Hooped Up

A van carrying a high school boys’ basketball team home from a game was only five minutes from their waiting parents when it fish-tailed on a slippery highway and slammed into a truck, killing seven players and an adult.Emily Cleland, sister of victim Nathan Cleland, said some parents had gathered at a fast-food restaurant to pick up their children when they got a call to go to the hospital.

“He was my best friend, my whole life,” Cleland said of her brother. “He was always so protective of me.”

The Bathurst High Phantoms were returning from a game in Moncton, N.B., about 220 kilometres away, when the accident occurred on Highway 8 outside Bathurst shortly after midnight.

The force of the collision sliced open one side of the large white van and ejected benches and people everywhere. Hours later, the benches still lay strewn in the snow.

“When members arrived at the scene, all eight were dead - there was nothing we could do,” RCMP Sgt. Derek Strong said during a news conference later.

The Canadian Press