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Air tragedy strikes OK State

STILLWATER, Okla. — Kurt Budke turned Oklahoma State’s women’s basketball team into a winner and hoped he’d found the place where he would coach until he retired.

Miranda Serna had passed up opportunities to leave his side, staying loyal to the man whom she had helped to win a junior college national championship and then rebuild a big-time college program.

Budke, the coach, and Serna, his assistant, were killed Thursday when the single-engine plane transporting them on a recruiting trip crashed in steep terrain in Arkansas, the university said Friday. The pilot, 82-year-old former Oklahoma state Sen. Olin Branstetter, and his 79-year-old wife, Paula, also died when the plane sputtered, spiraled out of control and nosedived into the Winona Wildlife Management Area, about 45 miles west of Little Rock.