Print edition: 
She's gone, far too early. Even so, Regan Wheeler, who was 13 when she died in March, has a way of brightening the days of those who love her.
Rick Wheeler, her father and the football coach and athletic director at Heights High, smiles when he thinks about her precociousness.
Regan's mother, Konnie, need only close her eyes and see the smile that could light a city block.
And Madison, the older sister, takes solace in the memories of how her kid sis could drive her crazy, in a good way.
The tragedy of losing a child with such promise, such a presence, is cushioned ever so slightly in what the child did with the years she had.
When they talk about Regan, her mother, father and sister have to fight through the words. There are emotional interruptions and an obvious longing for the daughter and sister who added so much to their lives.
But there is equal happiness and joy as they describe her and, thus, re-live their memories.
"Even in pre-school, her teachers told us that everyone is going to like Regan, everyone is going to really get to know Regan,'' Konnie Wheeler said. "And that she was going to get into some trouble because of her talking. And that's exactly what happened. She was just very alive.''
Regan was badly injured while driving a golf cart near Fox Lake in Butler County just a few days after the Heights boys basketball team won its second consecutive Class 6A championship. She was with a few of her friends on a supervised spring break getaway when she crashed into a barbed-wire fence.
She did not regain consciousness and died two days later at Wesley Medical Center, where friends and family gathered.
The shock hasn't subsided. The Wheelers will never be able to understand how someone so young and so vital could be gone so quickly.
There were close to 1,800 people at her funeral at Central Christian Church. Madison eulogized her sister and read from one of her poems, as Regan had become interested in poetry during the school year.
"As far as going on, you know, there's really no other options,'' Rick said. "We're obligated to a certain degree to carry on and Regan wouldn't want it any other way. It's hard, you just try to do it day by day. That's the part that's hard to talk about.''
* *
Rick Wheeler has a football team to coach. He recently returned from a team camp in Tulsa, where he was accompanied by 55 Heights players. He's in the process of putting together his 2010 team and beginning his 12th season as coach after six years as an assistant.
Konnie, a nurse practitioner in the emergency room at Via Christi Hospital on Harry, took a month off after the accident. At first, she worried it wasn't enough.
But getting back to work, back to familiarity, has helped both parents.
"Being in the field I'm in, I knew a tragedy like this can happen to anybody,'' Konnie said. "But when it happens to you, and you're on the other side, it just takes your breath away.
"I've seen terrible things happen to people and I always think, 'Oh my goodness, how are those parents and family handling that?' And then, with this, I've realized you just have to do it. Something just takes over.''
The outpouring from family and friends was overwhelming to the Wheelers. Enough food for 2 1/2 months of meals was delivered by a non-stop stream of caregivers. The family received e-mails, cards and condolences from all over.
Rick heard from dozens of coaches, the same coaches he's trying to whip on the football field on Friday nights. Some were at the hospital to console him while Regan battled for her life.
"My supposed arch enemies,'' he said. "Sometimes you lose sight of how you're all in this together even though you're competing with one another.''
* *
This was to be such a special year, the only year in which Rick, Madison and Regan were at Heights together.
Madison, who will be a senior, is a volleyball player and pole vaulter and she'll be off to college soon. She's going to volleyball camp this summer and Regan was supposed to be with her.
Madison is the athlete; Regan looked up to her sister. It wasn't always easy to tell.
"She was so ornery and fearless,'' Madison said. "She wasn't an easy younger sister. She'd get on my nerves and push buttons until I just exploded. But the last few months were the closest we'd ever been.''
Regan loved sports and loved being around athletes. An eighth-grader at Allison Traditional Magnet Middle School in the spring, she was thrilled to be able to sit among the Heights students at the state basketball tournament in Emporia, her father said.
"Regan was never even among the top half of the athletes on her teams,'' Rick said. "But the thing about her is that she always felt like she was the best player. She was all about the social aspect of being in sports. Socially, she was the center of any team she was on. There's no question.''
That's because Regan attracted a crowd wherever she went. Those who knew her were attracted to her sense of humor and her lack of fear.
She was frequently moved from desk to desk during her grade-school years because she wouldn't stop talking. It became a problem her parents heard about at conferences.
But it was one of those problems that wasn't really a problem because Regan's teachers were always as drawn to her, as were her friends, Konnie said.
After being a student manager for the highly successful Allison volleyball team as a sixth-grader, Regan tried out for the team the following year, hoping to follow in the footsteps of Madison, who was a fine player at Allison.
Things didn't go as planned.
"I cut her,'' Allison coach Tamara Gallatin said. "That's something all coaches hate to do, but it wasn't ever going to be an automatic that she was going to make the team.''
Gallatin is aware of what being cut can do to the psyche of a girl in middle school, so she kept a close eye on Regan in English class. Soon, she realized she didn't have to. Regan was fine.
"You can't knock that girl down and ever expect her to stay down,'' Gallatin said. "Getting cut didn't cause her to lose her will to play volleyball. She came back as an eighth grader (in the 2009-10 school year) and made the team.''
Instead of pouting, Regan often approached Gallatin about what she needed to do to become a better volleyball player. She was determined.
The same thing happened after Regan fared poorly on a reading test.
"That girl was checking with me all the time to see how she could get her reading score up,'' Gallatin said. "She really was OK with constructive criticism and girls are really fragile in middle school.''
Not Regan. She went out of her way, it seemed, to find obstacles.
"She really had confidence in herself,'' Konnie Wheeler said. "Of course, she had bad days. Everybody has those, where you feel a little bit sorry for yourself or you think you've been dealt some bad cards. But for the most part, she was really confident and she had an innate sense of leadership. She was truly color blind. She never put up boundaries for people. She just cared about them. She cared about everything.''
* *
Rick is a football coach who was softened by having two daughters. No matter how he might pretend otherwise, it's the truth.
"Jokingly, we always called it the coach's curse kind of thing, having two girls,'' he said. "But, no, I got a lot of boys (at Heights). Now, before we had children, I could never even imagine having a daughter. I just assumed all my children would be boys. I don't know if that's normal, but it's the way I looked at it.''
It didn't take him long to find out how misguided he had been. Madison came first. She's the serious type who excels at school and hasn't needed much guidance.
Regan was like a bird flying from one tree to the next, never willing to sit for a spell. For her, there was always something going on.
She'd clear space on the kitchen table to do her crafts. She enjoyed making a mess in the kitchen. Her room — you don't even want to know about her room. Let's just say leftover food didn't always find its way to the trash or the garbage disposal.
The Wheelers, who live in Kechi, disciplined Regan, but discipline doesn't work the same way for some as it does others. Regan was one who required return visits.
"Having these girls was probably the best thing that ever happened to me,'' Rick said.
Konnie concurred, saying her husband needed girls to level his life.
"And Regan was as close to a boy as she could be,'' she said. "She knew all the football guys, all the coaches. She was always there.''
After a win — or a loss — Regan would be among the first to reach her dad. She always gave him a hug, one of those moments that help with perspective.
Rick Wheeler used to need that kind of help, before he had the girls. Football was his life. He was a typical football coach, and in some ways still is.
He is the coach responsible for rescuing Heights from football oblivion to some huge success. Last year, the Falcons played for the 6A championship in Topeka, but lost to Olathe North. A Wichita high school hasn't won a 6A title since 1982.
Getting Heights to where it is as a City League football power wasn't the result of magic. Wheeler sacrificed family time, especially in those early years.
"But we've gotten better as a staff, and our team has gotten better, as we've stopping putting so much pressure on ourselves,'' he said. "The pursuit of perfection is what it's all about; it's not about being perfect.''
* *
This will be such a difficult season. Wheeler will be tempted to pour everything into football to escape the pain of losing a child. It would be easy for him to do so; easy for Konnie to do the same with her job.
Easy, yet not healthy. The family, Rick and Konnie say, is the most important thing. It was a strong, close family before the accident and it will stay that way.
"I don't know how (Rick) could put more time into football than he already does,'' Konnie said. "And that's just the way it is; that's our life. We always know where he's at and who he's with.''
In a roundabout way, football has been such a help to the Wheelers in the aftermath of losing Regan. It's football that has provided the family with such a strong network of friends, people who were not afraid to come forward and help with whatever needed doing.
With their senses dulled, the Wheelers needed that support. For weeks after the accident, they weren't capable of doing the day-to-day things, instead coping minute-by-minute.
"We have always been a very close family,'' Konnie Wheeler said. "People talk about how things like this can break marriages apart or send somebody down the wrong road. But there's just no doubt in my mind that that's just not going to happen here.
"You put so much work into creating a little person and then all of a sudden, she's gone. But you have to look back. And Regan was so very happy and that was largely because of us, because of this family. We're a very happy family. We have fun together.''
That's Regan's legacy. Fun.
"She was always smiling, she always had something to say,'' said Carri Parks, who coached Regan in summer softball for a couple of years. "And some of her stuff was really hilarious. I always called her 'The Entertainer.' ''
It's those memories, that charisma, that living of her life that people closest to her remember.
These are excruciating times for the Wheeler family and their friends. Not an hour goes by when they don't feel themselves crumbling.
When that happens, though, Regan reaches out. Something she said or did is replayed in their minds. They forget they're hurting for just a little while. Regan is there to pull them through.
