CHICAGO — Northern Illinois coach Ricardo Patton was returning from a recruiting trip when he heard about the campus shooting. Immediately, his mind started racing.
He knew one son was OK. He couldn’t reach the other one, though.
“Fortunately, our players were all together in practice,” Patton said Monday.
His son Michael is on the Northern Illinois basketball team and was at practice. Tracking down older son Ricardo Jr., a Huskies football player, wasn’t as easy.
Last week, Steven Kaz-mierczak entered a science lecture with a shotgun and pistols. He killed five people while wounding 16 before taking his own life.
With the campus locked down, there was no cellphone access. It took a few hours for the coach to get hold of Ricardo Jr.
“That was a tense moment,” the coach said. “But I was very prayerful that he was OK.”
Having his sons there “certainly gives me a perspective about how parents might be feeling about their students being here on campus,” he said. “We’ve had a wonderful experience here. There are some wonderful people. It’s a great academic institution. Those things are still in place.”
For Patton, the shootings jarred memories of the Columbine High School massacre in 1999. He was the coach at Colorado at the time and through last season. One of his players, Josh Townsend, lost a sister.
“I remember Josh Town-send’s mother stating it was very important that Josh was part of the team, and it’s no different now,” Patton said.
Patton remembered his Colorado team rallying around Townsend. Now, the coach expects the players to support each other when they return to campus today.
There will be no athletic competitions — home or away — until Feb. 25, when classes resume. The Huskies are 6-17 and are fifth in the Mid-American Conference’s six-team West division.
That means games against Western Michigan, Toledo and Tennessee State were called off. Patton said he thought only one might be rescheduled.
No NIU athletes were among the dead or wounded. The school is offering grief counseling, and coaches already met with counselors.
But there are bigger issues, bigger concerns.
“For me, it just confirms what I’ve always believed, and that is that our charge as coaches is greater than playing games,” Patton said. “Our charge as coaches is to help mold and shape young people’s lives and give them direction. The game is certainly secondary.”
