A series of decisions led Northern State University's head mens basketball coach, and former Wayne State College grad assistant, Saul Phillips to take a road trip he won't soon forget. The Wolves were set to play the Wildcats on Jan.18, and usually, Phillips would take the team bus.
"There was an alumni event in Sioux Falls that I was originally going to stay at and drive up to Wayne on game day. There was a chance to do some business stuff and knock a trip up to Sioux Falls out of the way at the same time," Phillips said.
The event meant Phillips would be driving himself in his own car, but a call from the team's bus driver told him more weather was on the way and Friday night was their best chance to make it to Wayne. Phillips agreed to drive ahead of the bus.
"If anything gets dicey I'll pull over and hop on the bus the rest of the way," Phillips said. "That was the game plan anyway."
In basketball and in life, sometimes game plans have to change and very quickly, Phillips realized his game plan wasn't going to work. Around Sioux City the bus passed Phillips but the weather was holding out.
"The weather turned on a dime about halfway between Sioux City and Wayne and all of a sudden I'm driving in a 40 mile per hour wind. It went from being just fine, no problems to 'I shouldn't be out here' and there wasn't a whole lot of alternatives," Phillips said.
Phillips' GPS took him on an unfamiliar route and he had to double back because the road he was on was drifted through. He reset his GPS for Wakefield and pushed through the storm.
"I was going about as far as I could when the wind let up just enough to let me see the road, and then I stopped and I started going again," Phillips said. "It was like a third or fourth time, when I saw the headlights in the ditch."
The vehicle in the ditch was facing the wrong direction and Phillips knew they weren't getting out by themselves, so he stopped and knocked on the car's window and found himself in a situation more serious than three people stuck in a vehicle.
"I said 'why don't you come up and hop into my car because at least I'm on the road we got a fighting chance to get through to Wakefield. The guy in the backseat was really quiet and turns out he was having an asthma attack I didn't know that. When I got in my car she (one of two female passengers) goes, 'I'm in labor.' That's when the mood changed a little bit," Phillips said.
The stranded car held a couple, getting ready to have a baby and her mother. The Wakefield Volunteer Fire Department was unable to release their names. Before Phillips came upon their car, they had called 911 so all they could do was wait. While the father-to-be was allegedly suffering from an asthma attack, Phillips took over the phone and talked seven members of the Wakefield Volunteer Fire Department and some civilian helpers to their location.
"We've been in the situation before, with (similar) road conditions, so we talked about the pickup going on in front of the ambulance, and the pickup was going to go slow and ambulance was going to have visual contact with it all the time," WVFD member Larry Soderberg said.
Fire Chief Adam Ulrich said visibility was zero around 1:45 a.m. on Jan. 18. Meanwhile Phillips was preparing.
"I'm starting to make plans in my own mind, as to how am I going to configure my Nissan Pathfinder to give birth to a child. I thought it was a real possibility that this was happening," Phillips said.
The party was stranded about one and three quarters of a mile north of Wakefield. Despite the terrible conditions, the first responders said it took about 10 minutes from the fire hall to the mom in labor.
"The EMTs were so calming and professional and good," Phillips said. "And (the mother-to-be) was a rock through this whole thing. I can't imagine being in her shoes with a bunch of people who really don't know what to do next and for her to stay so calm, she was really, really brave through the entire process."
While the EMTs were getting the family into the ambulance, the Nebraska Department of Transportation's plows cut a path for the caravan, much to the appreciation of the responders. According to Ulrich, from there, the WVFD team transported the couple to the closest health care facility. A post on Phillip's wife's Facebook page shared that a baby girl, Hazel, was born a few hours later. Phillips said he was able to make it into Wayne around 3 a.m.
His wife, Nicole, is a motivational speaker, columnist and blogger who focuses heavily on acts of kindness. Little did she know on Monday her quick post about her husband's wild ride to Wayne would be shared with nearly 2,000, with the story spreading all over the U.S.
More information can be found by searching Nicole J. Phillips on Facebook. Both Nicole and Saul said they are just grateful that several unusual events put Saul on the path to be able to find the family and help them during the blizzard and both expressed gratitude to Wakefield's Volunteer Fire Department who risked their safety to help get everyone where they needed to be.
