Varsity Kansas - The Blog

Mulvane’s football team might be 7-0, but as you’ll see in a story we ran today on the Wildcats — click here – there’s obviously more to this team and more to this town than simply playing football.

This was an enjoyable story to write because it’s pretty rare to have such raw emotion bared by such tough, strong men. But it was tough, as well, primarily because of my interview with Sam Keys’ dad, Mulvane assistant Phil Keys. Phil was amazing, willing to talk about his son’s death and what the memories mean to the team and to him.

I’ve done these types of stories before, but Phil got me when he said the following after I told him that I couldn’t imagine what he was going through.

He said ”You know that feeling you get on that first day in the spring, when it’s really warm and nice and you roll the windows down and you turn the radio up and you sing at the top of your lungs — that feeling doesn’t come anymore. That feeling sneaks in and you know something’s missing. That’s just the way it is.”

If that doesn’t hit you in the heart, I don’t know what will. I can’t imagine losing a child, and I certainly don’t know what the families of those four kids who died feel. But Phil gave me an insight there that made it all too clear.

Thanks to Phil, coach Dave Fennewald, Huldon Tharp and Jordan Gosch for opening up and talking about something that isn’t easy to discuss.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 19th, 2007 at 10:36 a.m. and is filed under AV-CTL, Coaches, Football. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.