Pretty good so far.
true story. The entire 1970 Marshall team died in a plane crash in 1970, except for a few injured players that stayed behind. I never knew this.
Plot
On the evening of November 14, 1970, Southern Airways Flight 932, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9 which Huntington, West Virginia's Marshall University chartered to transport the Thundering Herd football team to Greenville, North Carolina and back to Huntington, clipped trees on a ridge just one mile short of the runway at Tri-State Airport in Ceredo, West Virginia and crashed into a gully. The team was returning from their game against the East Carolina University Pirates — a 17–14 loss. There were no survivors. In all, seventy-five people lost their lives. The dead included the thirty-seven players, Tolley and five members of his coaching staff, Charles E. Kautz, Marshall's athletics director, team trainer Jim Schroer and his assistant, Donald Tackett, twenty-two boosters, and five crew members.
In the wake of the tragedy, President Donald Dedmon leans towards indefinitely suspending the football program, but he is ultimately persuaded to reconsider by the pleas of the Marshall students and Huntington residents, and especially the few football players who didn't make the flight. Dedmon hires a young new head coach Jack Lengyel, who, with the help of Red Dawson, manages to rebuild the team in a relatively short time. They are aided by the NCAA's waiver of a rule prohibiting freshmen from playing varsity sports (a rule which would be permanently abolished in 1972). The new team is composed mostly of the returning players and athletes from other Marshall sports programs. The "Young Thundering Herd" wins just two games during the 1971 season; their first post-crash victory is a heart-stopping 15–13 home win against Xavier University in the first home game of the season.
[edit] Cast
true story. The entire 1970 Marshall team died in a plane crash in 1970, except for a few injured players that stayed behind. I never knew this.
Plot
On the evening of November 14, 1970, Southern Airways Flight 932, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9 which Huntington, West Virginia's Marshall University chartered to transport the Thundering Herd football team to Greenville, North Carolina and back to Huntington, clipped trees on a ridge just one mile short of the runway at Tri-State Airport in Ceredo, West Virginia and crashed into a gully. The team was returning from their game against the East Carolina University Pirates — a 17–14 loss. There were no survivors. In all, seventy-five people lost their lives. The dead included the thirty-seven players, Tolley and five members of his coaching staff, Charles E. Kautz, Marshall's athletics director, team trainer Jim Schroer and his assistant, Donald Tackett, twenty-two boosters, and five crew members.
In the wake of the tragedy, President Donald Dedmon leans towards indefinitely suspending the football program, but he is ultimately persuaded to reconsider by the pleas of the Marshall students and Huntington residents, and especially the few football players who didn't make the flight. Dedmon hires a young new head coach Jack Lengyel, who, with the help of Red Dawson, manages to rebuild the team in a relatively short time. They are aided by the NCAA's waiver of a rule prohibiting freshmen from playing varsity sports (a rule which would be permanently abolished in 1972). The new team is composed mostly of the returning players and athletes from other Marshall sports programs. The "Young Thundering Herd" wins just two games during the 1971 season; their first post-crash victory is a heart-stopping 15–13 home win against Xavier University in the first home game of the season.
[edit] Cast
