UPDATED THUR., JAN. 27
Note: For this weekend's upcoming events (Jan. 28-30), Doug Tammaro of Arizona State media relations circulated a memo to fellow SIDs to honor former Oklahoma State media relations coordinator Will Hancock who lost his life 10 years ago in this plane crash as OSU men's basketball was traveling from Boulder, Colo. back to OSU following a game.
On his game notes, Tammaro put a link to
Hancock's photo and bio information from OSU's "Remembering the 10" webpage. Here is an online look at
Tammaro's game notes webpage.
Thursday, Jan. 27, 2011 is the 10-year anniversary of the tragic plane crash that took place on the Oklahoma State men's basketball team’s return to Stillwater from Boulder, Colo. following a Big 12 contest. The private plane, which crashed 30 miles east of Denver due to an electrical failure, was carrying student-athletes and support staff for the Cowboys men's basketball squad, who were returning following a contest with University of Colorado.
Ten members of the OSU basketball family perished, including media relations coordinator Will
Hancock (photo, above and right) who handled men's basketball communications/pr duties.
The men lost in the crash were Hancock, Denver Mills, Nate Fleming, Dan Lawson, Jared Weiberg, Pat Noyes, Bill Teegins, Brian Luinstra, Kendall Durfey and Bjorn Fahlstrom.
In OSU's Gallagher-Iba Arena, a permanent tribute to the 10 - the Memorial Lobby - was built in honor of those who died. It remains the most visited area of Gallagher-Iba Arena.
As the coordinator of athletic media relations, Hancock, 31, had overseen men’s basketball since October 1996. He had recently become a father.
“The pain of the loss will always be there," said Karen Hancock, Will's wife and the OSU women's head soccer coach at the time of his passing, quoted by the
Tulsa World. "It doesn’t matter if it has been 10 years or 60 years, it won’t ever go away. When people talk about our loved ones, it doesn’t bring us pain, because the pain is already there. We want people to talk about them and remember them.”
Will father is Bill Hancock, current Executive Director of the BCS and formerly the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Final Four executive director. Here is a touching column on Hancock and his recollection of that fateful day 10 years ago by Tulsa World columnist Dave Sittler:
Bill Hancock rises above BCS rancor.
OSU plays a home game against Texas on Wednesday, Jan. 26 and, during a special halftime ceremony, will honor the men who were lost in the crash.
Former coach Eddie Sutton and former players Andre Williams, Desmond Mason and Doug Gottlieb are scheduled to take part in the ceremony. OSU has invited back former student-athletes, athletic staff, coaches and student workers who were part of the 2000-01 team or whose years in Stillwater overlapped with that team.
Fans who attend the game will receive a commemorative T-shirt
. The shirt will be available only at the game and will not be sold at any time, according to a press release issued by the university.
In addition to the halftime ceremony, OSU will stage a private gathering for family members of the 10 prior to the game.
The following day, OSU officials will visit the crash site in Colorado, as they have done every year since the tragedy.
During the game, proceeds from the annual "Remember The 10 Run" will be donated to OSU Counseling Services.
There are many articles, features and videos in honor of the 10th anniversary, and those are referenced below.
Two articles are run in their entirety (10 years later, Oklahoma State plane crash remembered and OSU athletic department reflects on the 2001 plane crash).
The first are recollections of Will Hancock from New Orleans-based columnist Dan McDonald. The second has reflections and quotes from current Oklahoma State athletic media relations staffers Mike Noteware and Ryan Cameron, who both worked at OSU that fateful day 10 years ago.
• Jan. 27, 2011:
OSU tribute brings back memories, by John Klein, Tulsa World
• Jan. 26, 2011:
VIDEO and article: ESPN Outside the Lines: Dear Nate, by Tom Friend
• from Big 12 Conference website:
VIDEO: Remembering the 10
• Jan. 25, 2011:
Bill Hancock rises above BCS rancor, by John Klein, Tulsa World
• Jan. 24, 2011:
VIDEO and story: Oklahoma State players, administrators, coaches share their Remember the 10 stories, by Jenni Carlson, Daily Oklahoman/newsok.com
• Jan. 24, 2011: via TulsaWorld.com:
Remember the 10: 10 years after the OSU plane crash
•
RememberTheTen.com: Ten Men Remembered
• via OSU athletics website:
OSU To Remember: OSU will honor the 10 men lost in 2001 with a special halftime ceremony during the Texas game on Jan. 26
• Jan. 26, 2011: OSU to remember ‘The Ten’ at halftime tonight, by Jason Elmquist, CNHI
• Jan. 26, 2011:
'The 10' make OSU athletics special, meaningful, by Doug Gottlieb
10 years later, Oklahoma State plane crash remembered
by Dan McDonald, via NewOrleans.com
There’s a wooden post sticking out of a field in Eastern Colorado, visible a few feet above the scrub bushes and dead grasses that fill the ground as far as the eye can see.
The white paint is a little weathered, but not nearly as much as the deflated basketball that is attached to the top. The rubber hasn’t held up well against the elements … it’s faded and there are a few cracks.
But the symbolism of that post hasn’t faded, even though it’s been there for nearly 10 years.
The post stands where 10 members of the Oklahoma State basketball family lost their lives in a plane crash … and the rest of us who are part of collegiate athletics lost some of our innocence.
It’s not an official monument. That stunning and humbling one sits in Gallagher-Iba Arena on the OSU campus, making a powerful statement to its many visitors. In front of the plaques that help “Remember the 10,” a bronze cowboy knees in mourning.
But both symbolize a passage … the passage of time, the changing of generations, the inevitability of death mixed with the tragedy of when death comes too soon.
My friend Will Hancock would have been 42 this year, and would probably be an athletic director or a conference commissioner by now. Such were his talents, work ethic and demeanor while SID at Arkansas-Little Rock – where I first met him – and later at OSU.
My other friend Bill Hancock, Will’s dad, would have been very proud. But he already was proud, and remains proud to this day, even though his son was tragically taken away.
“I think about Will every day,” Bill told me more than once. “I see him and talk to him in my dreams.” Bill says they are always happy dreams, until they end and Will vanishes.
The times that Bill has said that, I want to break down and cry. I don’t think I could bear the thought of having those kind of dreams … if I knew that my daughter was gone. But Bill always seemed genuinely happy whenever he talked about Will.
I first heard Bill talk about his two young sons when I met him 23 years ago in, of all places, Seoul, Korea. We were on the U.S. Olympic staff and were roommates, and I easily got the best end of that deal since Bill is the kindest and most genuine human ever put on the face of the earth.
Bill was then, and has remained, a boulder in the foundation of college athletics. After working for the Big Eight Conference, he was the executive director of the NCAA Division I Basketball Tournament, and now serves as executive director of the BCS.
Later, I met the son when we were at schools in the Sun Belt Conference, and it was easy to see that the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree.
I thought about Will on the night of Jan. 27, 2001, when I saw the bulletin come across the wires at the Lafayette Daily Advertiser office. Ten were dead, their plane a pile of rubble in that Colorado field not long after the Cowboys had played a basketball game against Colorado. Three private planes, dubbed the “Cowboy Fleet” by then-coach Eddie Sutton, had left Jefferson County Airport in a light snow headed home to Stillwater.
Eighteen minutes later, at 6:37 p.m., radio and radar contact were lost. Electrical failure, and not the snowstorm, was the cause, but the effect – the loss of two players, four OSU staffers, two broadcasters and two pilots – is still being felt to this day.
I will forever believe that Sutton’s later relapse into alcohol problems began that night.
“I had to go off in a room by myself,” Sutton said of that evening, “to try to regain my composure, wipe the tears from my eyes. One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do was call the parents, the wives, and tell them what had happened. I hope no coach ever has to go through that again.”
But one will … more than one, actually. A hazard of the athletic profession is that it involves travel – especially college basketball, which takes place in the winter months and is subject to the worst of weather. At any given hour between mid-November and mid-March, hundreds of basketball teams are on the road.
And inevitably, some don’t make it home. It’s never expected, and when you’re on that road you don’t think about such horrors. But they happen … and when they happen with an airplane, it seems so much more horrific.
OSU is playing Texas Wednesday night at Gallagher-Iba, and a halftime ceremony will honor those that were lost. Thursday is the 10th anniversary of the crash, and to the Big 12 Conference’s credit someone made sure to schedule the Cowboys for a home game close to that anniversary this week.
Ironically, Texas head coach Rick Barnes is the only one of the conference’s dozen coaches who was leading a Big 12 program at the time of the crash.
“You think back to that time and it’s hard to believe that it’s been 10 years ago,” Barnes told a local reporter this week. “It was a very emotional time. I remember going to the memorial service. You don’t want to ever forget what happened.”
Over the past years, commemorations have been low-key. Each year the campus’ signature carillon tolls 10 times on the anniversary date at the time of the crash, and there’s an annual run that raises funds for the university’s counseling services. Sutton was back for one of last year’s games scheduled on the anniversary date.
But this year, the significance of 10 years passing has made it time for a remembrance and a retrospective.
Bill will be there, traveling from his home in Kansas, taking a break from the headaches of the BCS wars. It’s not as long a break as he took two years after the crash, when he pedaled his way on a two-month bicycle pilgrimage across America and famously captured his experiences and feelings in “Riding With the Blue Moth” – a book I treasure, and one that sits on my desk where I can see it every day.
“When you’re in grief, you look for some way to return to normal,” Bill said recently to a television reporter. “You think that the way you feel right then is the way you’re going to feel forever, but eventually you have to decide I have to get back to life. For me, life was running marathons and riding my bike, so I thought it was time to do the big bike ride.
“I learned to cherish every moment, hug everyone that I loved and made sure they knew that I loved them.”
Bill had told me virtually the same thing a few years ago when he sent me the copy of the book that sits on my desk. I had called him when I received it, and I was amazed at how happy he sounded.
I remember seeing my daughter later that evening, and I remember hugging her hard and crying all over again. I never told her why. Kristi, if you’re reading this, now you know.
OSU athletic department reflects on the 2001 plane crash
by Adam Kemp, The Daily O'Collegian Senior Sports Reporter via
ocolly.com
Words couldn't express.
Terry Don Phillips' voice quivers as he thinks back to the night and then words fail him.
"Even right now it's hard, even though it's been 10 years," Phillips said in a phone interview.
Phillips, who was OSU's athletic director at the time of the Jan. 27 plane crash in 2001, said days went by in a blur after the accident.
"It was one of those things where you don't have a lot of time to do a lot of things other than do your very best," Phillips said. "You are dealing with wonderful people and wonderful families, it was just indescribable how terrible it was."
Phillips, who is now the athletic director at Clemson University, said the days after the wreck went by in a haze, but the athletic department staff still had jobs to do and games to put on. But most importantly, they had hurting families to tend to.
"Oklahoma State is a special place with special people, and the way everybody joined hands and worked together no matter what the task was is something I will always remember," he said. "I can't say enough about the staff at Oklahoma State or enough about the community and the state. Everyone was absolutely tremendous for their support for the families and for their support of those that were having to work with the situation."
Now that 10 years have passed, members of the athletic department have left to take other jobs or retired but a few still remain.
Ryan Cameron finished his undergraduate degree in 2001 and began working at the OSU athletic office as a graduate assistant. He said, "was like a dream come true."
"I used live and die by wins and losses," Cameron said. "I would be so upset after we would lose and so excited when we would win."
Cameron, who is now the sports information director for women's basketball and OSU golf, developed a relationship with Will Hancock, who was the sports information director for men's basketball.
"Will was like my role model," Cameron said. "He was the best in the business, and I wanted to learn as much from him as possible."
But when Cameron was at his house watching a movie on Jan. 27, he got a call from a friend that shook him up.
"He said, ‘I don't know what has happened, but it's not good. We need you to get to the office,'" Cameron said. "When they said the plane went down and everyone is gone, I just remember thinking ‘This didn't happen.' We answered the phone until nearly 2:30 in the morning, and I just remember being kind of numb when I got the word and got the names, and I was just in shock."
Noteware, who was the women's basketball sports information director at the time, said his immediate reaction was to get people to relatives' houses nearby and to make sure they were being comforted.
He went to Molly Noyes' house, brother of Pat Noyes.
"It wasn't until I got home the next morning and turned on the TV and saw those guys' 10 faces," Noteware said.
"That's when it hit me because when you saw it on TV then you knew it was done."
Noteware said the next couple of weeks were the hardest he had ever gone through in his life; coming to work and seeing the empty offices or desks of the people he had lost was almost more than he could bear.
"Because I just lost four of my best friends, I just didn't want to go to work," Noteware said. "For three or four days, I just kept thinking they were eventually just going to come out of the air, and land at Stillwater airport. And go ‘We were never gone.'
The group in charge of releasing sports news to the media, was now in charge of answering phone calls about the friends they had just lost.
"We were just relying on someone to hold us up while somebody else was holding that person up, and it was just a chain reaction," Noteware said.
"Everyone around here is so tight, and we all felt it. And it was almost like every single person knew somebody on that plane, and so they were just relying on each other." Noteware, who took over Hancock's post for men's basketball the following season, said he was happy and grateful to be able to tell the story of his friends.
"I didn't know all of them, but between Will, Pat, Jared and Bill, those were guys that I considered very close. And I want people that never had a chance to meet them, to know what good people they were," Noteware said.
Cameron said what he remembers most are the times he shared with the guys, especially Will. Whether it was pickup basketball games in Gallagher-Iba Arena or late nights at the office talking sports.
Cameron said one memory that sticks out in particular is when Hancock asked him to drive his black Honda to Tulsa for an OSU soccer game because he hadn't been getting much sleep.
"I drive him there and back, and he probably didn't get one ounce of sleep because we ended up just talking the whole way," Cameron said. "I felt bad for it at the time, but now, I think it was kind of meant to be."
The week after the crash as Cameron was headed into the office, he saw Will's black Honda pull into the parking spot right next to him.
"(Will's dad) had come to clean out Will's desk, and I just lost it," Cameron said. "And Bill comforted me and asked if everyone was OK. A guy that just lost his son is asking me if everything was okay. It was just like, wow."
Cameron said he didn't know if anything good could come out of such a tragic event, but now he said he has at least one silver lining — perspective.
"I remember being so disappointed with the way the guys had played that day at Colorado," Cameron said. "There are bigger things in life and you really never should take things for granted. In a way it was kind of strange because you never felt prouder to be apart of the Oklahoma State family at that time because people got to see what we were all about."