UPDATE: 4:30 p.m. Thursday, 7/30/09: ETSU is in mourning today. Seth Coy, a rising sophomore basketball player died in a car crash Wednesday night. Thursday morning, his five teammates and staff on campus, met together with a grief counselor and the team chaplain.
Athletic Director, Dave Mullins said "We have great happy memories (of Seth), but at a time like this, we're trying to deal with the pain, the disappointment, the sadness at the same time."
Both Mullins and Seth's teammate Greg Hamlin shared in appreciation for the outpouring of thoughts and prayers as the team deals with this great shock.
Hamlin described Seth, "Seth was a great teammate, a great person. A people person. Everybody loved Seth. No matter who you talk to, everybody's going to say the same thing. He was just the greatest person to be around... he just loved life... kinda sad that he's gone now. I'm gonna miss him."
I got in touch with Seth's high school basketball coach, the Athletic Director, Gene Miller, at Washington High School in Washington, Indiana. He explained how the town of 12,000 has been rocked by Seth's sudden death. Seth has two younger brothers, one in middle school, and the other, just about a year old.
"All of our little kids in town looked up to him," Miller said. "He was a role model for all of them, and you know, he was one of those people in town that everybody enjoyed being around and talking to."
Miller said that Seth was the apple of his mother's eye, and explained, "he was such a loved personality. He was part of our last state championship basketball team, and he was one of those young kids that had a lasting affect on a community."
ETSU Athletic Director Dave Mullins told us the team is waiting to hear from the Coy family about funeral services, and then the school will try to arrange for group travel. Gene Miller said he expects a memorial to take place in their high school gym in Washington, Indiana.
He also said the NCAA will help pay for travel for those teammates who are further away, home for the summer.
Click on the icon above for more.
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9:00 a.m. Thursday, 7/30/09: Detective Jason Rice of the Shelby County, Kentucky Sheriff's Department is investigating a car crash that killed ETSU rising sophomore Buc's basketball player, Seth Coy.
Coy was driving westbound on I-64, and Det. Rice says the crash happened around 5:30 Wednesday evening, at mile-marker 38, between Lexington and Louisville. Rice thinks wet roadways were a large contributing factor, since it had been raining heavily before the crash. According to preliminary investigations, Det. Rice says Coy hydroplaned, lost control of his vehicle, and went into the median, causing the car to overturn. As of now, Rice thinks that the car flipped at least two times in the median, and one of those flips caused Coy's body to be ejected from the car. Coy was not wearing a seatbelt. Emergency medical crews pronounced Coy dead at the scene. No other cars or people were involved in the crash.
Coy is from Montgomery, Indiana. Rice said Coy's family was not at the scene Wednesday night, but they have been notified by the coroner's office. Rice believes that Coy's body is still in Kentucky at this point, and investigations continue. With evidence collected Wednesday night, Det. Rice will reconstruct the accident to determine more information about the crash. This may take seven days.
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Information From Josh Smith and Kenny Hawkins:
The East Tennessee State University athletics community is in mourning today.
Seth Coy, 19, died in a car crash last night in Kentucky while traveling home to Indiana.
The sophomore was a rising star on the East Tennessee State University Bucs Basketball team.
Police said it was a single car crash.
Here's an excerpt from a news release issued by ETSU:
“Words cannot describe the sincere heartache everyone involved with ETSU athletics feels at this time, and our thoughts and prayers go out to Seth’s entire family,” said ETSU men’s basketball head coach Murry Bartow. “For those of us who worked with Seth on a day-to-day basis as part of the men’s basketball program here at ETSU, this is devastating news. He was such a great young man with a pleasant personality, a wonderful sense of humor, and a really bright future. He was so well-liked within our team, and it was obvious by the reaction during games last year that he was a fan favorite as well. This is just unbelievably heartbreaking.”
Coy, a 6-foot-11 center, joined the ETSU program last season after a high school career that included playing alongside highly-touted North Carolina signee Tyler Zeller. Coy and Zeller won a Class 3A Indiana state championship at Washington High School, where Coy averaged 13.6 points and 9.8 rebounds a game as a senior.
At ETSU, Coy played in 24 games as a true freshman, averaging 10.8 minutes a game, with 2.0 rebounds and 2.9 points a contest. He was expected to battle this preseason for a starting spot in the post during the upcoming 2009-2010 season.
Funeral plans and arrangements are not known at this time. ETSUBucs.com will provide updates when they become available."
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