Campus shooting stirs dire memories for ex-CU coach

By Andrew Seligman, Associated Press

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Former University of Colorado basketball coach Ricardo Patton was returning from a recruiting trip when he heard about the Northern Illinois University campus shooting. Immediately, his mind started racing.

The current NIU coach 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 basketball team and was at practice. Tracking down older son Ricardo Jr., a Huskies football player, wasn't as easy.

Last week Steven Kazmier- czak entered a science lecture hall with a shotgun and pistols. He killed five people and wounded 16 before taking his own life.

With the campus locked down, there was no cell phone access. It took a few hours for the coach to get hold of his eldest son.

"That was a tense moment," Patton said. "But I was very prayerful that he was OK."

Patton said he understands what frantic parents were going through.

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 CU coach at the time. One of his players, Josh Townsend, lost a sister.

"I remember Josh Townsend's mother stating it was very important that Josh was part of the team, and it's no different now," Patton said.

He never envisioned encountering a similar scenario. Yet that's what he's doing 11 months after taking the job at a school in a bucolic community 65 miles west of Chicago.

Now, Patton expects the players to support each other when they return to campus today.

There will be no athletic competitions - home or away - until Monday, when classes resume.

"The biggest thing that we heard was to listen to our students about how they're feeling," Patton said. "You certainly don't want to try to tell them how they're feeling."

How this affects the 6-17 team remains to be seen, but there are bigger concerns.

"It just confirms what I've always believed, and that is that our charge as coaches is greater than playing games," Patton said.