Kathleen Beilein was uneasy as she rode the team bus to the airport. It got worse as she boarded the plane.
Earlier that morning, 57-mph winds had besieged southeastern Michigan's power grid. Tens of thousands lost power. At Crisler Arena in Ann Arbor, her husband's basketball team had to practice in the dark.
Now, here they were, the team, the coaches, the staff, and the families, set to take off as those same winds besieged their jet.
It was March 8, just after 2:50 p.m., when the pilot of the MD-80 twin-engine jet carrying most of the U-M basketball program pushed the throttle forward. The plane began to roll, faster and faster, until it reached 174 mph, and the pilot eased back the yoke.
Nothing happened.
Kathleen, who'd been a flight attendant in the early 1980s, sensed trouble.
"We're not lifting off!" she said to Beilein, who was sitting next to her, holding her arm. "We're not lifting off!"
One second passed. Then another. And another. With each tick, the speed increased, and the runway got shorter. Finally, as the plane roared over 190 mph, the pilot had a decision to make.
He hit the brakes.
As he did, Beilein looked down and noticed he hadn't buckled his seat belt. Then braced himself.
The plane began to slide, beyond the pavement, onto the grass, over a fence, stopping short of a stand of trees and a ravine.
The crash could've been much worse. Beilein realized that immediately. He was alive, after all. And it's hard to quibble with that.
But ... how?
And, more important, why?
The Michigan basketball coach doesn't have the answer to the second question. He'll leave it to his higher power. He does, however, understand how close he came to dying, and that a pilot's quick thinking saved more than 100 people.
It's hard to overstate how profoundly that March afternoon at Willow Run Airport changed him. Even if he's still discovering ways that it did.
Just last week in Naples, Fla., where he and Kathleen were taking a long-awaited vacation, he left his cell phone in his hotel room before heading to the pool. This may seem insignificant. But to Beilein, it was an act of liberation.
Not since he'd been carrying cell phones had he left his behind for a trip to a pool.
He was free.
___
During his 39-year career, Beilein never worked as an assistant coach. He's always been in control. Not just in managing the broad cultural traits of a team and program, but also in its most mundane details.
I once watched Beilein tell his players to make sure they opened their hotel-room blinds when they awoke because he thought the sunshine would help center them. For decades, he had dictated nearly every aspect of his players' winters.
Until this past one, when he started to cede some control to his assistant coaches and began asking for more input from his players. Whether age or experience, he was mellowing.
"I don't think I micromanage," he said, "but I had struggled with how much to control, and sometimes I was reluctant to give it up."
It helped that a different, equally powerful instinct often muted his desire for control: his willingness to trust. Those two traits battled one another the afternoon of March 8, when he, too, wondered if it was safe to fly.
"Is this my place to say right now we're not going up?" he asked himself.
Technically, yes. He could've stopped the flight. He certainly sensed unease on the plane.
In the end, he decided to trust the process and the pilots, which made sense, because just down I-94 at Metro Airport, commercial flights were taking off and landing without incident.
The winds, while unnerving, weren't enough to ground the plane.
The National Transportation Safety Board could take another year to issue its full report on why the pilot had to abort the takeoff that day. However, an early NTSB release showed that the MD-80 had a damaged pushrod that helped control the right elevator.
If the elevator can't move, the plane can't lift off.
Much has been written about what happened after the plane came to a stop. About how a couple of the players — including Mark Donnal — pushed open the emergency door. About how Beilein stood at the bottom of the chute making sure everyone got off the plane as jet fumes washed over his face. About his calm.
Of all the stories that surround that afternoon, that's his least favorite.
"Way too much was made of that," he said. "Anybody would've done that."
Maybe so.
But it's also Beilein's instinct to deflect adulation. As Kathleen pointed out, her husband's nature is to sometimes question whether "he's worthy."
Such thoughts help keep him grounded. The truth is, though, his demeanor and leadership helped diffuse the tension that afternoon, whether he wants to take credit for that or not.
The next few hours were a blur. The details of that night, though, remain clear.
He remembers going door to door at the hotel where the team camped out that night in Ann Arbor. To talk to his players. To console them.
He remembers taking a flashlight and going to his house to find a suit; the power had been out because of all that wind. He remembers some players had to return to their apartments to collect toiletries, or to buy them at the drugstore, because the luggage was trapped on the plane.
He remembers meeting with the team and coaches around 10 p.m., to tell them there would be a bus leaving at 6:30 the next morning for the airport, and that it was up to them whether or not they were on it.
And then he remembers lying down in his bed, trying to quiet his mind. For the first time in his life, on the night before a game, he wasn't thinking about basketball. He couldn't sleep.
Finally, about 5:30 a.m., he stood up to get ready. He met the team for breakfast at 6, then left on the bus for the airport. Everyone on the team showed up.
Kathleen stayed behind.
___
Beilein had no idea how the team would respond when it got to Washington, D.C., for its Big Ten tournament opener against Illinois. Even before the plane skidded off the runway, the power outage made prep difficult.
The players gathered for practice at Crisler Center late on the morning of the crash only to have the lights go out a few minutes later. The team moved through the dark toward the practice gym, which had a corner of windows. There, for an hour, by the glint of sunlight, they walked through their sets.
Then they headed to Willow Run.
Late the next morning, they finally landed in D.C. Actually, it was Dulles. Beilein made arrangements for his team to eat sandwiches as soon as they landed to help fuel them for their game. They finally got to the Verizon Center about 45 minutes before they were supposed to play.
In the pregame locker room, Beilein skipped his usual, technically heavy game plan and simply spoke.
"What's the story we're going to write here?" he asked them. "What are you going to tell your kids and grandkids?"
As he looked at their faces, he saw energy, and knew everything would be fine.
"They are great kids," he said, "but they weren't always as enthusiastic as sometimes you'd like them to be. It's just not their nature. From the first basket on, the bench was going crazy, and everyone was having fun."
Their reaction made him think about game preparation versus emotional readiness.
It's a tricky balance for even the best coaches. And it's easier to pull off when players see you're human.
Even though he'd been letting players see more of his personality during the season, surviving the crash opened him up further.
"I think he's so consumed with the game that didn't realize how important it was not to just have that 'beautiful (basketball) mind,' " Katleen said. "He needed to let (the kids) see who he was."
It wasn't that he was intentionally shutting his teams out. It's that he saw his role as the guardian, the father who is there to oversee his kids.
"Because they are part of our family," she said.
That worked for him for decades. At every stop, from Newfane High School in New York to Erie Community College to Nazareth to Le Moyne to Canisius to Richmond to West Virginia and, finally, to Michigan.
But last season was his 10th in Ann Arbor and though his players had struggled with brutal injury luck, his teams weren't as consistently outgoing and intense as he wanted. He was going to have to pull it from them.
"I don't know if they knew him as a person as much as a coach," Kathleen said. "Or how important it is for them to see that he's real. He's kind of private, and he likes to protect his family."
His answer always was in the details, the preparation, the pastor-like guidance centered on repetition, healthy eating and plenty of sunshine. He also thrived on strategy.
And yet, said Kathleen, "in putting the pieces of the puzzle together that help you win, you can't forget about life."
Relaxing dress codes, for example, or letting players wear earrings. Or, jumping in a circle with your team as you get doused in water.
Which is what Beilein did after his team beat Illinois. Then again, in some form, for the next two weeks as his team took him on the ride of his life.
___
The last time I saw U-M's basketball coach he was standing in the middle of a locker room in the basement of the Sprint Center in downtown Kansas City. There was no jumping. No water, except for a few tears.
No more narrative about the team that survived a plane crash, won the Big Ten tournament, and captured college basketball's imagination. It was finished. Beilein, ever reflective, tried to process his team's improbable run.
But he couldn't. Not really. Not then.
As much as he'd recalibrated his inner workings, he'd been too caught up in the daily details of managing his team and program to think about what it all meant.
Yes, he knew something had changed. He just wasn't sure how.
A week after the loss to Oregon in the Sweet 16, Beilein arrived in Phoenix for the Final Four. Kathleen joined him.
He spent a few days bumping into coaches from around the sport, and everyone wanted to know what the crash had been like. Retelling the tale was fine. He was grateful to be there, and to share with whomever asked.
Finally, after the championship game, he got a chance to sit quietly. He and Kathleen rented a room at the Hermosa Inn, a 35-room hotel tucked near spectacular rock outcroppings in Paradise Valley, Ariz.
For two days, they talked, ate, walked, and relived what had happened.
"The best thing we took from it is gratitude," Kathleen said.
The break didn't last long enough, though. Not for Beilein. He hadn't completely unwound. Besides, there was recruiting. And his own players to think about. And the NBA combine to think about — he knew a couple of his players could consider leaving early.
He spent the several weeks trying to shape next year's team. He began to pay more attention to things outside the game. Especially when he got on a plane.
When the brakes pumped at Willow Run in March, Beilein frantically tried to secure his seat belt. Until that moment, he hadn't thought about it. Everything about flying was routine.
But now?
"I listen to the flight attendant," he said. "I'm much more intentional."
