Pawnee Heights remembers Amber

Sports fans looking for pure heart don't need to travel to Manhattan for the K-State game this weekend.
    In fact, they don't have to go any further than Pawnee Heights High School, whose varsity volleyball team gave heart a new meaning during the season opener against Spearville Tuesday night.
    The Tigers took the court just two days after the loss of their beloved teammate, Amber Schmitt, who died in a car crash early Sunday. The score didn't matter, and it still doesn't. What mattered to the Tigers, and to the community that loves them, was the fact that they are a team. So the players got up and did what teams do. They played their hearts out to honor Amber, who will remain a Tiger forever.  
    As soon as Spearville's first pass sailed over the net, all of Pawnee's starters sank to their knees, allowing the ball to pass.
    So did the Pawnee coaches and staff.
    "We did it in Amber's memory, to honor her," Heights volleyball coach Jim Eckhoff told the Globe in a phone interview Thursday. "We had planned to start Amber, and leave her space empty, but the KHSAA wouldn't allow us to do that. That was a hard one for all of us to understand."
    No one was ready to let Amber go. Every athlete at the game felt her presence. Every parent thought of Amber's parents. Every school thought of Pawnee.
    In a gesture of respect that brought spectators to tears, Spearville responded to Pawnee's first serve by kneeling at the net and allowing the point, just as their opponents had done.
    "Tonight, it doesn't matter where anyone is from," a woman from Minneola told Eckhoff's wife. "Tonight, everyone is rooting for Pawnee."
    After the game, Spearville presented the Tigers with a white rose in memory of Amber.

Communities shattered
    Pawnee Heights High School is tiny, but the role it plays in the lives of the communities it serves is huge. Everybody knows everybody else, and most people know one another's grandparents. The people of Burdett, Hanston and Rozel devote hundreds of volunteer hours to their school, and the 77 students are very close.
    They depend upon one another, and their school depends upon the participation of every one of them.
    Thus, the sudden loss of one of its children shattered the community like a powerful  bolt of lightening
    "Losing Amber that way shook our whole world," Eckhoff said.
    Her coach learned of Amber's death at 9:30 on Sunday morning. An hour and half later, Pawnee's entire student body was at her family's home. The volleyball team and most of the senior class girls remained with the Schmitts all day.
    That night, the girls slept on the floor of the school gym because they needed to be together.
    "I thought long and hard about whether we should play on Tuesday," Eckhoff said. "At first it just seemed way way too soon -— I mean we still hadn't really taken it in. But the team was determined to play. The girls said that's what Amber would want them to do, and they wanted to play in her honor."

Keep on going
    Seven hundred and fifty people showed up at Pawnee Heights High School Thursday to say goodbye.
    "We put up 650 chairs and filled the bleachers," said Principal Roger Meyer, "And we still had people standing. It's so important for the kids, as well as the whole community, to be supporting one another and Amber's family, as we make our way slowly forward."
    The girls of the class of 2010, who'd expected to be graduating with Amber in May, walked slowly together to the podium. Nothing in their experience had prepared these adolescents for this moment. Still brimming with life, but forever changed, two of the kids spoke to the crowd about their friend.
    They did their best to convey the Amberness of Amber.
    But when your best friend dies at 17, you learn there are some things that just can't be explained.
    
Reach Claire O'Brien at (620) 408-9931 or e-mail her at claire.obrien@dodgeglobe.com.