Bob Lutz: East coach Brian Byers uses football to deal with tragedy

It happened so suddenly, so unexpectedly.

So tragically.

One minute, Deb Byers was cleaning a window in the family home on a cool Sunday afternoon last April. And the next she collapsed, unresponsive.

Her husband, East football coach Brian Byers, had gone upstairs for something. He heard the fall and rushed downstairs to find his wife on the floor. He tried to revive her while calling 911. Paramedics arrived quickly, but Byers could tell from the looks on their faces and by the way they were talking that there wasn’t much hope.

His wife, his pal, the woman who keeps the statistics at all of the Blue Aces’ games, was gone.

Byers, in his eighth season as coach, was in the midst of coaching the javelin throwers on East’s track and field team. And it was just six days before Ashley, the Byers’ daughter, was to be married.

“There was no talk about putting the wedding off,” Brian Byers said. “Never. (Deb) would not have wanted that.”

Deb’s funeral was the next Thursday at St. Francis of Assisi. Ashley got married to Mark Buxton two days later in the same church.

“Extremely emotional,” Byers said. “The wedding couldn’t have gone better.”

Now it’s football season and Byers’ Aces open Friday night against Kapaun Mount Carmel at Cessna Stadium. One of his assistant coaches is his son, Matt, a world-class javelin thrower who recently graduated from Iowa and lives with his father again in the house in which he grew up.

It’s just the two of them in that house now.

“I think being together has helped us both,” Matt said. “When that night happened, I didn’t know what I was going to do. My dad was in shock and my sister was about to get married. But my sister was a rock for us when everything went down. She really held my dad and I together.”

Deb Byers, 57, was Wichita State’s director of financial aid and regional vice president of the National Association of Financial Student Aid Administrators. She knew people all over the country because of her job, Brian said, and many reached out to him.

“She was at WSU a long time and one of the things that maybe my son and daughter didn’t know was how well she was respected and how well-known she was in that financial-aid group around the country,” Byers said. “We had people from all over the country – almost all 50 states – send us cards. I had gone with her to different conventions over the years, so I knew how well thought of she was in that financial-aid community.”

But no matter how busy she was, Deb made time for East High athletics. She loved being around the football players and track and field athletes, Brian said.

So as ready as he is for the season to start, he knows he’ll have to navigate his way through emotions.

“When I’m on the football field, I’m thinking about football so that I don’t have to think about that other situation nearly as much,” Byers said. “I think it’ll be tough, but it’s what I do. I like coaching football; it’s something I have a passion for. But the one thing you really find out after something like this – and until something like this happens you can say it all you want – is that life really is short and it can change in an instant.”

It helps, Byers said, to have his son so close by.

Matt, one of the best high school javelin throwers in Kansas history, became an All-American at Iowa. He’s training now with Wichita State assistant John Hetzendorf and wants to compete nationally and internationally.

“My goal is to be one of the top throwers in the United States and to be competitive on the international scene,” Matt said. “I’m really hoping to compete in world championships and in the Olympics.”

For now, though, he’s focused on doing what he can to help his father as a coach and a son.

“My dad called me that day and said he had found my mom and he told me to hurry home,” Matt said. “I wasn’t that far from the house, but then he called and said I should go straight to the hospital. I met my dad there.”

Deb had dealt with cardiomyopathy, Brian said, which is a weakening of the heart muscle. She had a slightly enlarged heart, but there had been no warning signs before her collapse. She had been doing well, in fact.

Brian, 58, and Deb had been married for 29 years. They met when Brian was an assistant coach at Emporia State and Deb was working at Missouri Southern, in Joplin. Those teams had played in Emporia State’s homecoming game and they met when they were out that night.

Byers soon took a coaching job in New Mexico, but the distance between them was too far. He eventually quit that job and took one at Pittsburg State to be closer to Deb.

Being alone is hard. And the week leading up to the opening football game has been the hardest yet.

“No, I’m not sure I’m prepared,” Byers said. “My daughter’s birthday was (Tuesday). And Debbie was always at those things. She was always at our games, always doing the stats. Her brothers would come to the games and help out. This is like a lot of things that have come up for the first time since this happened. I’m sure it’s going to be hard.”

But Brian and Matt will take some comfort from being together on the football field. They’ll take comfort from East’s players, who have grasped the gravity of their coach’s loss and reached out to him in many ways since.

“I have people come up to me all the time and say they don’t know what to say,” Byers said. “And they’re right. There’s nothing you can say unless you’ve experienced something like this.

“You do the best you can. I’ve got to get up every day and live my life and not sit back and dwell on this. Life is too short.”

This story was originally published September 5, 2014 at 10:46 AM with the headline "Bob Lutz: East coach Brian Byers uses football to deal with tragedy."