Kayla O'Mara Was High School Junior
Tragedy struck the Michigan running community Jan. 24, 2006 when Goodrich High School junior Kayla O'Mara, 16, was killed in a Grand Blanc Township car crash that injured her twin sister, Kaitlin, and driver Danielle Bila, 17.

The O'Maras were members of five Division 3 state championship teams at Goodrich, three in cross country and two in track.

Police said the girls were westbound on an ice-covered Baldwin Road when Bila lost control of her 1998 Pontiac Bonneville and careened into the path of an oncoming pickup truck.

Kayla, riding in back, was thrown from the car and later died at Genesys Regional Medical Center. The other girls remained there in critical condition as this magazine went to press.

The pickup driver sustained minor injuries.

The girls were headed for a coffee shop to study with other students when the accident occurred, police said. Neither drugs nor alcohol were involved.

The rise of Goodrich, a 708-student school southeast of Flint, to running prominence coincided with the O'Mara twins' arrival. As freshmen, Kayla finished second and Kaitlin fifth in the D-3 Lower Peninsula cross country finals, leading the Martians to the first of their string of titles.

Team and individual successes have flowed from there.

Both girls maintained their fitness as swimmers during winter.

The death came nine months after another Michigan small town, Fremont, was rocked by the car-crash death of high-school running star Riley Klingel. Klingel, Division 2 cross country champion as a sophomore, planned to run for Michigan State University the next year.

Hundreds of mourners attended Kayla O'Mara's funeral Feb. 1 at St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church in Davison. Some wept when Goodrich United Methodist Church Pastor Karl Zeigler read a mock obituary Kayla had written for a class, that described her dying in her late 80s and being a wonderful wife and grandmother.

"Kayla could light up a room with her smile," he said. MR