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Sep. 26—PULLMAN — About an hour after Tyler Hilinski played the game of his life, after he crowd-surfed on the Martin Stadium field to celebrate leading Washington State to a triple-overtime victory over Boise State, he did one thing. He found his mother.
After the celebration died down, Tyler met up with Kym, who had taken a red-eye from LAX to Pullman the night before this September 2017 game. As they walked from the stadium to the nearby Courtyard Inn, where Kym always stayed when she visited for games, they wrapped their arms around each other. Tyler beamed.
“Mom,” he said at one point during the stroll, “did that just happen?”
It was all still washing over Tyler: The way he came off the bench and led the Cougars to one of the biggest comebacks in program history, erasing a three-touchdown deficit in the fourth quarter. The way he tossed a pass to running back Jamal Morrow, who sprinted in for the winning touchdown. The way he was lifted onto the shoulders of WSU fans, who made Pullman the happiest place on the planet for one night.
Once Tyler and Kym reached the hotel, they headed over to “The Nest,” the apartment of teammates Kyle Sweet, CJ Dimry, Kirkland Parker and Nick Begg, whose mothers also joined for a get-together after the game. They talked and laughed for some time. In a few months, Tyler would move into an apartment not far away, where he would enter a closet and fatally shoot himself with an AR-15 riflle.
But on this night, Sept. 9, 2017, Tyler was nowhere near that closet. At least on the outside, he was just Tyler, the happy 21-year-old who was friends with everyone he met, the redshirt sophomore who had just authored the game of his young career, the blond-haired kid who teammates swore would be the next great Cougar quarterback to enter program lore.
Tyler did so — just not in the way anyone…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/night-hope-looking-back-wsus-035900658.html
Author : The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Wash.
Publish date : 2024-09-27 03:59:00
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