Kathleen Beilein was uneasy as she rode the team bus to the airport. It got worse as she boarded the plane.
Earlier that morning, 57-mph winds had besieged southeastern Michigan's power grid. Tens of thousands lost power. At Crisler Arena in Ann Arbor, her husband's basketball team had to practice in the dark.
Now, here they were, the team, the coaches, the staff, and the families, set to take off as those same winds besieged their jet.
It was March 8, just after 2:50 p.m., when the pilot of the MD-80 twin-engine jet carrying most of the U-M basketball program pushed the throttle forward. The plane began to roll, faster and faster, until it reached 174 mph, and the pilot eased back the yoke.
Nothing happened.
Kathleen, who'd been a flight attendant in the early 1980s, sensed trouble.
"We're not lifting off!" she said to Beilein, who was sitting next to her, holding her arm. "We're not lifting off!"
One second passed. Then another. And another. With each tick, the speed increased, and the runway got shorter. Finally, as the plane roared over 190 mph, the pilot had a decision to make.
He hit the brakes.
As he did, Beilein looked down and noticed he hadn't buckled his seat belt. Then braced himself.
The plane began to slide, beyond the pavement, onto the grass, over a fence, stopping short of a stand of trees and a ravine.
The crash could've been much worse. Beilein realized that immediately. He was alive, after all. And it's hard to quibble with that.
But ... how?
And, more important, why?
The Michigan basketball coach doesn't have the answer to the second question. He'll leave it to his higher power. He does, however, understand how close he came to dying, and that a pilot's quick thinking saved more than 100 people.
It's hard to overstate how profoundly that March afternoon at Willow Run Airport changed him. Even if he's still discovering ways that it did.
Just last week in Naples, Fla., where he and Kathleen were taking a long-awaited vacation, he left his cell phone in his hotel room before heading to the pool. This may seem insignificant. But to Beilein, it was an act of liberation.
Not since he'd been carrying cell phones had he left his behind for a trip to a pool.
He was free.
