Evan Capper reacted with shock and horror, like most everyone else, upon hearing that legendary Iowa prep football coach Ed Thomas was shot to death by a former player.

"I got a phone call from someone who said they'd heard something happened, but we thought it couldn't be true," said Capper, a University of South Dakota sophomore nose tackle who was an all-state lineman for Thomas at Aplington-Parkersburg High School.

"I made a few phone calls, talked to my grandma who lives down the street from where it happened. She said there were police all around and an ambulance. That's when I knew it was true."

Former USD player Nick Walters, a standout at Aplington-Parkersburg who went on to become an All-NCC guard for the Coyotes, was a high school teammate of Mark Becker, the 24-year-old in custody for killing Thomas.

"Apparently he started making some poor decisions after he got done playing," Walters said. "I couldn't believe he could do something like that, but I don't think I could imagine anyone doing something like that."

Capper waited more than four hours on Sunday, in a line that stretched on for six blocks, to pay his respects to his former coach. He and Walters were there again on Monday, clustered together with former teammates, at Thomas' huge funeral.

"When we all got together beforehand, it wasn't so bad," Capper said. "But when we got to the funeral, then it was bad. That was tough to deal with."

It's the second time tragedy has hit Parkersburg in two years. Last summer, a tornado ripped through town, killing six people and destroying much of the high school.

The odd and horrific details of Thomas' death, coupled with his status as a highly successful coach, has made this most recent tragedy national news. Thomas is on the cover of Sports Illustrated this week, standing behind the headline, "A good man down."

In reading the SI story, those who did not know Thomas will learn that the 58-year-old was a maker of men much more so than football players, though he was pretty good at both. Capper saw it all up close.

"He always told us that if all he did was teach us to block and tackle, he'd failed in his job," Capper said. "You always knew he was going to do whatever he could do to help you get motivated. You knew you were dealing with someone special."

Much has been made of the fact that there are four players currently in the NFL who played for Thomas at Aplington-Parkersburg, a high school with an enrollment of about 250 students. Given the size of the school, it's an astonishing number.

It wasn't the way he coached his stars, though, that made him successful.

"He cared very deeply for every player, it didn't matter how good you were," Walters said. "That was his best attribute - that, and the fact that he was more concerned about how we would turn out as people than about how we would turn out as football players."

Family members and those close to the coach did their best to celebrate that spirit at this week's funeral. The wicked details of the death made it all the more difficult.

"One of Coach's sons got up and told us that today was a day to mourn, but tomorrow we had to get going again," Capper said. "That's what the coach would want - he'd want you to move forward."

In time, those inspirations - shared by hundreds of former players over Thomas' 37-year coaching career - will matter most. But for now there is no denying the shock of it all.

"I think we'll do all right, but the guy was a huge pillar in our community," Walters said. "When you touch that many people, it's going to take some time for folks to get over it."

Capper agreed.

"It was just horrible," he said. "This hit our town harder than the tornado did by far. The tornado was nothing compared to this."