Six years ago...

On Saturday night, OSU's mens basketball team did something that it hadn't done in 6 years. They took the court on January 27th. Coincidence? In part, given that their games generally fall on particular nights of the week. But in actuality there is a bigger reason the Cowboys had not played on that date since 2001.

On a cold night in Colorado, following a disappointing loss to the Buffalos one of the 2 planes carrying members of OSU's basketball traveling party went down in rural eastern Colorado - not far from I-70 east of Denver. On it, 10 men who filled various roles in OSU's basketball program - 2 players, a broadcaster, 3 student assistants, a sports information specialist, the director of basketball operations, 2 pilots - were all killed.

Word of that tragedy hit Stillwater later that night in the middle of a horrible rain storm - you know how in movies it always rains when something bad happens, well it was actually raining that night. For days the campus and the community merely went through the motions trying to move on. Stillwater and the OSU campus are very tightly knit, it is a proverbial college town (in the good and the bad sense), so a situation like this effected everyone.

Later that week memorials were held. One gathering saw a recently re-opened (after a huge renovation that doubled its size) Gallagher -Iba Arena filled nearly to capacity as the school and team honored those lost. Each family held their own service as well. As it happened I had become acquainted with the brother of one of the men on the plane just a couple of weeks before the crash. We were taking a class together and were put in a group together to complete projects for the semester. As a show of support the third member of that group and I attended Chad's brother Jared Weiberg's funeral in a small town in western Oklahoma. He was one of those guys that was well known by a community who loved him, he'd grown up and gone to a big school and made something of himself (Jared managed to walk-on to the OSU hoops squad and make the team for a couple of seasons while he was a student, at the time of the crash he was a graduate assistant under Eddie Sutton). From all accounts he was a class individual. I'm sure that the other memorials and funerals were just as emotional, honoring other men of character and great promise.

Over Christmas my wife and I went to see "We Are Marshall" - the movie about the plane crash that killed almost all the members of the Marshall football team and coaching staff back in the 70's. It's a great movie. Watching it brought back a lot of memories from the days and weeks that followed OSU's crash. I can't imagine what that school went through, the results of OSU's crash were so devastating and it was far fewer people.

As we are often forced to do after a loss, life had to move forward. OSU's basketball team won a inconsequential game against Missouri shortly after the crash in front of a very quiet, somber crowd at GI. It almost felt wrong to even play the game. Two road losses (at Nebraska and Kansas) followed.

But then came the night that I began to see the light at the end of the tunnel. On Valentine's Day of all things, OSU had the Sooners coming to town for a Bedlam game that on paper was no matchup (but you know how those rivalry games go). OU was number 13 and OSU unranked. Before the game, Coach Sutton and Kelvin Sampson (OU's coach) came out to address the crowd (this was early enough that it was mostly OSU students in the Arena at this point). Kelvin - who I don't like - was a gentleman and showed more class than I knew he had. He communicated the support of the OU community for OSU during this time of loss and the two coaches urged the students to let the rivalry be less heated that night.

That is the one Bedlam game I have ever witnessed that was fairly civil. I was proud of my fellow students and fans for taking it easy on OU that night, the time for hating would come later.

But that night wasn't even about being nice. It was about seeing hope. OSU went on to beat OU 72-44 that night, the biggest basketball winning margin I've seen in Bedlam recently. During the game when it was clear that the team had turned the corner and were again playing with passion the crowd absolutely roared. I've watched lots of games in that Arena (touted as among the loudest in the country) and I've never heard it get that load before or since. The pain wasn't gone, but healing had begun.

Anyway, Saturday night OSU played on January 27th for the first time in 6 years, thankfully this time it was a fairly quiet win over Iowa State.