Nov. 28, 2008

By Adam Lucas

It is already 6:16 p.m. for a scheduled 6:05 p.m. departure and American Airlines Flight 6 is still sitting at the gate at Kahului Airport in Maui . The pilot, whose name is Tom Crews--say it out loud, and yes, that's really his name--is awaiting for the appropriate paperwork to be cleared by the FAA before he can push back and begin the seven-hour overnight trip to Dallas. It is his very last flight after 30 years of flying for American and 22 years of flying in the Navy.

It is Thanksgiving night, and scattered throughout the Boeing 763 is the full Carolina Basketball traveling party. Video coordinator Eric Hoots is in seat 25G, just behind Tyler Hansbrough and Deon Thompson. Taller players get the coveted aisle seats, an effort to make the lengthy trip more palatable.

Departure is rescheduled for 6:17 p.m. Just one more minute. What difference could one more minute make?

As we are about to find out, it could mean a life.

The plane takes an almost imperceptible roll back from the gate, maybe a foot. At exactly that moment, flight attendant Penny Mather streaks up the left aisle and shouts, "Code red!"

One of her fellow flight attendants looks at her with a quizzical look. Mather, a 20-year flight attendant veteran who has a tropical purple flower in her hair, looks back and says, "Seriously!"

Carolina Basketball is all about preparation. Every day in practice, Roy Williams concocts a new scenario for them to experience. Up three points with a minute to play. Down six points with two minutes to play. Attacking a zone. Beating a press. They even practice the best way to get the ball in bounds and call timeout to preserve precious seconds in a last-chance shot situation.

And yet, despite all that practice, despite the pains that are taken every day to make sure that the North Carolina Tar Heels never encounter a single situation for which they are not prepared, it's in those moments where there can be no preparation that you learn the most about them.

Mather has called the code red because the large man in the row in front of Hoots, the one who came on board in a wheelchair, is struggling. Sweat is pouring off him and his family can't get him to respond; he has a history of diabetes and heart problems.

"I need strong guys!" Mather barks.

Hoots jumps to his feet.

"Deon! Psycho!" he shouts.

Another flight attendant tries to get Hoots to sit down. "Clear the aisles right now!" she says to him.

"No," Mather says, "I need them."

She runs up the aisle and asks for the automatic external defibrillator and enhanced medical kit that are kept on board. Two doctors on the plane are out of their seats and attending to the man. Even as they move towards him, more basketball players are standing up, wanting to help.

"We need to pick him up," Mather says.

What she is about to learn is that you don't issue an order to a Carolina basketball player without it being followed exactly. Thompson, Hansbrough and Hoots lift the man up--way up. Thompson and Hansbrough are almost seven feet tall, so "up" to them is stratospheric to the rest of us.

"Not that high!" Mather says.

She instructs them to take the man to the galley, located in the middle of the plane, where doctors can better attend to the man. Of course, not being aeronautics experts, they don't know where the galley is, but eventually they find it.

They carry the man there and position him for the doctors. Unable to return to their seats, they slide into seats 6H and 6J, the back row of first class. A yellow Kahului fire truck pulls alongside the plane just outside their window, red lights flashing. Hansbrough, who has made giant strides as a happy flyer during his Carolina career, sneaks a glance at the emergency vehicle.

A passel of paramedics and airport police board the plane. After approximately 30 minutes, doctors have restored the man to consciousness enough to wheel him off the plane. His traveling companion, his first cousin, is in tears.

Mather gets a round of applause from the passengers as she walks back down the aisle--the first time in her career, she says, that has ever happened. And as for Hansbrough and Thompson?

It turns out seats 6H and 6J are broken, so FAA rules prohibit them from being occupied. The players are shuttled back to coach, back to where their knees scrape the seat in front of them and turkey sandwiches with potato chips are available for the bargain price of $10.

That 10-minute delay at the gate could have saved the man's life. If the incident had happened in the air, the plane would have had to circle for as much as an hour to dump fuel before landing.

"It all worked out for the best," Mather says. "We had that delay, we had the doctors on board, and we had the best possible passengers sitting around him."

She did not see them zip through a competitive Maui Invitational field. She does not know that somewhere in his luggage Ty Lawson is toting the tournament MVP award, or that the days of several--most?--of these players flying coach will be over very soon. But as she nods towards the interlocking "NC" on my shirt, she is sure of one very important thing:

"That's a great group you're with," she says.

Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of four books on Carolina basketball.