NEW ORLEANS -- A group of baseball players, including three who play at Southeastern Louisiana University, are being called heroes after saving a woman from a burning car while on the road in Western Canada.
On Tuesday, four players and the coach of the Port Angeles Lefties, a summer squad out of Washington State, were heading to a game in Kelowna. Evan Pace of Zachary, Louisiana and coach Darren Westergard were in the front of an S.U.V., separate from the team bus, while three other players slept in the back.
Fate played a huge role as the team wasn’t even supposed to be on this particular route.
“All of sudden me and coach Darren see a car on the side of the road in like a little ditch ravine thing so he slams on the brakes and whips over to the side,” Pace said.
Pace and Westergard ran over only to see 67-year-old Linda Jack in the driver's seat. They started working on getting her out vehicle. At this point, the front was going up in flames, Pace said.
“If we hadn’t have gotten there I think the outcome would have been much different,” said Ronnie Rust of Portland, Oregon who was also in the car.
Trey Morgan of St. Francisville, La, Kyle Schimpf of Covington, La and Rust woke up and started getting the woman’s belongings out of the car.
“We were just trying to get everything we could out of the car before the back end caught on fire,” Morgan said.
“Me and coach Darren finally got her out.” Pace said. “I kid you not maybe two, three minutes later the whole car just explodes, like the back windshield busts out. It’s just crazy because we actually missed two of the turns so we weren’t even supposed to be going that way.”
Jack suffered a broken hand but was more concerned about getting to her destination.
“She was going to Kelowna as well so she loaded up with us,” Pace said.
“I just warned her that these guys sing and it could be good or could not be good so she's just gonna have role with it," Westergard said.
The team sang all the way home and dropped Jack off at her doorstep. Somehow, she found the bright side in all of this.
“She said that she’s been really wanting to get a new electric car so she said now she has a reason to get one,” Schimpf said.
If you believe in Karma, you might think that this good deed would translate into win on the field that night. As luck would have it the Lefties would lose 6-to-2. Though, there is no questioning the fact these young men are certainly winners in the eyes of the woman they saved.