Getty Image
The University of South Carolina golf team was involved in a scary car crash on the way home from its most recent tournament, and it ended in bad news for its top player. While everyone made it through the accident without sustaining life-threatening injuries, there was one setback that will end junior Nathan Franks’ season.
Franks suffered a right elbow fracture in the collision, which involved three cars at a stoplight on a Georgia highway.
The team was returning from an appearance in the Schenkel Invitational in Statesboro on Sunday when its van was hit by a driver running through a red light.
Here’s more from NBC Sports:
Franks was riding shotgun in the team’s sprinter van alongside the driver, Gamecocks assistant Brady Gregor, when another car, making a left-hand turn, pulled out in front of them on Highway 25 in Waynesboro…
Gregor, cruising through the green light in the right lane of the five-lane highway (the middle lane is a turn lane), swerved right to avoid a direct collision. The driver’s side of the van sustained the brunt of the hard impact, and the van then careened into a power truck, which kept it from skidding off into what Gregor estimated to be an 8-foot-deep ditch. The other driver was determined to have been at fault, having ran through a red turn signal.
Nathan Franks had just landed a win in that Schenkel Invitational. To celebrate, he planned to make the team stop for donuts.
View this post on Instagram
The van was reportedly within 100 yards of those tasty treats before disaster.
“One of those crazy decisions, if we would’ve went into the gas station a different way, we maybe would’ve missed this thing,” driver and assistant Brady Gregor said.
Others in the van escaped without suffering significant injuries. As for Franks, he’ll likely be on the sidelines for the rest of the regular season with his SEC Tournament now in doubt, too.
Hopefully, South Carolina can get him back by the time NCAA postseason play rolls around, though the team is currently on the bubble and now without its best player.
Still, coaches feel fortunate the accident wasn’t worse.