Coping with Loss Sudden deaths of high school athletes pose special problems of mourning and healing for teammates, coaches, parents

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As a wrestling coach concerned with his kids making weight, Bucksport coach Joel Pelletier does not condone junk food during the winter season.

But Pelletier threw all that aside one Sunday evening in December. His team was trying to cope with the sudden death of a fellow wrestler and needed to be together, so Pelletier called for a team dinner at his place.

What was on the menu?

Pizza, chips and soda. Not exactly health food.

But Pelletier didn’t care – anything to get the wrestlers together at such a terrible time.

“It was everything I preach against,” Pelletier said with a smile. “But I just wanted them to hang loose and have a good time.”

Dealing with the death of a teenager – a person at such a promising age – is difficult for students, teachers and the entire school community.

For the members of a team who lose a teammate during the season, the loss is that much harder. Teammates are often good friends who spend long hours together during the season and sometimes in the off-season, or play two or three sports together, share the team’s common goals, and work to become tight-knit in order to achieve their goals.

This winter a number of schools and teams have gone through the mourning and healing process after the death of a student and teammate. Bucksport wrestler Ryan DeTour collapsed at a meet in Caribou in December. Almost a week later, four Old Town students were involved in a car crash that took the lives of golfer Gabe Woods and Steven Gomm, the top Class B diver in the state last year. Gray-New Gloucester basketball player Michael Huff was killed in a December snowmobile accident.

In these cases, the pressure is often on the adults in the situation even though they’re going through the grieving process, too. It’s the job of coaches, teachers and administrators to guide student-athletes through the time immediately after a death, and to hope the team stays together through it all.

“I knew whatever I did as a coach was going to make or break my team in the next step,” Pelletier said.

Schools mobilize

When a death happens in a school, administrators go into action immediately. Neither Gray-New Gloucester nor Foxcroft Academy, which lost three students to a car accident this year, have official plans to deal with student deaths, but those schools have at least a phone chain or crisis management team.

Old Town High has a system, which it went to immediately after the deaths of Gomm and Wood.

“Any time we lose a student, we have a policy in place that we start instantly,” Old Town’s principal, Terry Kenniston, said.

Old Town’s policy has been in place since at least the late 1980s. It involves calling in the necessary administrators and counselors, who decide what the school will tell its faculty and students and whether to cancel school or practices for the day. Decisions about how to work with students are also made.

There are always unforeseen circumstances. In Old Town’s case, Kenniston said, the state police dealing with the crash in which Gomm and Wood were killed had not released the boys’ names, so teachers only knew that two unnamed students had died.

In the hours and days after Michael Huff died – in the season’s first snowmobile accident – members of Gray-New Gloucester’s crisis team met, including the school’s administrators, guidance counselors, teachers and a parent.

The school brought in officials from the Center for Grieving Children, which is based in Portland. There also are centers that deal with grief in Bangor, Gardiner, Exeter and the Lewiston-Auburn area.

The Center for Grieving Children helps schools deal with tragedies such as the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and also sends teaching materials all over the state.

“The biggest thing for teams is the pressure to keep going,” said Anne Lynch, executive director of the center. “Teams don’t really have the luxury of having time to just be. There’s so much pressure that it’s difficult for them to find a quiet space.”

Schools sometimes call in members of the town’s religious community. Old Town had several leaders from local churches in the school after Gomm and Wood were killed. Schools like Old Town, which draw students from smaller surrounding towns, frequently call on counselors from sending schools, too.

“You never know what the different reactions are going to be and you want people to have as much access to [counselors or clergy] as possible,” Kenniston said.

Schools can often rely on adults close to the team to keep an eye on the kids.

“The kids who we see aren’t talking are the ones we’re concerned about,” said Pelletier’s wife, Elaine, who spent a lot of time with the Bucks that week. “When you’re alone you don’t feel as strong as when you’ve got a crew around you; you lift each other up. We watched our team draw strength from each other.”

Foxcroft Academy, which had three students – one of whom had been on the tennis, swimming and field hockey teams at different times in her high school career – die in a car accident, also has a crisis management team, which instantly starts a phone chain. Like other schools, the building is open for students. Foxcroft also brought in counselors from other local schools.

“We implement it immediately,” said Athletic Director Dave Clement. “We keep fine-tuning it every time something like this happens.”

So does Old Town. Kenniston met recently with officials from the superintendent’s office to go over the policy.

“We learn something new from every experience,” he said. “I think we’re continuing to heal on a daily basis.”

Pulling together

Whatever Bucksport coach Pelletier did for his team, it worked. One week after losing DeTour, the Golden Bucks were back wrestling at an invitational meet in Gardiner, where the Class C team finished third behind two Class A schools.

For the Bucksport wrestlers, spending time together and having understanding adults around made a huge difference. The Bucks lost practice time, but the time spent together was invaluable.

“I told them, ‘If you think I’m going to tell you to be tough and suck it up, it ain’t going to happen,'” Pelletier said at the Gardiner meet. “The boys that have stuck together have pulled through as a team.”

It took some time for the wrestlers to understand that, however. Some of the boys wanted to be alone – in fact, the Golden Bucks lost a wrestler who felt he couldn’t go on with the team.

For Kyle Perkins, a Bucksport senior, spending time with the team, family and friends made the week after DeTour’s death a bit easier.

“At first, when it first happened, I thought I wanted to be by myself,” Perkins said. “But then after I started doing things with the team, it seemed to just move better and it made it a lot easier.”

Even though the wrestlers seemed to get through the days after DeTour’s death, Pelletier was worried. That’s because of the manner in which DeTour died.

Gomm and Wood were killed in a car crash. Huff died in a snowmobile accident. Both incidents were, in a way, out of sight of the team.

But DeTour’s death was different. The senior collapsed during a meet in Caribou – the cause of his death is still unknown – and although the Caribou High gym was cleared to allow a doctor and two nurses to work on him, the Golden Bucks still saw the whole thing happen.

That thought troubles Pelletier.

“We lost a kid when I was in school. But these kids saw this kid, eyes open, dead, gasping for his last breath,” he said. “It’s not like you have a car accident and you don’t see it. I can’t explain it. And that’s what my whole struggle is, honestly.”

And so the reason for the junk food dinner and other team get-togethers throughout the week.

While teams try to move on after a death, many choose to honor their lost teammate throughout the season. The Bucks had DeTour’s initials embroidered on their uniforms. Bucksport’s cheerleaders also posted a sign for DeTour during a recent cheerleading competition at the Bangor Auditorium.

Old Town cheerleaders honored their schoolmates with a picture frame with photos of Gomm and Wood that the girls placed in front of them when they performed during competitions. The Indian swimmers and divers had Gomm’s initials sewn onto team hats.

Eastern Maine basketball fans who watched Class A girls basketball games at the Bangor Auditorium during the 2002 tournament may have noticed the outpouring of support for the Nokomis girls team and player Mandi Foss, who died in a snowmobile accident in December 2001.

The Warriors of Newport kept Foss in their thoughts all season. They stitched angel halos on their uniforms, and also kept a teddy bear on the bench, which they kissed as they were introduced. Fans posted and waved signs that read “All for Mandi,” and Foss’ name was read during the award ceremony after the Eastern Maine Class A final game.

Finding ways to memorialize teammates is important for teenagers.

“It’s good for them to do something in memory of the person,” Lynch said. “They have a real sense to be in connection to the spirit of the person and make sense of the person’s life.”

Those things are important, but many kids said being together was the key factor in getting through the tragedy both for the team and the individual.

“All we were doing last year was staying together as a team. That’s all we were doing. If we weren’t practicing or having a game, we were always together,” said Lindsey Welch, now a senior on the Warrior squad. “It didn’t matter what we were doing. Spending the night at somebody’s house, grabbing something to eat. We were always together, and we got closer.”

Maintaining a connection

Sherri Foss stayed away from basketball for the rest of the season after daughter Mandi’s death. Now that younger daughter Ricki-Lynn is a cheerleader, she goes a bit more often.

It’s still hard, but knowing Mandi’s teammates are there for her has been a help, she said recently.

Mandi Foss grew up in Corinna with Nokomis players like Welch, Danielle Clark, Michelle Murray and Sara Lowe.

Welch and Mandi Foss were especially close, and one afternoon last summer Sherri Foss got a phone call from the starting player.

“She asked me if I would come with her to have her senior pictures taken. Lindsey and Mandi had planned to do that,” Sherri Foss said.

Foss was worried it would be too hard on her, but she agreed to it. And even though it was tough, she said, being with Mandi’s teammate and friend helped.

“Those girls don’t know. They don’t realize,” Sherri Foss said. “Every hug they give me. … They see Mandi in me, the way I act and the things I say. Those girls think I’m a part of Mandi and I think they’re a part of Mandi. I need to have that connection.”

At times, teams go to parents and family, and vice versa, especially when it’s a group as close as the Nokomis girls. The connection can be invaluable.

Lynch suggested teams make a photo album or memory book that will let the family in on the child’s life outside the home and understand the effect that child had on the world around him or her.

“The impressions that we have of our children at home, you don’t know how they were with the team,” she said. “[Families] can have some sense of the child’s impact on the teammates.”

In the days after Mandi Foss’ death, several members of the Nokomis team piled into her room at home and spent the night. They still visit Sherri and Ricki-Lynn Foss. Sometimes the girls leave little tokens in Mandi’s room, which has not been changed. Mandi Foss was also a field hockey player, and that team keeps in touch, too.

“It definitely helps me so much,” said Sherri Foss, who hopes to return to work as a hairstylist in the next month.

“I think [Sherri Foss] loved [the visits],” said senior Danielle Clark. “She was afraid that we would stop going to see her, but that will never happen.”