Evansville plane crash just as tragic

Tragedies hit at the most inopportune times, and they are never pleasant.

In sports they can be especially big since athletes can be portrayed as bigger than movie stars.

Recently, the Washington Redskins were hit hard by the death, possibly murder, of Sean Taylor, but in colleges tragedies seem to come at a larger scale.

The Marshall University Football team suffered a major tragedy in 1970 where 75 players and coaches died in a plane crash, which has since become infamous through the production of "We Are Marshall," which accounts the team and universities recovery.

However, there was an equally huge tragedy that hits closer to home only a few years later.

Nearly 30 years ago, on Dec. 13, 1977, a twin-engine DC-3 plane carrying the Evansville mens basketball team crashed, shortly after takeoff, on the way to an away game, killing all 29 people on board.

I'm not old enough to remember this event as I was not yet born, but I have been told stories about it as my mom was a freshman at Evansville at the time of this tragedy.

She recalled the massive amount of students on campus, including herself, who mourned the deaths in the days following the tragedy.

Many of the players were popular on campus, not only because they were athletes, but because they were honest, sincere individuals.

While not as publicized as the Marshall tragedy, it is no less sad.

ESPN ranked it as one of the top-10 newsmakers in college basketball history, and donations totaling more than $300,000 went toward the building of a memorial plaza on the campus, which exists to this day, and to scholarships for future student-athletes.

Evansville remembers these lost souls every year with a moment of silence at the first home basketball game of each year and I feel it is only appropriate to keep this tradition going because, as many have said before, "They may be gone, but they are not forgotten."