As I arrived, I was in generally good spirits, and why shouldn't I be? I had just had a pleasant lunch and a lingering conversation with my mother. Before that had been my weekly appearance on the Cardinal Couple Radio Hour which is always an enjoyable event. I was looking forward to an evening dinner out with a number of friends to celebrate the birthday of one, and then hopefully watching the UofL Men's Basketball team beat Syracuse, to win the Big East tournament and in the process secure a number one seed in the NCAA tourney.
I had been reflecting on the success of all of the various UofL Athletics teams, and if you know me very well you know I particularly follow the UofL Women's Athletics teams. Almost across the board, in recent years, UofL teams are seeing success in their sports, most are achieving national rankings, and virtually all are on an upward trajectory, a phrase being used a lot around the UofL Athletic Department.
The UofL Lacrosse team is no exception. The newest sport at UofL, in its sixth year, had a rough year last year after approximately a third of the team graduated the year previous. Louisville Lacrosse was briefly ranked a couple of weeks ago, which surprised me and I'm sure a number of other people, before taking a loss in Denver and dropping back out of the rankings. For such a new team, though, Louisville Lacrosse is seeing success that I don't think much of anyone really anticipated.
So I was thinking about Louisville Lacrosse among the other UofL sports teams as I sat in newly expanded Jim Patterson Stadium.
I pulled out my phone to catch up on my twitter feed in between innings and saw a headline that I suspect in most frames of mind would register as a tragic story for me and then be dismissed, but perhaps because I had just been thinking about the Louisville Lacrosse team, has really struck a chord.
I'm referring to the crash of the chartered bus that was carrying the Seton Hill Lacrosse team to a game at Millersville University. The bus driver, Anthony Guaetta, was declared dead at the scene. The head coach of the Seton Hill Lacrosse team, Kristina Quigley, was transported to Penn State Hershey Medical Center and was pronounced dead at the hospital. She was sixth months pregnant, and the unborn child did not survive. The rest of the passengers on the bus were all transported to various area hospitals, mostly for treatment of minor injuries. At the time of this writing, I believe all but two have been released.
Many communities are, without a doubt, grieving about this. From Baltimore MD, Kristina's hometown, to her alma mater and school where she was an assistant Lacrosse coach, Duquesne, to Erskine College, in South Carolina, where she started their Lacrosse program and coached for three years, and obviously to Seton Hill University outside of Pittsburgh, PA; these are all communities that Kristina directly touched.
I suspect, however, that the Lacrosse world is a pretty small community and this will impact all of it. Louisville Lacrosse was traveling, by air, to Philadelphia for a game with Drexel today, when the news broke. Upon landing, whoever it is that runs the @LouisvilleLax twitter account almost immediately tweeted words of condolence to the Seton Hill community, with the hashtag #onelaxfamily.
Like I said, in most frames of mind, a news story like this would have registered as a tragic story and then shortly been dismissed from my thoughts. This one, however, has stuck with me. I didn't know Kristina Quigley, I don't know anyone on the Seton Hill Lacrosse team, I don't even truly know anyone on the Louisville Lacrosse team, having only met, once, briefly a couple of weeks ago, the Head Coach Kellie Young. I have, however, been trying to learn more about the sport, and have been following the Louisville Lacrosse team's progress through the season closer than - judging by attendance at the UofL Lacrosse Stadium - just about any other UofL sport fans that aren't more closely associated with the team in some way, such as family members and friends of the players on the team. Certainly the temporal proximity between my reflections on the success of many of the UofL sports teams this year, and Lacrosse in particular; and learning of this news story helped to register the story as one worthy of further, deeper reflection.
I don't have any brilliant insights, any particularly touching tributes to honor Kristina Quigley, or any specific words of comfort for the Seton Hill Lacrosse team and related communities. I, before this incident, didn't even know of the existence of Seton Hill University, and like many, including nearly all of the early news reports, initially confused it for Seton Hall University in New Jersey, who doesn't field a varsity Lacrosse team.
About all I can offer to the Quigley family, and the Seton Hill community, is to say that there is at least one person who stopped and did his best to reflect on this tragedy, and to grieve along with you. In time, to be honest I probably will forget Kristina Quigley, but you will not. I hope that her time here with you has made the world a better place and that her memory in you will inspire you to work to make the world a better place in the future.
Louisville Athletics uses the twitter hashtag #L1C4, which stands for "Louisville 1st, Cardinals Forever." I see in a news article that Seton Hill has embraced a similar thought, which I'll end by sharing in honor.
Kristina Quigley - Forever a Griffin
1 comment:
Nice tribute.
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