UVic sports boss remembers ‘Boys in Red’ crash

The Humboldt Broncos bus crash brought rushing back to University of Victoria athletic director Clint Hamilton memories of another sports-travel tragedy that still feels fresh and cuts deep.

The Boys in Red accident still haunts those, like Hamilton, who have a connection to New Brunswick sports. Seven players from the Bathurst High School boys’ basketball team, and the wife of the coach, were killed Jan. 12, 2008, when their 15-passenger van collided with a semi-trailer truck while returning from a game in Moncton.

Hamilton was a good friend of Bathurst High basketball coach Wayne Lord, who survived the accident, while his wife Elizabeth Lord perished.

Hamilton was the University of New Brunswick athletic director before taking up the equivalent job at UVic in 2005, where he had won a national championship and captained the Vikes basketball team.

Hamilton got to know the New Brunswick sports community well, first as UNB basketball coach from 1992 to 1999, and then as its athletic director through 2004. He had even spoken at Bathurst High.

“New Brunswick is a small province. So the New Brunswick basketball community is very small and tight-knit . . . . it was devastating,” said Hamilton.

“But the outpouring of support was massive. We battle with everything we have as rivals in sport. But now in Humboldt, and before that in Bathurst, we come together and support each other in moments like this.”

Few groups in society spend as much time in travel than sports teams. Hamilton said potential life-and-limb travel disasters weigh on the mind of any sports administrator. He was the UNB athletic director in 2000 when a minivan heading to UNB in Fredericton, carrying eight members of the men's and women’s wrestling teams from McGill University, crashed head-on with a truck, killing one and sending 12 to hospital. The wrestlers were on their way to Fredericton to compete in the Atlantic Universities Conference championship.

“I think about it as [UVic] athletic director every single week that our teams are competing on the road,” said Hamilton.

“You want to make sure the athletes arrive home safe, whether it’s by plane or bus. It’s the biggest fear you have as athletic director and it wouldn’t be truthful to say it’s not in the back of your head.”

After the Boys in Red crash, so named because of the colour of the Bathurst High jerseys, the New Brunswick government halted the use of 15-passenger vans for school sports travel.