You most probably know or at least have heard about Drazen Petrovic. The basketball legend whose life was cut short at age 28, on the height of his career in a car accident on a slippery road in Germany on June 7th 1993…
Details and the whole story can be easily found on the net. It was a tragedy that shook the basketball spectrum as he was a top player in the NBA and had achieved everything there is to be achieved in Europe and with the national team.
Every death is a tragedy, especially of a young man.
From that accident though there is another life story that has gotten little to no attention.
Hilal Edebal, a 23 year old basketball player at the time, was also a passenger in that red Volkswagen. She was in the backseat just behind Drazen.
She did manage to survive. With a great cost though. 8 weeks in coma and a lifetime of trying to get her life back to some kind of normal.
What was it like for her? Although her memory of the accident is mostly erased, having suffered severe brain injury, she got back to teaching 3 languages. Her promising sports career ended at the spot, right there on the wet Autobahn. How did she deal with that?
I managed to contact her and chat for a while about what powers she used to get her life together as much as possible.
Her words are an inspiration that show that there is no losing, just quitting. If you don’t quit, no matter how dark your fight is, you can get back to the light!
