A routine road trip for a Southern California girls’ hockey team ended in heartbreak hundreds of miles from home, leaving one parent dead and multiple children and adults injured.
According to the New York Post, the Santa Clarita Lady Flyers, a 12-and-under girls ice hockey team, were traveling to a tournament in Colorado when their journey took a devastating turn.
Families back in Valencia, California, gathered at The Cube Ice and Entertainment Center — the team’s home rink — struggling to process the news and explain the loss to their daughters.
”She was distraught,” team hockey dad Serge Zarubin said of his daughter’s reaction. ”It’s understandable. It’s hard for them. It’s hard on grownups. It’s even harder for the kids.”
Another parent echoed the sense of shock rippling through the tight-knit hockey community.
”It hits everybody hard — it’s just so tragic. There is a child without a parent now,” Santa Clarita Valley hockey mom Kelly Lytle said. ”It’s just really disheartening to think about those families.”
The crash occurred just before 9 a.m. Thursday on a snow-covered stretch of Interstate 70 in Clear Creek County, roughly 55 miles west of Denver, according to CPR News and NBC. A Sprinter van carrying the team collided head-on with a Colorado Department of Transportation snowplow.
The force of the impact was severe. Authorities said the plow’s blade was torn off, and the van was pushed off the side of the interstate. The driver of the van — the father of one of the players — was pronounced dead at the scene. He was the only fatality.
Ten people were inside the van at the time of the crash. Eight suffered injuries, including several juvenile players.
One girl was airlifted by helicopter to a trauma center in critical condition. Seven others — four children and three adults — were taken by ambulance to nearby hospitals, CPR News reported.
The van had been rented by three families to transport the players to the tournament, according to KTLA.
”This is the kind of thing you hear about on the news, but it’s never someone you know or people you know,” Prescott Littlefield, president of the Santa Clarita Flyers, told NBC. ‘It just completely knocked me back, knocked the wind out of me.’
In a statement shared on Instagram, the hockey club asked for privacy as families cope with the aftermath.
”Our 12AA Lady Flyers were on their way to Denver, Colorado, to participate in a WGHL weekend,’ the team wrote. ‘We ask that you keep our hockey families in your prayers and that you give them time to sort through the details of this tragic event.”
Since the crash, four of the injured children have been released from the hospital. One girl remains in critical condition. Of the three adults who were hospitalized, two are listed in serious condition, while the third is in fair condition.
