Mark Wiedmer

Chattanooga (Tenn.) Times Free Press (TNS)

Why me?

Austin Hatch rarely goes there. Not that the former Michigan basketball player, originally expected to be a member of the graduating class of 2017, couldn’t. Ninety-nine-point-ninety-nine percent of the rest of us would. And often.

When you were in a small-plane crash at the age of 8 that took the lives of your mother, brother and sister and left your father with burns severe enough to require skin grafts and plastic surgery, there are bound to be questions of faith and fairness.

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When eight years later — and just nine days after Wolverines coach John Beilein offered you a scholarship at the close of your sophomore season at Canterbury High School in Fort Wayne, Ind. — you’re in a second small-plane crash that kills your father, your stepmother and a family dog and leaves you in a coma for two months as doctors wonder whether you’ll ever walk or talk again, the question of “Why me?’’ can take on darker and more troublesome angles.

And Hatch readily admits that, every now and then, he struggles with those two words because, well, “If anyone has that right to ask ‘Why me?’ I do.’”

But he immediately adds these words to that thought: “But that doesn’t honor God. That doesn’t honor my family. You can’t change your past but you can shape your future.”

Hatch will share his painful past, persistent present and fascinating future Friday at Chattanooga’s McCallie School during a luncheon to tip off the school’s Dr Pepper TEN Classic hoops weekend. Tickets are $25 a person or $150 for a table of seven. Reservations can be purchased online at attend.com/2017drpeppertenclassic, along with tickets to both Friday’s and Saturday’s basketball action.

“I embrace every opportunity I get to share my story,” Hatch said. “Maybe I can use my misfortune to help people with other misfortunes.”

He came into this world as one of its most fortunate sons. His father, Stephen, was a doctor who’d married his high school sweetheart, Julie. They had three children: daughter Lindsay and sons Austin and Ian. They were on their way home to Fort Wayne from Michigan when the first crash occurred on Labor Day weekend in 2003.

“When you talk about people that complemented one another, they complemented one another,” Stephen’s cousin, Kevin O’Donnell, said of the couple in a 2015 espn.com article. “That one-plus-one-equals-three rule? That’s exactly what that was.”

And yet father and son somehow healed from that tragedy, Stephen remarrying a couple of years later and Austin suddenly having a new mom, Kim, and three new siblings: Maria, Brittnee and a brother, also named Austin.

Life was somewhat back to normal for Austin Hatch for the next six years. Plenty of one-on-one basketball wars in the driveway against Stephen. Family vacations. And more flights in his father’s new plane.

Then came June 24, 2011. Beilein had made Austin’s dream of one day playing basketball for the Wolverines come true by calling to offer him a scholarship on the first day coaches could call recruits: June 15.

“Coach called me at 1:45 in the afternoon,” Austin recalled. “I accepted right then. I’d always wanted to play at Michigan.”

That night, the happy Hatch clan celebrated at the 800 Degrees pizza parlor in Fort Wayne with “30 to 40” friends and family. Austin scarfed down at least a couple of slices of his favorite pulled pork pizza — “Think pulled pork barbecue on a pizza,” he said — and dreamed of how he’d be a Wolverine two seasons from then, his 6-foot-6 frame and deft outside shooting certain to fit perfectly into Beilein’s brilliant offensive sets.

The coach even compared him to Wally Szczerbiak, a 10-year NBA veteran.

“Great fundamentals,” Beilein would tell people regarding Hatch. “Knows how to win.”

Nine days later, the plane Stephen Hatch was flying to the family’s lake home in Michigan crashed, killing Austin’s dad and stepmom and leaving him in a coma for two months.

“I couldn’t walk or talk,” he said. “I wasn’t back at square one. I was at square zero.”

The doctors told Hatch that the earliest he might walk would be six months. He was walking in five weeks. One hundred and six days after the plane went down, Hatch walked out of the rehab facility and into his new normal.

That didn’t mean he ever would return to the athletic level he was before the accident. Even now, six years later, as Hatch said, “My body can’t execute what my mind tells it to do. I can think the game as well as I ever did. I just can’t drive baseline and dunk anymore.”

Yet Beilein never wavered on the scholarship. And after years of painful rehab, Hatch made it onto the basketball court in the final minutes of a Dec. 22, 2014, win over Coppin State. Fouled on a three-pointer, Hatch hit the middle of his three free throws to make it into the Michigan record book forever.

“I, obviously, have a unique situation,” said Hatch, who gave up his athletic scholarship for a medical waiverso he could focus on academics, though he still sits on the bench for home games and a few road contests.

“But coach Beilein couldn’t have dealt with it any better. It’s hard for me to put into words. “

As Hatch, who’s majoring in organizational studies with an eye on a business degree, considers surrendering his dream of one day reaching the NBA to earn an MBA, it has all been such a unique situation that ESPN’s “E:60” series did a story on him that became one of its most popular mini- documentaries.

“I’ve watched it a fair amount,” Hatch said of the piece that first ran in February 2015. “You can’t condense a life into 16 minutes, but it’s cool to see pictures of my family, stuff like that.”

It was cool enough and touching enough to McCallie basketball coach John Shulman that when it came time to find a speaker to follow last year’s inaugural Dr Pepper TEN smash hit and Turner Sports broadcasting giant Ernie Johnson Jr., Hatch was the only name on his wish list.

“I’ve probably watched ‘Miraculous: The Austin Hatch Story’ 33 times, and I’ve cried every time,” Shulman said.

“Now, Ernie ruined it for everybody who’ll follow him. Thanks to Ernie, you can’t just have a big name now, you’ve got to have somebody with a great message. But there’s nobody out there with a better message than Austin Hatch. Most of us think of our cable going out or our cell phone needing a new battery as adversity. This is a guy who knows real adversity. This is a guy who lost his whole family by the time he was 16 years old, a guy who literally went through years of rehab so he could shoot one free throw in a college basketball game. Every person who’s ever played basketball or coached kids needs to hear his story.”

As Hatch was wrapping up his interview for this story, he was asked whether he’d ever wished he’d died in the second crash, given the enormity of his loss.

“No, I was thrilled I was saved,” he said. “I was thrilled the Lord blessed me with a third chance at life.”

And blessed the rest of us with a first chance to hear more about Hatch’s amazing courage, perseverance and faith.

Michigan teammates learn about pre-crash Austin Hatch