Clemson's football staff saved a student whose car crashed near a river
Clemson was practicing outside on Tuesday evening, about to close up shop for the day, when a car leaped off Perimeter Road and slid down an embankment close to the nearby Seneca River. The team jumped into action, and Dabo Swinney selected six staff members -- sports medicine assistant Scott Crowthers, student athletic trainer Bailey Black, student managers Jack Wardlaw and Jack Sari, student coach Daniel Boyd and student videographer Eric Suttles -- to jump in and swim across the river to the crash site, and graduate assistant athletic trainer Rachel Alterio and student athletic trainer Ana Wright also joined the unidentified driver at the site.
.@ClemsonFB staff jumped into river to rescue @ClemsonUniv student whose car crashed near practice field. https://t.co/vXN8GAUsgv
— Coy Wire (@CoyWire) October 5, 2017
Dabo Swinney told the story to the Charleston Post & Courier:
"We turn around and here comes a car just coming down that ravine. It was just unbelievable and it just keeps coming and it’s all the way to the moat. It’s a miracle it didn’t go in the moat. It was just kind of natural, the whole team took off running (to help) and you didn’t know if the car was going to catch on fire, you had no idea. It was just kind of instinct.
"A bunch of our trainers and Daniel Boyd, who’s a student coach for us but is a former military guy, they actually swam across the moat and it’s like quicksand over there, just to try to assess the situation until the paramedics got there. (Offensive GA) Xavier Dye ran around because there was no way (the paramedics) would know where to go because his car was all the way down there. We huddled up and we just said a prayer for this situation, whoever it was."
"Whoever it was" turned out to be Clary Miles, a Clemson freshman whom Swinney happened to coach as an 8-year-old Little Leaguer.
"Then my son, Will, came over to me and had a big tear in his eye and said, ‘Dad, I think that’s Clary.' And that just took my breath away," Swinney said. "Clary Miles is a kid I’ve known his whole life and ... is just an unbelievable young man.
"What we saw, I just can’t even believe someone was able to survive that. Just a true miracle."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=3HwNy3QcZKU
“I want to tell everyone how grateful we are to everyone associated with the Clemson football program that helped my son," Paula Miles said in a statement. "I am especially grateful for those trainers and managers and others who swam to help Clary and get him out of the car. Thomas Austin (graduate assistant coach) rode in the ambulance with him to the hospital and that was so comforting. I am just so glad my son is alive.”
