Recollections of Sept. 11, 2001

Thinking back to Fall 2001 … it was an amazing beginning to early August preseason as we travelled as a team on an international trip to Europe to play five games in Germany, Holland and returned to campus unified and experienced from the trip. The team and staff were excited about the fall 2001 season and began the year 3-1 with an upcoming trip out west to Colorado for two games the week of September 11th.

Tuesday, September 11th, that morning I was at a 9 a.m. coaches meeting at Tyser Tower at the football stadium.

I lived in locally in Greenbelt, so I told coaches Shannon (Cirovski) and Katherine (Remy) that I would plan on going to staff meeting to represent women’s soccer so they could come in a little later if they had other appointments, given we would be traveling as a team in two days to Colorado. 

At the end of the staff meeting around 9:45 a.m., I was walking out of the football stadium back to Cole Field House and it was an amazing fall day on campus, clear blue sky, cool temperature. I was truly in awe of how nice it was out, that’s when I noticed off in the distance, direction south toward D.C., little curls of brown and black smoke in the sky. I did not think much of it because when the visibility is clear like that you can see stuff happening in D.C. and around the area. So, I continued on to Cole Field House, where our soccer offices were, and walked into our office suite just before 10 a.m. I greeted a hello to our administrative assistant, ‘Linda B’ (Barbour) who was sitting at her desk glued to her little black and white TV (which was a little funny as she usually only watched her “shows” on her lunch break) and so I said “Linda B what the heck are you watching this early at 10 a.m., I thought your “shows” come on later during lunch?

I was kind of being silly with her, but she did not respond, did not move an inch, she continued to watch silently, that’s when she said “oh my god.” I said ‘what Linda B?’ I moved closer and looked at the screen and wasn’t quite sure what I was looking at, it was a tall building on fire, lots of smoke, more smoke than fire and then watched with her the building just pancaked down within seconds. Linda B. was still seated and I was standing next to her and I said, ‘What is going on? Where is that?’ She told me it was New York City and the World Trade Center, and she said both were hit with airplanes a little while ago and she said there was a report that the…