Texas town’s stirring win whipsaws into tragedy

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 travelled to West Texas last week with photographer Ilana Panich-Linsman for more salutary reasons. We wanted to chronicle a highschool 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 fakenews 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, principal at Iraan High School, joked Friday morning. “You don’t need one when you’re underground.”

As the undefeated Iraan Braves prepared for a threehour trip to play in the state quarter-finals, 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,” 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.

Panich-Linsman photographed one of the wellwishers, who wore an Indian headdress. She was Liz Pope, 52, 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 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.

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 Friday morning.

After the 40-12 victory, the Iraan travelling 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 Garlock, the varsity sponsor. Her sister, Pope, also rode along. The players headed to a nearby Mexican restaurant for a late meal.

Christmas music played in the background. Then the room grew quiet. Players began to gather around a table in the centre of the restaurant.

Clayton Kent, 18, Iraan’s quarterback, had received a sombre 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. According to the Texas Department of Public Safety, the driver of a tractor-trailer, travelling east 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.

The most seriously injured were transferred late Friday to University Medical Center in Lubbock. Kamie Klassen said her daughter, Kiara, 15, a cheerleader, had sustained a fractured skull, a fractured cheekbone and bruised lungs. But, she added, “She’ll be OK.”

And then 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.