He Died at the Top of His Game

It is surely the cruelest of ironies that college basketball superstar Hank Gathers should have suffered from the abnormality of arrhythmia. In the prime of his athletic life, at the top of his game, to his legions of fans not only at his college, Loyola Marymount, but at his former high school in Philadelphia and almost everywhere he played, to every hard-court opponent against whom he’d ever competed, Gathers was known for having a heart as big as a basketball court.

But on Sunday, after stuffing a basketball through a hoop and giving his team inspiration and widening the lead against the University of Portland, Gathers fell to the floor with convulsions and died at a nearby hospital shortly thereafter. Doctors believe that the arrhythmia condition was a major factor in the star’s death. He was 23.

What a terrible tragedy this is. Here was a young man who had everyone rooting for him and everything going for him: The sixth-leading collegiate basketball scorer in the country, who had completed a KTLA Channel 5 internship, enjoyed the prospect of a pro basketball career and perhaps a broadcasting career after that. He had a spirit and a manner for all, and a special respect and love for his family, that were deep and infectious. At a time when the term role model is sometimes more honored in its misapplication, Gathers was precisely that: someone whom people should look up to.

So will he always be.