Husson University swim coach Bruce “Butch” Babin is recovering from a hip injury sustained during the team’s trip to a meet at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth last Friday.
Babin was hurt when the driver of the Cyr Bus on which the team was traveling was forced to slam on his brakes to avoid a multi-vehicle accident on I-95 in southern Maine.
Babin said he was in the seat behind the driver and was thrown forward into the metal partition.
“I was kind of asleep and I woke up and bounced off it,” said Babin.
He said none of his swimmers were injured.
“A couple of laptops got banged up,” he said.
“Everybody kind of freaked. We went from 70 miles an hour to zero,” said Babin, who added that the driver wasn’t at fault.
“He did what he had to do,” said Babin. “We had come around the corner and the sun was on the horizon. We couldn’t see any traffic (until the last second). A truck had run into a car around 20 yards in front of us. There were four or five cars involved (via a chain reaction). Three of the cars were really smashed up. The traffic had backed up.”
He said they were lucky to avoid the accident.
Babin and the team completed the trip to the meet, competed, then returned Saturday night. Babin was evaluated at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor on Sunday morning.
He admitted the injury to his left hip was painful.
“Probably an 8 on a scale of 1 to 10,” said Babin.
He had broken the same hip and his femur (upper leg) when he slipped on a pool deck last summer.
Babin has been advised by a doctor to use a walker for 12 days. He said he underwent an MRI on Tuesday but has yet to receive the results.
Babin said things went well for his team at the non-scoring meet at UMass Dartmouth and he has continued to coach them this week.
Husson entertains the University of New England (Biddeford) and St. Joseph’s College (Standish) for a three-team meet on Saturday at noon.