BLUFFTON, Ohio — Current Bluffton University baseball players walk through the Circle of Remembrance overlooking the baseball field before every practice.
They glide their hand over the sculpture bearing the hand prints of the 2007 team, and see the imprints of the cleats worn by the five players who died in a fatal bus crash 10 years ago today.
“We remember you played our positions,” Austin Every, a current BU senior and pitcher, said. “We remember you wore our numbers. We remember you are our teammates.”
He spoke during a bus crash memorial service held around the Circle, an event that was attended by about 150 people.
“We take on this daily ritual to say, to Zachary (Arend), David (Betts), Scott (Harmon), Cody (Holp), Tyler (Williams) and the 2007 team, we remember,” Mr. Every said.
PHOTO GALLERY: Bluffton crash victims remembered on 10th anniversary
The five players named, along with Jerome and Jean Niemeyer, the bus driver and his wife, died in the March 2, 2007 bus crash in Atlanta on the way to spring baseball in Sarasota.
The Bluffton team’s charter bus carrying 33 players and coaches flipped over an I-75 overpass and plummeted 30 feet onto the highway.
Tim Berta, who went through intense rehabilitation, was one of the players on the bus.
“It’s hard because I met those people,” he said. ”I can’t speak highly enough of Bluffton and how they put this together and did this. This is wonderful.”
He’s thankful to be able to return to Bluffton for events like this, and to remember his teammates and friends.
“I was given a tremendous gift by the grace of God, in that I’m here and I’m walking and I’m talking, and I know not everyone was given that gift,” he said. “I’m doing the best to live a good, clean, full life in honor of each of those five souls.”
Mr. Berta, 32, works as a substitute teacher and is a volunteer assistant girls’ golf coach at Summerfield High School in Petersburg.
“Golf brings me back to what I used to be,” he said. “I’m not very good, but I have an occasional good shot, and in that second, I’m back to how I was.”
The current team will be heading to Florida next week for spring baseball.
Contact Zack Lemon at: zlemon@theblade.com, 419-724-6282, or on Twitter @zack_lemon.
First Published March 2, 2017, 6:43 p.m.
