Minco softball has emotional return to field six months after bus crash

MINCO — Taitlyn Voss broke into a wide smile as she hustled across the Minco High School softball field and into the Bulldogs’ dugout.

Her eyes beamed.

“Play ball!” the junior catcher proclaimed.

Play ball, indeed.

Monday, March 2, was opening night of Minco’s slowpitch softball season, a fresh and glorious beginning after a horrific bus crash cut short its fastpitch season. But for the Bulldogs, this wasn’t just the start of something new. It was also a continuation of something sacred.

“Chapter 2,” assistant coach Laci Garrett has called it.

Almost six months ago, a bus carrying the Minco softball team home crashed while returning from a game. It flipped twice in the air, then rolled once on the ground. Six passengers were ejected, and all 13 people on the bus were hurt, some seriously.

But no one died. Or was paralyzed. Or suffered any long-term injuries.

The Minco miracles, they are.

After the crash, Minco canceled the rest of its fall fastpitch season. The coaches and the players needed time to heal, process and recover. But they always talked about playing again — and because seniors Emma Oaks and Ava Russell will graduate and be gone next fastpitch season, this slowpitch season is the last time that this particular team will be together.

“This is kind of the golden group,” Voss said. “We went through so much. We’re back on the field, but for them to go away, we’re losing a piece to our puzzle that sticks us all together.”

That made Monday even more special.

After the team did a short pre-game warmup, head coach Cody Schmidt gathered everyone in the locker room behind the dugout. Posters and letters of support sent to the team after the crash still cover the walls and the ceiling.

“I wrote something,” he told everyone, “but I’m not going to read it because I’ll cry.”

He chuckled.

“Let’s keep it simple,” he said. “We’ve all been given a second chance to do something we love. Don’t take it for granted.

“Go have fun.”

And the Bulldogs did.

They chanted and cheered in the dugout, even breaking out a pair of drumsticks that beat out rhythms on a ball bucket. They hit and ran, caught and threw on the field, winning a pair of games by run rule.

“When we were getting hit after hit after hit,” Oaks said, “we were just going around and playing … ”

“Having fun,” Russell interjected.

“Yeah,” Oaks agreed. “It really just felt like everything was normal again.”

But the bus crash will always be part of this team’s story, and on the night Minco played its first games since, there were reminders of that.

When assistant coach Jordan Benge reached the first-base coaches’ box in the bottom of the first inning, the players in the dugout erupted in cheers. He turned and offered a bow and a smile.

Benge spent 67 days in the hospital after the crash, the longest of anyone, and even though he’s still healing from severe injuries to his liver, spleen and lungs, he was there Monday.

So was Jillian Reh, who suffered serious cuts on her face in the crash, but you wouldn’t have known it as she ripped a pitch to left field. Presley Bilderback injured her arm and Lexi Woodruff injured her legs and hips, but you wouldn’t have known it as they smashed one pitch after another toward the wall. Oaks needed stitches all over her left hand and Voss had a huge gash on her right arm, but you wouldn’t have known it watching them pitch and catch the Bulldogs to victory.

Before Minco returned to action, though, they thought it was important to thank some of the people who helped them get back on the field. They invited first responders who worked the crash and medical professionals who nursed them back to come to the game.

Nearly four dozen did.

And it would’ve been more if not for some working the night shift.

Still, during a pregame ceremony, the line stretched along the edge of the outfield grass from the left-field line all the way past second base. Those men and women saw Minco’s players and coaches at their worst moments, bloodied, injured, broken.

But Monday, those same players and coaches stood along the third-base line, healthy and whole.

“Thank you to the men and women who showed up on September 8,” a recording of players and coaches began on the field’s loudspeaker. “We are speaking directly to you, the ones who answered the call, the ones who came running.”

“When you arrived at that wreck, you saw flashing lights, crushed metal and uncertainty. But what you may not have realized is that you were walking into the most critical moment of our lives.”

“We were scared, we were in pain, and we didn’t know what the next minute would hold — and then we heard your voices. Your calm instructions. Your steady reassurances. The way you said, ‘We’ve got you.’”