
become a better person."
"You already are a very good person," Busby said while giving
Sara a friendly pat on the head.
Eighth grader Jasmine Green said Busby is one of her best coaches and that
she will be missed.
"A couple of girls cried when Coach Busby told us that she's
retiring," the track and field, basketball and volleyball player said.
"It probably won't sink in until the last day of school."
Busby's work with junior high girl athletes has laid the foundation for
the Hornets' success at the high school level, said Flour Bluff High School
athletics director James McMinn.
High school successes include three Region IV-4A quarterfinal appearances
in the past four years in both varsity girls basketball and volleyball with a
combined three regional semifinal appearances in that span.
"She has a knack for understanding our kids and for getting through
to them," said McMinn, also Flour Bluff's varsity girls basketball coach.
"You just can't measure what she has meant to our community."
And despite being away from the classroom for 11 weeks during a battle
with bone cancer in 2006, Busby has kept inspiring others.
Former student Terri Thompson, secretary to athletics director McMinn,
found solace in Busby following her mother's recent death and her father's bout
with leukemia in December.
"She was going through the stem cell transplant in Houston and she
was still able to call me to tell me that she loved me and that she was there
for me," Thompson said. "Just to hear those words and to know that she
was still thinking of me -- that made all of the difference in the world to
me."
Radiation treatments caused Busby to suffer a broken pelvic bone, and her
hair slowly is growing back following chemotherapy. Her cancer has been in
remission since November.
"The kids told me that it was OK if I went without my hat, so that
made me feel more comfortable about it," Busby said. "The kids have
been very accepting, very understanding and I couldn't ask for better children
to go through this with."
That's why after retiring, she said she isn't ruling out coming back to
coach at the junior high again if a part-time position becomes available.
"Coach Busby's favorite song is 'Forever Young' by Rod Stewart, and
she lives it every single day of her life," Thompson said. "She will
be impossible to replace."
Flour Bluff Junior High School physical
education teacher Nancy Busby
takes part in a game activity with her class.
