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Linda Gregory called the students in Wichita Northwest High School’s football program “her players.”
The 69-year-old photographer had been on the sidelines for years with her camera, capturing moments of the players in action and snapping shots of fans in the stands. If there was a Grizzlies football game, the Northwest High community in Wichita knew Gregory and her husband, both avid photographers, would be there, standing beside the field with their cameras in hand.
She was doing that Monday night for the school’s freshman and junior varsity football teams at Bishop Carroll Catholic High School when some players suddenly ran into her during the second game. Gregory fell backward, hitting her head on the concrete between the field and the track around it, Northwest High head football coach Steve Martin said.
Gregory was put on life support after the accident but was taken off of it and died on Friday afternoon, according to a close friend. Gregory’s family planned to donate her organs, one of her final wishes.
She was a “fixture” of the school’s community, someone who felt like family to him and the players, Martin said.
“Losing her puts a hole in our program,” he said.
Gregory and her husband started taking photos for the program during the 2015 season, said Joanna Chadwick, a close friend of the family.
Chadwick first spoke with the Gregorys online years earlier. They would interact on Twitter, now known as X, exchanging conversations while Chadwick was a high school sports reporter for the Wichita Eagle and the Gregorys were taking photos at the area’s big games. The couple met Chadwick’s husband, Bryan, at a grocery store, recognizing him from her tweets, and the families became fast friends.
Ever since, the Gregorys were a “third set of grandparents” for Chadwick’s children, she said.
The couple had similar relationships with many people in the community, Chadwick said, including the football players and others they had photographed over the years. Everywhere they went, they were greeted with hugs and treated everyone like family, she said.
“They were a gift to those kids,” Chadwick said. “And those kids were a gift to them.”
In 2014, when Bryan Chadwick became the head basketball coach at Northwest High, Gregory and her husband started taking photos of his team. The following year, they asked Martin if they could take photos of the football team’s games, and he agreed.
Gregory forged bonds with the players immediately and “loved sharing kids’ stories” through her photography, Martin said. She also kept up with players after they’d graduated. When running back Breece Hall went on to play for Iowa State, Gregory — who was from Iowa and prided herself on being a longtime Hawkeyes fan — said she would root against her team “for one game out of the year” during the rivals’ matchup, Martin recalled.
On the sidelines, Gregory had a knack for making players laugh and capturing photos as they posed. But she was careful to do it while Martin was busy, so the coach, who has a “no nonsense” policy for the sidelines, wouldn’t chide them, he said. After the games, she and her husband uploaded the photos to the football team’s Facebook page.
“Whether you are the best player on the team or maybe never played, you always got pictures of yourself,” Martin said.
During Monday’s night’s junior varsity game, Gregory had been talking to parents near the fence before she set her tripod down by the field, getting ready to take more shots, according to Martin. She probably hadn’t noticed that a receiver had made a block and that the play was coming toward her, he said.
The play happened so fast, Martin said, and Gregory was trying to pick up the tripod to get out of the way when the players ran into her. Gregory was taken to a hospital, where she was taken off of life support on Friday.
After practice Wednesday, Martin gathered the Northwest High players to reflect on what Gregory contributed to the program in her eight years on its sidelines in what he said was an “emotional talk.”
The Northwest High football team plans to honor her in the coming weeks, starting on Friday. When varsity players take the field to face Wichita Heights High School, they’ll each have a sticker on their helmets — a gold circle with “LG” written atop it in navy blue, the Northwest High colors.
“I think that’s when, for a lot of my older guys, it’ll kick in,” Martin said. “They’ll be looking around for Linda and notice that she’s not there.”
Source link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/09/08/linda-gregory-wichita-football-photographer/