Bowling Green State coach saves motorist from serious injury

Every once in a while we see a story that trends away from the bad news seemingly seeping from the pores of the sports world.

This is one of those stories.

Bowling Green State University football coach Dino Babers joined assistant athletic trainer Chelsea Lowe in helping to save a motorist from serious injury following an accident on Saturday.

The two administrators were in the first of a convoy of Bowling Green State buses heading back from their game against Buffalo. At just before midnight, the car in front of them hit the center divider on I-90 near Avon, OH. At which point, Babers and Lowe took matters into their own hands.

In explaining the situation, Babers had this to say (via BCSN.TV):

“The bus driver asked for permission to stop the bus, and I gave it to him — but I told him not to stop the other three buses. Then he asked to go check out the car and see if the driver was hurt. “I told him no, because if he was hurt there wouldn’t be anyone to drive the bus home.”

Once the first bus got closer to the scene of the accident, Lowe made the decision to check out what had happened.

“The closer we got to the car, the clearer we could see smoke billowing,” Lowe said. “We knew whoever was in the car wasn’t just going to walk away and have everything be OK.”

The two then helped the injured motorist out of her car, saving her from what was described as "billowing" smoke from the car.

The injured woman, 25-year-old Amber Nettles, was taken to nearby St. John Medical Center. While there were no further updates relating to her status, the report does go on to say that Lowe was comforting Nettles after the two pulled her from safety — about 30 feet away from the scene of the accident.

For Babers and the Falcons, the 28-22 win over Buffalo this past weekend wasn't the biggest story. Instead, it was all about helping a stranger at a time of desperate need. It was also brought on by an incident 30 years before that saw the head coach saved by Good Samaritans.

“I’m sitting there, looking at the snow, and I’m going to wait for help — even though I’m sitting there in a short-sleeve shirt, no blankets, no food, nothing,” the head coach said about an incident three decades before. “Then I noticed my lights weren’t visible because of the accumulation of snow, and I barely could open the door to the car.”

Stranded in snow for the first time and ill-prepared for the harsh conditions, Babers was eventually picked up by a couple who took him to the nearest town.

The promise he made to those individuals that aided him on the side of the road when he was a graduate assistant at Arizona State was that he would not look the other way if he saw another person dealing with the same potentially life-altering event.

Prior to Saturday's heroic act, Babers previously revived a person who had suffered a heart attack and helped pull two people from a car that had flipped over.

The moral of this story is that pay it forward is live and well, at least when it comes to ordinary people performing heroic tasks.

Check out Vincent's other work on eDraft.com and follow him on Twitter @VincentFrankNFL.