Not The Loss You Were Expecting...

I found today's post in The New York Times. Written by Jere Longman, it's about the football team and cheerleaders for the Iraan High School Braves. Folks say that Texas High School Football reigns supreme. That it doesn't get any better. And the Iraan Braves were a team that has not lost a regular season game in 4 years. FOUR YEARS! And strangely enough, football has little to do with this story. But without football, there is no story. (All photos by Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times)

Factoid: Iraan Pecos County, Texas, United States. The population was 1,238 at the 2000 census. It was named for Ira and Ann Yates, owners of the ranchland upon which the town was built. Iraan is the second largest town in the second largest county in the second largest state. (Wikipedia)

IRAAN, Tex. — This is not the story we intended to report, about a fatal bus crash and injured cheerleaders and ecstatic celebration whipsawed into gut-punching tragedy.

I traveled to West Texas last week with the photographer Ilana Panich-Linsman for more salutary reasons. We wanted to chronicle a high school football team so dominant that it had not lost a regular-season game in four seasons, and yet in a place so tiny and remote that homecoming was held only every other year.

There was to be a quirky angle, too, a somewhat irritated but mostly amused reaction here to viral fake-news videos posted in January on a website called Stranger Than Fiction News. The videos claimed that Iraan (pronounced Ira Ann) was a ghost town, not the oil town it is. That no one lived there. That the football team was a fake bused in from elsewhere. That the 1,200 residents actually lived underground in a secret city.

“That’s why we don’t have a dome on our stadium,” Jim Baum, 49, the principal at Iraan High School, joked on Friday morning. “You don’t need one when you’re underground.”

As the undefeated Iraan Braves prepared for a three-hour trip to play in the state quarterfinals, I spoke with Christina Garlock, 48. She ran the high school’s computer lab and sponsored the varsity cheerleaders. She has a daughter who is a cheerleader and two sons who play on the team. She spoke of the 11 seniors who had played together since elementary school and had lost only three or four games their entire lives.

“These kids knew 20-something plays in third grade,” Ms. Garlock said.

When the team buses headed out of town Friday, escorted by a fire truck, residents gathered and waved, many soon to follow on the trip to Colorado City, Tex., where the game would be played at a neutral site.

Ms. Panich-Linsman photographed one of the well-wishers, who wore an Indian headdress. She was Liz Pope, 52, Ms. Garlock’s sister, who worked in the computer lab at the elementary school. She also served as the sponsor of the junior high cheerleaders and was an effervescent president of the high school booster club.

Hours later, Iraan won the game, reaching the state semifinals for the first time in 20 years.

And Ms. Pope was dead.

There had been a horrific accident on a cold, rainy night. Her sister was seriously injured, along with several cheerleaders. A small town was left stunned and inconsolable.

“You thought you were going to win the race but instead you drove off a cliff,” said Kevin Allen, 59, the superintendent of the local school district.

Chasing a Title Together

It was such a jarring and shocking whiplash of a town’s emotions, revelry to disaster less than two hours after the game had ended. Everything had been so light and expectant on Friday morning. The entire student body, from kindergarten through 12th grade, gathered in the school auditorium for a rousing send-off for the football team. Heavy metal music played, cowbells rang and video highlights showed Iraan’s victory in the previous playoff round.

The opponent on Friday was the Munday Moguls. On the video, Kix Bales, 6, the son of a coach, said he did not know what a mogul was, “but I know I don’t want to be one tonight.”

Kurt Hanna, 41, Iraan High’s technology director, stood at the back of the auditorium. His father, Larry, had coached the team to its lone state championship, in 1996. Kurt had been an all-American pole-vaulter at Baylor University. He talked about the pride and tradition and belonging that football fostered in the town from a young age.

His own son, Kayin, 8, was a ball boy. Each week, Kayin asked his father, “You think we’ll make it for state?”

“He lives football 24/7,” Mr. Hanna said. “It’s an expectation. These kids don’t know anything different.”

I grew up along Highway 190 in Louisiana, the same road that runs 650 miles to the west through Iraan. The town, near one of the country’s largest oil fields, was said to be holding its own against the industry downturn.

I knew many small towns with big aspirations for football. Perhaps none bigger than this one. Storefronts were painted in team symbols. Wooden cutouts at Mesquite Wood Bar-B-Q allowed customers to pose for photographs as a player or a cheerleader. Black and red streamers fluttered at the public library and Juanita’s Hair Design. Paper cups placed in the chain-link fence at the youth center spelled “Feel Our Power” and “Defense Is Awesome.”

At Isabella’s Kitchen, the walls displayed news clippings from Iraan High’s 1996 state championship team and photographs of current players from their days in peewee football. Jerseys also adorned the walls, and Christmas ornaments shaped like footballs hung from a wheel on the ceiling. On a mesa behind the stadium, a giant “I” shone in red lights.

Of the 125 students at Iraan High, 44 played football.

“Some people claim football is a religion,” said Brad Willock, 51, whose son, Albert, plays on the team. “I guess we’re more fanatical in West Texas. When you live in a small town, you want to get together and show that you’re succeeding and not living in a cave in an underground government facility.”

The team had left at noon and the temperature had dropped through the day, dipping to the low 40s in Colorado City by late afternoon. A light, persistent rain fell. Iraan had followed its familiar rituals and superstitions. The wives of the coaches stopped to eat corn dogs at a Sonic Drive-In. Each player had his left ankle taped first. “In the Air Tonight” by Phil Collins played in the locker room.

Anticipating rain, Iraan had practiced all week by soaking balls in a bucket of water, leaving them slippery and heavy.

“It felt like I was snapping a medicine ball between my legs,” said Ivan Castilla, 16, the center.

At game time, though, the meticulous preparation went awry.

Iraan fumbled on its first possession. After three and a half minutes, it trailed Munday by 12-0. But the Braves, an unhurried team, did not panic, scoring six consecutive touchdowns as bubbles wafted from the stands in celebration and air horns bellowed in a corner of the stadium.

After the 40-12 victory, the Iraan players and cheerleaders raised their helmets and arms while the band played the alma mater. Coach Mark Kirchhoff, 54, gathered his team and said endearingly, “You little rag knots are going to the semifinals.”

Facing a Tragedy

The Iraan traveling party began to disperse for the long ride home. Six cheerleaders went with their parents. Six others boarded a small bus that did not have seatbelts, according to school officials. It was driven by Ms. Garlock, the varsity sponsor. Her sister, Ms. Pope, also rode along. The players headed to a nearby Mexican restaurant for a late meal.

Mr. Allen, the school superintendent, drove west with his wife on Interstate 20 and glanced at the speedometer on his Chevy Suburban. It said 75, the posted speed limit, but it felt too fast in the rain and the spray of heavy truck traffic. He was thinking of the game and said he told himself to slow down, to concentrate on the road: “This is tailor-made for something horrible.”

At the Mi Ranchito restaurant, players ate chicken and beef fajitas and sopaipillas for dessert. Ms. Panich-Linsman and I sat at a table near the front. The mood was happy but subdued. Christmas music played in the background. Then the room grew quiet. Players began to gather around a table in the center of the restaurant.

Clayton Kent, 18, Iraan’s quarterback, had received a somber call from his mother. The cheerleader bus had been in a wreck. Kent’s 15-year-old sister, Katie, had been aboard. She was conscious but there were few details. Pray for everyone, his mother told him.

“I was scared to death,” Kent would say later.

The accident had occurred near Big Spring, Tex., about 40 miles west of the stadium. Coach Kirchhoff said, “Let’s come together and pray for our girls.” The players stood silently, heads bowed, holding hands or gripping a teammate’s shoulder.

According to the Texas Department of Public Safety, the driver of a tractor-trailer, traveling eastbound on Interstate 20, tried to avoid a car that braked in front of him. The 18-wheeler lost control, strayed across the median into the westbound lanes and collided with the cheerleader bus.

Kurt Hanna, Iraan High’s technology director, was traveling two cars or so behind the cheerleaders. He saw a confusion of brake lights, and a crash, then realized that the bus was from Iraan. His wife, Melissa, called 911 at 10:34 p.m.

When Mr. Hanna approached the bus, he said one cheerleader was already outside. She appeared dazed and hurting. He opened the back exit of the bus and saw a scattering ofbackpacks and large letters that spelled “Braves.” Everything seemed pushed forward. Most of the cheerleaders were not responsive at first. They seemed to Mr. Hanna to have been lying down, probably trying to rest on the trip home. Some appeared to have slid under the seats. Two were in the aisle, one atop the other.

“It got worse as I went up,” Mr. Hanna said.

He declined to discuss Ms. Pope, the deceased, out of respect for her family. Ms. Garlock appeared calm and alert but was pinned in the driver’s seat.

“Are you all right?” Mr. Hanna said he asked, and Ms. Garlock replied yes, but “I’m smashed in here. Can you help me?”

Mr. Baum, the principal at Iraan High, soon arrived. He described Ms. Garlock as full of energy in her job at the school’s computer lab, a “fireball” who laughed easily and worked efficiently. But she was pinned so tightly in the wreck, he said, that “she couldn’t wiggle; she couldn’t do anything.” Her face, he said, was about an inch from the tractor-trailer.

“Are you O.K.?” Mr. Baum said he asked, and Ms. Garlock replied, “No, but I know I will be.”

It took rescuers with hydraulic tools about an hour and a half to extricate her from the bus. School officials said she was suspected to have sustained multiple fractures.

“She knew she couldn’t panic,” Mr. Baum said. “She had teenage girls who were listening to her.”

Because the 18-wheeler had straddled the westbound lanes of Interstate 20, he said, Ms. Garlock “had nowhere to go” to avoid a collision.

Ms. Garlock’s daughter, Lauren, a senior cheerleader, was safe. She had ridden with her father. Her two sons, Steven, a senior football player and Lauren’s twin, and Ryan, a freshman player, were driven 45 minutes by coaches from the restaurant to Big Spring. Their mother and the injured cheerleaders had been taken there initially, to Scenic Mountain Medical Center.

The lobby was filled with parents and relatives and concerned fans, many still wearing red Iraan football T-shirts. Outside, in the chilly drizzle, two cheerleaders who had not been on the bus cried on the shoulders of their mothers. School officials hugged and wept as they spoke of Ms. Pope, whose death had been confirmed.

“You feel crushed, like an elephant is sitting on your chest and you can’t breathe, you can’t think,” said Tracey Myers, 51, Iraan High’s cross-country coach.

Ms. Pope and Ms. Garlock, whose maiden name was Castaneda, had grown up in a large family of seven girls and three boys, according to a nephew. The sisters had attended Iraan High, and although Ms. Pope’s two children were now adults, she remained involved with the school. As president of the booster club, she brought food to cross-country meets and made sure there was enough chili at the concession stand for football games. She also designed T-shirts for each round of the playoffs.

As she left the stadium, Ms. Pope had already begun to line up orders for T-shirts for the state semifinals.

“She was the last person I hugged,” said Tammy Kirchhoff, 51, Iraan High’s track coach and the wife of the football coach. “She was going to send those T-shirt orders out Monday morning. She loved the Braves.”

The most seriously injured were transferred late Friday to University Medical Center in Lubbock, Tex. Kamie Klassen said her daughter, Kiara, 15, a cheerleader who had finished 20th at the recent cross-country state championships, had sustained a fractured skull, a fractured cheekbone and bruised lungs. But, she added, “She’ll be O.K.”

And then Ms. Klassen expressed a sentiment that would be repeated by many as she left Scenic Mountain Medical Center. There was something familiar and reassuring to be found in continuing the football season. “We’re still a team and we’ll persevere,” she said.

Halee DeGraffenreid, 17, had been one of the more fortunate cheerleaders. She stood in the lobby of the medical center with a gash across her nose and her arm in a sling. She had needed stitches in her elbow but otherwise seemed O.K., her mother said.

Halee had been listening to music and trying to sleep on the bus when she felt a sudden braking and hurtled forward. “I heard a lot of crying and screaming,” she said. “Everyone was on top of each other. It was real scary.”

Suddenly, Halee felt queasy. She sat down in a wheelchair and doctors took her to an examining room before releasing her half an hour later, according to Mr. Baum, the principal.

Sometime after midnight, highlights from the Iraan-Munday game appeared on televisionin the hospital lobby. The Iraan fans turned their eyes to the screen but watched with blank stares. At about 3:30 a.m. on Saturday, the Pope and Garlock families left a small room off the lobby. Relatives hugged them and they cried without words.

Late Saturday morning, the football players met at Iraan High School. Clayton Kent, the quarterback, said his sister Katie had two broken vertebrae in her lower back and a sore neck but was expected to be O.K. They had spoken briefly on the phone.

Coach Mark Kirchhoff gave other updates: Ms. Garlock had been stabilized overnight and doctors were operating on her legs. She was expected to recover. None of the cheerleaders’ injuries appeared life-threatening.

“The emotional swing last night was crazy,” Coach Kirchhoff told his players. “I can tell you how I’m feeling. You have sort of a guilty feeling in that you’ve got that feeling of euphoria and happiness for the game. And then the other swing of the pendulum, the surreal, what-the-hell-just-happened tragedy. It conflicts you inside.”

But, he assured his players, “If you’re thinking about last night and the win and going to the semifinals, that’s O.K. I know I’ve had that thought, ‘Semifinals, man, semifinals,’ and then thinking, ‘My mind shouldn’t be going there.’ But it’s going to.”

By Sunday, at least 10 high schools in West Texas had offered to have their cheerleaders cheer for Iraan in Friday’s semifinal game in Abilene. The offers are greatly appreciated and the cheerleaders will likely be welcomed, perhaps to sit in the stands, said Mr. Allen, the superintendent, but Iraan wants to get back on its own feet.

“It’s the West Texas mentality,” he said. “You may knock us down, but we ain’t staying down.”