Just what this city needed: Dayton rallies around the Flyers

DAYTON, Ohio – Trey Landers survived one of his hometown's worst moments. Now he's contributing to one of its best.

A Dayton native, the senior guard has helped lead the University of Dayton men's basketball team to its best start ever at 28-2 and to a No. 3 ranking in the Associated Press poll — its highest since reaching No. 2 in 1955-56. The Flyers (28-2 overall, 17-0 Atlantic 10) have the nation's longest active winning streak at 19 games and have matched the 1951-52 team for the most wins in school history.

Nearly seven months earlier, though, Landers was running out of the back of a Dayton bar as a gunman approached with an assault-type weapon.

People greet or e-mail to "just thank me and my teammates for everything we're doing right now," Landers said. "Our team is helping pull the city together a little bit. … It's bigger than us."

Dayton has been struggling for decades, its current population of some 140,000 down from nearly double that in 1960. Its signature company, NCR, moved to Georgia, a nearby General Motors plant closed, and in recent years, the opioid crisis hit hard.

And then came 2019, what Mayor Nan Whaley calls "a hell of a year." Tensions were high around a Ku Klux Klan rally downtown in May, followed by devastating tornadoes.

And in the early morning on Aug. 4, a gunman opened fire in the city's Oregon entertainment district. He killed nine people in 32 seconds before police shot and killed him, stopping him from getting into the crowded Ned Peppers nightclub.

"It's hard to run it back," said Landers. "It's a visual picture that will always be in my head. You can't unsee some of that stuff."

It also evoked a traumatic childhood memory, the loss of his father, Robert, who was fatally shot outside a shop in Dayton in a still-unsolved case. "I was about 8 years old, so I was aware … so it makes you think, it brings a lot of questions."

Landers called his coach, Anthony Grant, and other people close to him to talk through his feelings. He soon refocused on basketball, the game and his teammates helping him cope.

As the city started a healing process, Whaley, a Dayton alum, adopted a slogan: "We're going to get through the winter with the Flyers."

Unranked to start the season, the team won its first six games before losing in overtime to a heralded Kansas team in Hawaii. It has lost one time since then — again in overtime — to Colorado on Dec. 21 in Chicago.

With no major league-level pro sports teams in Dayton, the Flyers have long been popular in the city, which annually hosts the "First Four" games to begin the NCAA tournament. Regular sellouts at 13,409-seat University of Dayton Arena have helped keep the Flyers fired up.

"You have to give it to the fan base," Duquesne coach Keith Dambrot said after an 80-70 Feb. 22 loss at Dayton. "Those are some of the best fans in the country."

Grant, who returned to Dayton three years ago as head coach after playing for the Flyers three decades ago, said the coaches have talked to players "about the joy you could bring to others, whether it's because of the events that hit our community, or maybe it's just someone who's going through tough times."

"It's always been a love affair with the city, community and Flyers," he said.

Arthur Jipson, a University of Dayton sociology professor, likes to wear school gear around town, drawing shouts of "Go Flyers," high-fives and even renditions of the school song.