Kevin will always be in our memories

Friends getting together, sharing hugs, saying good-bye, even a few tears.

That's what this time of year is about, high school and college graduates moving onto the next stage of their lives, surrounded by the family and friends who have been there along the road.

Friends got together Thursday in Sugar Grove. There were hugs. There were goodbyes.

And way too many tears.

The sadness of Kevin Bryant's passing Sunday at the age of 21 from a whitewater rafting accident, just when he should be starting a promising career with the best years of his life ahead of him, is hard to express in words. It's one of the most heartbreaking stories I've covered the last five years in the Tri-Cities, alongside the deaths of Geneva football player Dustin Villarreal and St. Charles North drill team member Lauren Laman.

The saying goes that you need a program to tell the players, but that wasn't the case with Bryant, a 2004 Batavia graduate who just finished college at Illinois Wesleyan. You didn't need a program for Bryant, because he was the one diving for loose balls, the one draining 3-pointers from anywhere on the court, the one who didn't back down from any opponent, the one who played with the kind of fire and confidence you rarely see.

"Very mature" is how Batavia basketball coach Jim Roberts remembered Bryant Thursday, recalling a story about how Bryant, on the day of his junior prom, took the time to come to a funeral Roberts was attending.

You can measure Bryant's basketball ability by statistics and the Bulldogs' regional and sectional titles.

You can measure how much his death has touched the community by the line at the Healy Chapel. It stretched far outside the entrance as people waited an hour or longer to pay their respects.

Two years ago Roberts organized a celebration of Batavia's 100th year of basketball. Alums from the last eight decades returned on that special night.

Roberts said he wanted all those former players to get together to commemorate the milestone, because it's better than everyone gathering at a funeral.

That's what they are going to be doing today, only not the way the Batavia coach pictured.

They won't be gathering for someone who lived a full life, who can look back on playing basketball at Batavia High School as a thrilling four-year blip in a life filled with a successful career and his own family, his own children and grandchildren.

They'll be gathering for someone whose life ended much too soon, in a much too terrifying way. Someone Batavia basketball fans will remember not just for his considerable talent but the incredible intensity he played with, and someone who his family and friends remember much more than a basketball player but a young man who was caring, bright, full of energy and had a love of life.

For those of us who follow the Bryants and their amazing basketball exploits mostly from the outside, just try to imagine how hard this must be on David Bryant, one of Kevin's younger brothers who is a tremendous basketball player and a great kid in his own right, and how emotional his senior season at Batavia is going to be next year. It breaks your heart.

But that's nothing compared to what's going on in the hearts of all the Bryants, their many close friends and family. You wonder how a family ever moves on from something like this. "Keep praying," said John Bryant, Kevin's father, on Thursday.

It will take time. Kevin Bryant is never going to be forgotten, his memory will be with those who knew him and loved him every day of their lives, and that memory will be an inspiration.

Like that February night in 2007, the Batavia community knows how to come together and celebrate. Now it's time for the Batavia community to come together again, to help the Bryant family in their most difficult hour. In many ways they already have, and they will continue to do so.