This is a football site but on a day like today, the game of choice couldn’t be less important.
Fourteen people are dead and another 14 are injured after a truck collided with a bus carrying a junior hockey team to a playoff game in northeastern Saskatchewan. The team, the Humboldt Broncos, plays in the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League and is made up of players ranging from 16 to 20-years-old – young men with their whole lives in front of them.
https://twitter.com/MattGourlie/status/982511622508822529
I’ve covered a team like this, a Junior B team in small a British Columbia town. I’ve ridden the busses, got to know the players and coaches on interminable rides to far-flung towns. Those kids aren’t shooting for pro stardom – it’s a rung below big-time junior hockey – but maybe a scholarship to a good U.S. school, a chance to play university hockey. Most of them are playing because they love the game, the locker room and the sense of community and place that comes with it.
This tweet…
The players on that bus were from Alberta and Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Over the next few days and weeks, stories of unspeakable horror will emerge: what the players endured, what the families are going through, what the survivors now face. It is just so goddamn awful.
But we can help, at least in some small way. There is already a GoFundMe page established for the families to help ease the financial burden as they cope with every parent’s nightmare come to life. It’s not much but it’s the least we can do.
This is a football site but today is a reminder that the game – hockey, football, whatever – is secondary. People and life are fragile and the wake of unspeakable tragedy, we can all do our part to support a community that needs it.
