Meet the BYU grad who will lead flyover ahead of Saturday’s game BYU-Arizona game

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Emotions will be a thousand feet high on Saturday as an Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker approaches LaVell Edwards Stadium near the end of the national anthem. For the Altus, Oklahoma-based crew, it will be business as usual, but for the pilot, the flyover ahead of the BYU-Arizona game will be so much more.

“I am so excited for this. I’ve been trying to do (a flyover) for a few years now,” BYU graduate and KC-135 pilot Jimmy Winegardner told the “Y’s Guys” livestream show. “Flyovers have to be done before sunset and all the (BYU) games that I’ve tried to do ended up being nighttime kickoffs.”

Saturday’s 1:30 p.m. MDT start in Provo finally cleared Winegardner’s big dream for takeoff. The KC-135 refueling tanker will land at Salt Lake City International Airport on Friday. As part of their Saturday training regimen, the crew will fly west of Utah Valley and approach the stadium from the south.

“I’m not really sure?” said Winegardner about his expectations. “We’ll see in the moment what it feels like. But I imagine it will be pretty exhilarating being able to see all those fans from a thousand feet above the stadium and just flying right over the top. I think it’s going to be a really awesome experience.”

BYU ready

Winegardner’s experience at BYU, including five years in the ROTC program, and the impact of 9/11 are precursors to his aerial homecoming.

“The combination between BYU schooling and the ROTC program definitely prepared me,” he said. “It taught me a lot. It grew my relationship with my Savior, and it taught me how to work with other people.”

Growing up in Ridgecrest, California, Winegardner was drawn to military service at an early age.

“It’s fulfilling a dream (I had) since I was a little kid,” he said. “I can vividly remember watching 9/11 happen on the TV — with all the news stations and everything. Just being able to be a part of something bigger than myself, working to defend the freedoms that we have in our country has been awesome.”

Sky is the limit

When a pilot says, “The sky is the limit,” you have to take him at his word. Like his KC-135, Winegardner believes the Cougars command their airspace.

“I think we have a lot of potential. Obviously, there was a lot of change with the coaching staff, but the amount of continuity that coach (Kalani) Sitake has kept with the players and the buy-in that he gets for the program, I think the sky is the limit this year,” he said. “I think we can really go far.”

With those lofty expectations coming from a pilot, he noted with a laugh, “You have to take my word for it.”

Jimmermania

Long before meeting his future wife, Jessi, in their student ward on campus, Winegardner moved into the freshman dorms at BYU in 2010.

“I wasn’t really into sports at the time,” he said. “But I was surrounded by all the other freshmen students and we all had ROC passes.”

A ROC pass provided access to basketball games at the Marriott Center and that exposed Winegardner to something he never expected — Jimmermania.

“The way Jimmer (Fredette) took over the school his senior year was just wild,” he said. “I was pretty fortunate to get tickets to a few games.”

Fredette’s Cougars won 34 games, and he was named the National Player of the Year. Along the way, BYU sports won over a new fan, and Winegardner has been soaring with the Cougars ever since.

On Saturday, it will be his turn to be a headliner on campus — or at least a thousand feet above it. Flyovers only take a few seconds, but when you are a BYU grad flying over a BYU game ahead of the Big 12 opener, the dream becomes real and the moment lasts forever.

Dave McCann is a sportswriter and columnist for the Deseret News and is a play-by-play announcer and show host for BYUtv/ESPN+. He co-hosts “Y’s Guys” at ysguys.com and is the author of the children’s book “C is for Cougar,” available at deseretbook.com.

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