Our coaches did a great job of monitoring our players, staying with our players, keeping them preoccupied, as I then left to go to the accident scene.
I got to the accident scene and saw that our training staff were with Declan, and I wanted to make certain that that area was in good hands. It looked like to me everything was moving in the right direction. We had Notre Dame responders, we had ambulance responders. And once I felt comfortable in that situation, where we had professionals on-site dealing with it, I went back inside to the practice field and subsequently called our football team together at midfield. We prayed for Declan. I told and informed our football team of the injury, the seriousness of it, and I then dismissed our football team.
That's my best recollection of the events surrounding the accident itself.
Obviously there's going to be a lot of speculation, there's going to be a lot of questions. I'm not really adept at being able to handle some of the specifics. I can tell you that we're working hard to get all those answers. We're so close to this event occurring that we're still putting together a lot of the information that everybody I'm sure is interested in, as we are as well. We're very interested in making sure that we provide, my staff has been incredible, in providing as much information as possible. That's really important.
For me, it was important for me to get a chance to spend time with Declan's family before the mass and pass on to them our entire football team's sincere sorrow for what has occurred. It's just a devastating thing for everybody. But it was really important, I wanted to be able to meet the family. I was very, very fortunate to do so.
I'm trying to cover as many of the notes that I have scribbled down here.
Again, I think the most important thing is that for me, productive and safe. Weather-related factors are examined every day relative to that safe atmosphere. We've got systems in place to deal with that. We're obviously examining them very, very carefully, especially obviously wind.
So, again, I don't have a lot of answers relative to specifics. I'll open it up to some questions.
Q. When did you realize that it was Declan that was down? Did you know when practice started that it was him?
COACH KELLY: I knew once the tower went over who it was.
Q. Why didn't anyone tell him to come down? Who is responsible for monitoring stuff during practice as conditions change? Why wasn't there anyone to tell him to bring the lift down?
COACH KELLY: Certainly, as you know, those are all the things that we're examining right now. We could probably come up with a number of different things that we're all wondering. Those are the questions that are being asked exactly as you've asked them. We're doing that, and have been doing it since the accident occurred.
