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The names of the five people who were killed in the Central Texas plane crash that was taking a pickleball team to a tournament have been revealed.
On board were Amarillo Pickleball Club players Hayden Dillard, Seren Wilson, Brooke Skypala and Stacy Hedrick, all from Amarillo, Texas, along with pilot Justin Appling, who was also a pickleball player.
Wilson, the youngest, was an accomplished tennis player. In 2022, she was University Interscholastic League team tennis state champion, according to the tennis booster club at Amarillo High School, where she graduated from.
Another player named Sarah Lister, who got to know Dillard and Appling during pickleball tournaments, described them to the Associated Press as genuine people. She said Appling was always making them laugh and Dillard was an amazing businesswoman and mother.
She said Dillard has two daughters, one of whom was about to start college. Dillard and Appling had played mixed doubles for a long time together, and Skypala was Dillard’s women’s doubles partner, Lister said.
“The pickleball world is super, super small, even though it’s huge at the same time,” said Lister. “And when one of us has a tragedy like this, it’s like it’s the whole community that gets hit.”
Leroy Clifford, a club member who had traveled to the tournament on another plane, considered all of them family, even though he’d only recently met Wilson. They had traveled to Pro Pickleball Association-sanctioned tournaments all over the country together, from Dallas to Las Vegas. They bonded over being in the higher-end competitions of pickleball, but they also didn’t take themselves too seriously.
“One thing I can say about this group is this group, you wanted to be around this group. They were fun, carefree, not uptight, just relaxed, loved to joke with each other, make fun of each other,” Clifford said, per The Associated Press. “You couldn’t ask for better friends, honestly.”
He played the most with Skypala, who he described as quick-witted and a natural athlete.
“She was very witty, super sweet and very funny,” Clifford said.
Dan Dyer, president of the Amarillo Pickleball Club, said he’d played many games with four of the five people who died.
“I’ve handed them medals. They were excellent players. They were out to win some games,” Dyer said. “Every weekend there are dozens of tournaments. Some people get the bug; others don’t. But once they do, they’ll travel for a tournament.”
SMALL PLANE CRASHES NEAR HICKS AIRFIELD IN TEXAS, REPORTEDLY CAUSING MULTIPLE SEMI-TRUCK FIRES
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) investigators are on scene and serving as the lead investigative agencies, DPS said in its Saturday release.
But the cause of the crash has yet to be determined.
The plane crashed in Wimberley, a city 40 miles southwest of Austin, at 11 p.m. Thursday.
Dyer said a second plane was traveling to the event from Amarillo at the same time. Authorities said it landed safely at the airport in New Braunfels, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) northeast of San Antonio.
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“I haven’t heard anything from him,” the pilot of the second plane said, according to air traffic control audio.
A controller responded, “He started to move erratically, and now his track is disappeared from the scope. So, we want to make sure everything’s all right with him.”
At least one pilot in the area confirmed the troubled plane’s locator emergency device had emitted a distress signal. The controller called 911.
It was mostly cloudy in the New Braunfels area shortly before the crash, and there was a thunderstorm two hours later, the National Weather Service said.
Wimberley, with a population of about 3,000, and New Braunfels, with a population of about 116,000, are tourist destinations in the Texas Hill Country.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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