We Are Marshall

Southern Airways Flight 932 was a McDonnell Douglas DC-9 that Marshall University chartered to transport the Thundering Herd football team to Greenville, North Carolina, via Stallings Field in Kinston, North Carolina, and back to Marshall’s campus in Huntington, West Virginia. On the evening of November 14, 1970, the aircraft clipped trees on a ridge just one mile short of the runway at Tri-State Airport in Ceredo, West Virginia, and crashed into a gully.

The team was returning from its game against the East Carolina University Pirates, a 17–14 loss. There were no survivors. In all, 75 people lost their lives. The deceased included the 37 players; head coach Rick Tolley and five members of his coaching staff; Charles E. Kautz, Marshall’s athletics director; team athletic trainer Jim Schroer and his assistant, Donald Tackett; 25 boosters; and five crew members.

In the wake of the tragedy, University President Donald Dedmon leans towards indefinitely suspending the football program, but he is ultimately persuaded to reconsider by the pleas of the Marshall students and Huntington residents, and especially the few football players who didn’t make the flight, led by Nate Ruffin. Dedmon hires a young new head coach Jack Lengyel, who with the help of Red Dawson, the sole surviving member of the previous coaching staff, manages to rebuild the team in a relatively short time, despite losing many of their prospects to West Virginia University. Dedmon travels to Kansas City, where he pleads with the NCAA to waive their rule prohibiting freshmen from playing varsity football (a rule which had been abolished in 1968 for all sports except for football and basketball, and would be permanently abolished for those sports in 1972). Dedmon returns victorious.

The new team is composed mostly of the 18 returning players (three varsity, 15 sophomores) and walk-on athletes from other Marshall sports programs. Due to their lack of experience, the ”Young Thundering Herd” ends up losing its first game, 29-6, to the Morehead State Eagles. The loss weighs heavily on Dawson and Ruffin, who had been hurt in the first play of the game. The Herd’s first post-crash victory is a heart-stopping 15–13 home win against Xavier University in the first home game of the season.

2006

PG

012569835122

True Story Drama

Movie

👍 Interested

1

79

7.0

1

2024-10-26 21:01:00

No

2.35:1

127

United States

2006-12-22

MPEG-2

480p

2.35:1

8.5 GB (DVD)

1

1

Keep Case

1

~$4.49

2024-10-17

Yes

2024-10-26 21:01:00