The death of a student-athlete goes against the natural order of life.

After all, the men and women who compete in intercollegiate athletics are young, strong and vibrant. So when a tragedy occurs it can be particularly shocking -- not only for teammates and coaches, but the entire campus community.

Since most of these heartbreaking events occur unexpectedly, there is no way to prepare adequately for such an emotional experience. Perhaps the best athletics administrators can do is set a contingency plan that can be implemented at a moment's notice, while hoping they'll never need to use it.

Such losses have happened frequently enough, though, that the topic was the subject of a breakout session during the recent National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) convention in June.

Panelists acknowledged that while athletics directors deal with many levels of stress -- from being scrutinized by alumni and media and maintaining a balanced budget to high-profile hiring and firing decisions and television contract negotiations -- there is nothing that compares to a death within the athletics family.

"It's unlike anything else that an athletics administrator will deal with," said Dutch Baughman, the executive director of the Division I-A Athletic Directors' Association. "It requires unique leadership skills -- you'll be experiencing emotions unlike any you've experienced at any time in your career. You will be making decisions unlike any others your career. You'll be dealing with stakeholders who are very different from those you typically deal with."

Baughman moderated the NACDA discussion, while athletics directors Dave Hart Jr. of Florida State University, Tim Curley of Pennsylvania State University and Skip Lord of Houghton College (an NAIA institution) were panelists.

Each has had to deal with one or more student-athlete deaths, and all agreed that not having a plan in place only makes matters worse.

Baughman said in fact that a survey last fall of Division I-A athletics directors revealed that two-thirds of the respondents have dealt with a student-athlete death at some time in their career. Yet fewer than 10 percent had prepared some kind of a guideline or manual that they can refer to if the situation ever occurred again.

That's not surprising to Tim Neal, the head athletic trainer at Syracuse University. In the summer of 2001, Neal was certified in "catastrophic incident stress management" counseling. His timing was prophetic, since months later, Neal was put on standby to provide counseling on campus and possibly go to New York City to provide services to those having difficulty with the tragic events that took place on 9/11.

It made him wonder what his university would do if a catastrophe occurred on campus.

Indeed, the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, inspired Neal to create the "Catastrophic Incident in Athletics" guideline that appears in the NCAA Sports Medicine Handbook. Neal worked with the NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports to develop the information.

"I put the document together in the spring and summer of 2002," Neal said. "I met with our then-athletics director Jake Crouthamel, and he thought it was a good idea. He asked me to find out what other people do. Much to my surprise, and a little to my dismay, the places I checked that had experienced deaths had no plan. They still have no plan."

Neal, who was part of a medical team that revived football official Gerry Bram with an automatic external defibrillator after the official had a heart attack in the fourth quarter of a recent game at Syracuse, thought it would be best to have something written down, so the decision-makers could have a format to follow.

He authored the Catastrophic Incident in Athletics, which is defined as the sudden death of a student-athlete, coach or staff member from any cause, or disabling and/or quality-of-life altering injuries that occur to a member of the athletics family.

According to Neal's guidelines, the first step in handling such an incident is to assemble a management team consisting of a select group of administrators who receive all the facts pertaining to the catastrophe. That team will serve as the official distributors of information to family members, teammates, coaches, staff, the institution and media.

Besides being sensitive to the immediate family, Neal views this part of the guideline as the most critical for the institution.

"When I looked into this, there were a lot of ad hoc groups," Neal said. "I'm really big into leadership, and the people on the management team are the leaders when a catastrophe happens. You should have administrators, the head athletic trainer and spokespeople. We're all professionals and people who pay attention to details. We want to get things right and get information to the family and to the public appropriately. These are who should be the point people."

Neal's guidelines also encourage an immediate action plan at the moment of the incident consisting of a checklist of whom to call and immediate steps to secure facts and offer support.

Next, a chain of command or role delineation should be established to outline each individual's responsibility in the aftermath of a catastrophe.

In criminal circumstances, an outline of collaboration between the athletics department and university, local and state law enforcement officials should be developed, Neal said.

In the event a catastrophe occurs at an away contest, Neal said the policies should establish who stays behind with the individual to coordinate communication and act as a university representative until relieved by the institution.

Also, each program should establish an up-to-date telephone list (office, home and cell) of all key individuals involved in the management of the catastrophe. University legal counsel numbers and the NCAA Catastrophic Injury Service Line (800/245-2744) should be included.

Making sure all the legal aspects are covered may seem unsavory, but it is a necessary part of dealing with this issue, Neal said.

An "incident record" chronicling the actions of the management team also is recommended so that the process can be reviewed and strengthened in the future.

'You don't think it will happen'

Like Syracuse, Florida State has a written policy to refer to if a tragedy occurs within the athletics department. And indeed, it unfortunately has been put to use.

In February 2001, Florida State football student-athlete Devaughn Darling collapsed during a workout and died from a cardiac arrhythmia.

In the summer of 2002, academic advisor and former men's swimming student-athlete Matt Schmauch died after suffering an allergic reaction, and in June 2004 women's basketball student-athlete Ronalda Pierce died from an aneurysm in her aorta.

"We started drafting something (after Darling died)," said Pam Overton, the associate athletics director of student services at Florida State. "You don't think it's going to happen again. We started writing down notes about what we did and how we did it. But we didn't really get into it until we lost the second athlete. That's something you'd like to see others not have to deal with. We didn't think it was going to happen in the first place."

One of the goals for the Florida State athletics department is to notify family members and all teammates before they hear of the death of a member of their team from someone else. It can be a difficult task because of the high-profile nature Florida State has in the media.

"This is the kind of thing we experienced when (Schmauch) died," Overton said. "We made sure that within the first two hours we did a phone tree so that all the guys on the football team and the women's basketball players were called by someone from our staff. They were not hearing about it on television or their car radio."

After putting the plan in writing, everyone at the university should be committed to following it when the time comes. Communication throughout the management team is a key in that process.

"Make sure you inform your president or supervisor so they are not surprised," said Penn State's Curley, who dealt with the death of a pole vaulter several years ago. "Work with your sports information and university information departments to make sure you handle all the public and media inquiries. Make sure the legal counsel is involved and make sure you stay engaged in the whole process. You need to take charge and make yourself available to the student-athletes and be visible for your coaches."

Unfortunately for Hart, he's had to cope with this subject matter all too often on his campus. He stood in front of the women's basketball team to inform them of the untimely death of Pierce.

"It's really not crisis management -- it is a tragedy management," Hart said. "I don't think I've done anything tougher in my career. To look in the faces of those teammates who were all unaware that a death had occurred. This is something that is perpetual. This is not something that you do for a day or two then go back to being a team."

Hart said some members of the team are still receiving counseling.

Because of the long-term effects, athletics directors also agree that it is important to maintain contact with the family of the deceased student-athlete afterward.

ADs also are encouraged to seek advice from their colleagues and to make sure they take time to assess their own feelings.

Experts say that part of the process can become lost since the athletics director is usually the leader in such catastrophic-incident responses.

"You have to take time for yourself to deal with the tragedy," Curley said. "Make sure there are people you can talk to who can help you get through it. This is something that will stay with you for the rest of your life."

While the topic isn't comfortable for most athletics administrators to deal with, many agree that at least having a plan in place can ease the situation if and when it occurs.

"In my mind it's a matter of when and not if," Neal said. "Even in 2001 when we had just received our automatic external defibrillators, we had them only six or seven weeks before we had to use one on an official at a football game. That reinforced my thoughts that a problem could always be right around the corner."

For more information, see the NCAA Sports Medicine Handbook online at www.ncaa.org (click "media and events," "NCAA publications" and "health and safety").