Bathurst high school unveils 'Boys in Red' memorial

A memorial for seven basketball players killed in a January highway crash was to be unveiled Friday during a private ceremony at a high school in Bathurst, N.B.

Staff and students at Bathurst High School were scheduled to get their first look at the memorial area, in a courtyard behind the school, around noon. An archway, complete with basketball net, leads into a quiet nook filled with benches and plants.

The names of Nathan Cleland, Justin Cormier, Daniel Hains, Javier Acevedo and Codey Brach, who were all 17, Nick Quinn, 16, and Nicholas Kelly, 15, and their jersey numbers are engraved on brass plates near the entrance. The students, all members of the Bathurst Phantoms basketball team, are known as the Boys in Red after the school's colours, black and red.

School principal Coleen Ramsay told the Northern Light newspaper earlier this week that the nook is a place where "students can sit and reflect for a while."

"It's basically for the students in an area that was created by the students and it's in honour of the students, " she said.

The memorial was a school initiative funded by the Boys in Red Fund, which was set up to support the families shortly after the crash.

The teens were killed on Jan. 12 when the 15-seat van in which they were travelling fishtailed and hit a tractor-trailer while returning from a game in Moncton. Their coach's wife, teacher Elizabeth Lord, was also killed. Coach Wayne Lord, his daughter, and two other players survived the crash.