A Death That Shook a School and a Sport

The shock of it all brought home to everyone a heightened sense of the fragility of life itself.

That anyone could die so unexpectedly was unsettling enough. But that it could happen to a highly conditioned athlete like Hank Gathers, on a basketball court, seemed to defy rationality.

It happened nine years ago today, at Loyola Marymount University, in the first half of a game against Portland. Gathers, a 23-year-old Philadelphian who had been taking medication for a heart condition, had just made an acrobatic dunk to give Loyola a 25-13 lead.

He was moving upcourt just before Portland inbounded the ball. While turning at the free-throw line, he took two steps to the right and fell heavily to the floor.

The crowd of 4,000 grew silent as teammates and officials gathered around the fallen player. Most were aware that Gathers had fainted in a game three months earlier and had missed several weeks while undergoing tests. It had been determined his previous fainting was because of an irregular heartbeat, but eventually he had been cleared medically to play again.

This time, Gathers appeared to revive briefly, while on the floor, but he lost consciousness again. He was taken on a stretcher to an ambulance and was pronounced dead an hour and 40 minutes later.

Longtime friend and teammate Bo Kimble said the next day, “There’ll always be a piece of him with me. I played with him so long, I don’t know how it could be any other way.”

Also on this date: In 1968, at New York, Joe Frazier knocked out flabby Buster Mathis in the 11th round and Nino Benvenuti decisioned Emile Griffith before 19,000 at Madison Square Garden. . . . In 1950, at Santa Anita, Noor beat Citation by a nose in the San Juan Capistrano Handicap. . . . In 1981, Guy Lafleur went over 1,000 points faster than any NHL player had, in his 720th game. . . . On the same day, jockey Laffit Pincay, battling flu, rode six winners at Santa Anita.