One Year Since Scranton Bus Crash | Video

Lee Timmerman | 1/14/2013

It was one year ago yesterday when the Hettinger-Scranton boys basketball team was scheduled to play Trinity. The team did not make it to Dickinson that day. During their trip, the Nighthawk`s bus crashed near New England. Twenty-eight people were taken to the hospital. It`s a day still vivid in their minds.

"We were going to a game at Trinity. And we went around a nasty curve and we just popped a hill and you didn`t see the curve coming. And we took the curve at the speed limit and on the curve it was icy and we met a snowplow, so we went off the edge and were going through the ditch. And we hit a steep incline or step crossing road to go over somebody`s house and we flew over the road," said sophomore Damon Mellmer.

"I just yelled, `Hang on boys!` Just thinking we were going to hit a bump and bump our heads. Never imagining we were going to hit that thing and launch some 30-40 feet through the air. When we hit that embankment, the front of the bus sheered right off. The coaches sit right in the front so when we launched that pulled me right off my seat that I was holding on too, I was just floating in air. I was just looking and the front of the bus was gone," said Nighthawks coach Adam Hill.

The crash resulted in some players missing the rest of the basketball season due to injuries. Freshman Hayden Sadowsky was one of them, "I had about 4-5 bones broken in my face. And in the surgery, they had to go through underneath my eye and fix some stuff from there and they also went up through my mouth on this side to fix it."

The players who could play returned back to the court a week later and defeated Glen Ullin-Hebron in their first game since the crash. Coach Hill says the road trip on January 13 last year has given everyone that was on that bus a greater appreciation for life on and off the court.

"It`s kind of nice because we`ve gotten past it and it`s about playing basketball again. But it`s in the back of our mind. But it`s in the back of our minds, truly what it`s important, family and where does basketball fall in place? And our kids understand that really well now.

The Nighthawks are in their second year as a co-op. They are 4-7 this season, but have won two of their past three games. They host Trinity on Friday.

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