For the first time since 2011, Austin Hatch hit a shot in a basketball game.
And while that may not sound all that impressive on the surface, you probably don’t know the entire story.
Hatch has survived two plane crashes that killed five of his family members. In 2003, his mother, 11-year old sister and five-year old brother were killed when his father crashed the small plane he was flying. In 2011, he was put into a medically-induced coma for two months after his father again crashed a plane that he was flying. His father and his stepmother died in that crash.
Hatch had committed to Michigan shortly before the second crash, and John Beilein has already announced that he will honor Hatch’s scholarship.
Back to Wednesday night, Hatch, who has moved from Indiana to his uncle’s house in Los Angeles, played in his first game since the crash. He hit his first shot, a three, which sent the Loyola High School bench sprinting onto the court and drew a technical foul:
“It was the best technical foul I’ve ever been a part of,” Loyola Coach Jamal Adams told the LA Times.
After the game, Hatch sent out the following tweet:
“He hit a three and our bench erupted. It was unbelievable what that kid has gone through and how hard he’s worked. That kid has taught me you can come back from anything, that nothing is impossible. It was a spiritual moment.”
As I said after the game, my three was pretty cool, but, more importantly, we’re now 14-0 😎
— Austin Hatch (@ahatch33) January 9, 2014