It was a regular night for the Wayne City girls basketball team on November 30. They were in Middle-Of-Nowhere Orchardville as their school bus headed towards Sandoval for the game that was to take place that evening. It was quite dark out by the time they had gotten this far, around five o’clock. Most of the team had their headphones stuck in their ears and some were getting a quick nap in before the game ahead of them. The whole situation was quite uneventful. Well, it was uneventful. The bus rounded a few curves when bus driver, Robert Caudle, hit the breaks.

“Avery and I fell into the floor when he hit the brakes!” Bryleigh Matthews said, recalling the incident. Most of the girls were coming out of their sleepy daze when the next jolt from the front shook them all wide awake. “I saw it fly to the side. It’s whole body was limp as it rolled down the hill. We just creamed that sucker.” Lucy Smith witnessed the whole scene as the bus hit the deer.

Coach DeAirdra Dagg exited the bus and claims that the deer was nowhere to be seen. Everyone was unsure if the deer managed to survive long enough to run away or it just tumbled too far into the woods for anyone to see. Dagg and Caudle proceeded to carry the dented, broken grill of the bus inside the vehicle and the team took off back towards the Orchardville Store. “I’m kind of sad that we might miss our game. I was really looking forward to playing tonight,” remarked Avery Seidel on the journey back from the scene of the accident, “but I just feel really bad for the bus driver.” Several players agreed with her.

All turned out well in the end. A new bus met the driver and the team at the store they stopped at and their hopes of making it to the game that night were fulfilled. “We knew it had to have been a good game that night because it couldn’t have gotten much worse.” Shauna Roesch said to conclude the events of those few hours. Whether she was right or not, that’s something the girls will have to answer themselves.