Identities of pickleball players killed in plane crash on way to tournament released

A man in Malaysia died after going over a safety railing to retrieve a ball while playing pickleball. (Newsflare via Reuters Connect)

The names of the five people who were killed in the Central Texas plane crash that was taking a pickleball team to a tournament have been revealed.

On board were Amarillo Pickleball Club players Hayden Dillard, Seren Wilson, Brooke Skypala and Stacy Hedrick, all from Amarillo, Texas, along with pilot Justin Appling, who was also a pickleball player.

Wilson, the youngest, was an accomplished tennis player. In 2022, she was University Interscholastic League team tennis state champion, according to the tennis booster club at Amarillo High School, where she graduated from.

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A crashed Cessna airplane is seen in a wooded area on Round Rock Road in Wimberley, Texas, Friday, May 1, 2026. (Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman via AP)

Another player named Sarah Lister, who got to know Dillard and Appling during pickleball tournaments, described them to the Associated Press as genuine people. She said Appling was always making them laugh and Dillard was an amazing businesswoman and mother.

She said Dillard has two daughters, one of whom was about to start college. Dillard and Appling had played mixed doubles for a long time together, and Skypala was Dillard’s women’s doubles partner, Lister said.

"The pickleball world is super, super small, even though it’s huge at the same time," said Lister. "And when one of us has a tragedy like this, it’s like it’s the whole community that gets hit."

Leroy Clifford, a club member who had traveled to the tournament on another plane, considered all of them family, even though he’d only recently met Wilson. They