Minco Superintendent speaks out after school bus crash involving softball team

Minco Public School leaders are responding and engaging with their community after a school bus carrying members of the Minco softball team crashed Monday night in Anadarko.

RELATED: Minco High School softball team bus crash injures players and coaches

News 9 spoke to Minco Superintendent Kevin Sims about the wreck and how his district has responded.

Can you tell us how your community is doing this morning? How's everyone holding up?

Sims: I think everyone's worn out. It was a long night. It is hard and painful, but I'm going to say we're also very grateful. This could have been so much worse than what it was. You know, I can't give you too many details about the accident. The investigation is ongoing by the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, and they will give you those details, I promise you. We had a number of people ejected from the bus. The bus rolled several times. The only thing I can tell you and the listening audience, you know, it was the hand of God that saved the lives of students and coaches, and teachers.

Can you talk about the types of injuries that some of the players and coaches sustained?

Sims: I will say it like this. Broken bones heal a lot faster than broken hearts, and there's a lot of broken bones and things of that sort, and probably some internal injuries and things like that. I don't know all the injury details, obviously. They were treated for trauma last night. You know, there are some hospitalized, obviously, but everyone is out of danger, you know, and we're grateful for that. People were ejected from that bus. I don't have the exact number. Five or six were ejected from the bus. How the bus didn't roll on top of them as it was rolling, I have no answers for other than Jesus was looking out for our kids and staff members.

Can you talk about the softball team?

Sims: We've been really successful at softball for several years at Minco, and in all athletics. They're a tight-knit group. Beautiful young ladies. I'm sure most people have seen those pictures on social media. They're fun. They're good girls. They're wonderful people. The coaches are wonderful coaches, but not only wonderful coaches, they're tremendous teachers in the classroom, and you know, we have a good school here at Minco. When one hurts, we all hurt, and that's kind of how we are this morning. Like I said, it is hard for this to have happened. We are so grateful that, you know, you're not talking to me from the funeral home this morning.

What is your word of thanks to those first responders this morning?

Sims: I was able to get out there to the site. It was about nine miles west of Minco that's where the accident happened. First of all, I've never seen anything like that. I never want to see anything like that again, and I'm going to leave it at that. A lot of carnage, but the professionalism and the speed with which our local fire department, the other community fire departments, the EMTs, and the speed at which they recovered the individuals and got them to hospitals in Oklahoma City was pretty incredible. There were some very significant injuries. That information will come out. I'm grateful to all of them. It's been a long night, an emotional night, but we're alive and grateful.

You canceled school today, and your community thought that was a great idea. Do you think class will return tomorrow? Do you have any thoughts on that?

Sims: Our plans are that we will return to school as normal tomorrow.

Any final message to your community or the people watching today?

Sims: We feel those prayers, and number one, I want to say thank you, and number two, continue. You know, there's a lot of healing, physical healing, and I'm sure some emotional healing is going to have to go on in a lot of these young ladies' lives and our staff's lives from this. I received a message from a restaurant, I believe a restaurant in Elgin or Lawton, wanting to bring food up to a hospital last night. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to respond to that. I was so busy. But that shows you the kind of people that are in our state, and the people in our community are wonderful people here. The Baptist church opened up and had a prayer vigil for our students and coaches, and my message is we're going to be OK. We're going to get through this, and God's walking us through it. I'm thankful that everyone's alive, and just continue the prayers, please.