All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys' Soccer Team

A local boys’ soccer team in Mae Sai, Thailand, the Wild Boars have players who range in age from 11 to 17. Despite the age differences of team members, the boys get along well and love to spend time together outside soccer games and practices. They often join each other for outdoor activities like hiking, biking, and swimming, excursions that are often organized by their assistant coach, Coach Ek. Exploring Tham Luang was one such outing that the boys embarked on after soccer practice on Saturday, June 23, 2018. Not every team member was available to go to the cave, but 12 boys accompanied Coach Ek there.

Most of the players on the Wild Boars team are Buddhist, except for Adul, who is a Christian. They often practice meditation before games to help calm their minds and focus on the game. This practice proved especially helpful in the cave, where they used meditation to stay calm, mentally strong, and determined. Other qualities from their soccer training also became integral to the boys’ survival. The determination, teamwork, and resilience they learned in soccer helped them continue fighting for survival day after day.

Soontornvat highlights the boys’ amazing mental fortitude and humility. Not only were they upbeat and respectful when rescuers finally reached them after 18 days, but they also were amazingly calm and accepted the terms of the rescue, particularly the sedation, without protest. After the rescue and recovery in the hospital, the boys expressed gratitude and humility. They made videos for the rescuers to say thank you and became novice monks for nine days as a way of showing their thankfulness. They also decided to wai, or bow with their hands pressed together, rather than wave when appearing at a sporting event together. They wanted to show humility rather than heroism or pride.

Soontornvat shows the boys of the Wild Boars to be mature beyond their years. They’re ordinary boys, yet they used their experiences and choices to stay strong and determined when faced with a seemingly impossible situation. Their resilience offers inspiration to people of all ages and shows that ordinary people can survive extraordinary situations.

The 25-year-old assistant coach of the Wild Boars soccer team, Ekkapol Chantawong (nicknamed Coach Ek) is a mentor figure to the boys. However, his role in the boys’ lives is perhaps strongest away from the soccer field, and the team enjoys a family-like bond with him, as with an older brother. He arranges outdoor activities for the boys outside of practice, and although he leads them, he encourages the team to make democratic decisions. Rather than making a decision for the group, he encourages the team to decide things collectively. This shows Coach Ek’s humble style of leadership and his desire to teach the boys important life skills rather than simply help them win soccer games.

Coach Ek had a difficult childhood, losing his family to an illness when he was only nine years old. However, this tragedy didn’t harden him. He lived as a nain (a novice monk) for 11 years, which taught him discipline and gave him mental fortitude and resilience. As a nain, he had to overcome difficulties that seemed impossible at first, and this training helped him inside the cave. Ek’s training in meditation kept him from panicking and helped him encourage the boys to stay calm and continue fighting for survival. While in Tham Luang, Coach Ek did what he could to act and show the boys that he wasn’t giving up. For example, he tried swimming through the flooded passage and encouraged the boys to try diverting floodwater from the passage by digging canals. Coach Ek’s levelheadedness under pressure helped the boys stay calm and hope for rescue.

A British caver who grew up exploring caves near his home in England, Vern Unsworth moved to Thailand to be with his partner and has lived in Mae Sai for seven years. In that time, he learned more about Tham Luang than anyone in the area through frequent explorations of the cave. He even mapped the cave and its many tunnels. His vast knowledge proved vital for rescuers who were unfamiliar with Tham Luang. Vern was one of the first people on the scene, called by the director of the Siam Ruam Jai Mae Sai Rescue Organization. Vern’s knowledge of the cave helped rescuers predict which route the boys most likely took and which chamber they might have been sheltering in within the cave. Without Vern’s expertise on Tham Luang, rescuers would have had to do much more guesswork and wouldn’t have been able to prepare for the rescue so thoroughly.

Additionally, Vern was a voice of reason and practicality at base camp. His firm suggestion got the ball rolling on bringing in professional cave divers. Vern quickly recognized that cave diving experts would likely be needed to reach the boys. Vern’s knowledge and advice proved helpful for the water diversion situation too. He explained to Thanet the importance of reducing the water flowing into Sam Yaek from Monk’s Series. This helped give Thanet a new direction for his work and led to a reduction in the water levels and the current during the rescue. Soontornvat shows that because Vern knew so much about Tham Luang, he had a unique position at base camp. He could recognize rescuers’ best chances for reaching the Wild Boars, and he used his knowledge to help convince those in charge to use the best course available. Without Vern, rescuers would have had far less knowledge on which to base their decisions.

An American citizen who was born in Thailand, Thanet Natisri is an architecture student, restaurant owner, and water diversion expert. Thanet learned about groundwater from his father-in-law, who owns an engineering company in Thailand. Thanet was working with his father-in-law in Bangkok when they received a call from the Thai army to help with the water situation at Tham Luang.

When Thanet arrived at base camp, rescue efforts were chaotic, and he didn’t receive clear instructions about where he was needed. However, Thanet took initiative to determine where his knowledge of groundwater would be the most useful. Even though no one had time to fully explain the situation to him or tell him where to go or what to do, Thanet jumped in and figured things out for himself. He recognized the need to extract groundwater to reduce water levels in the cave. Once he found a good location for sucking water from the ground, he took the initiative to find groundwater engineers who volunteered the use of their drills. He also found farmers with homemade super-pumps who wanted to help. Without a budget or official resources, Thanet found a way to lead the water diversion effort.

Thanet exhibited resilience and ingenuity. He got little sleep (about four hours per night) when working to reduce groundwater yet pressed on for the sake of lowering water levels even slightly in Tham Luang. He refused to let a lack of resources inhibit his team’s work, using bamboo poles and vines to create makeshift structures and poles for diverting water from Monk’s Series.

Additionally, Thanet humbly helped catalyze communication between Thai leaders and the British dive team. He acted as a go-between alongside Colonel Singhanat to get the dive rescue plan on a meeting agenda to present to leadership. Thanet was even asked to help draft a letter to convince the prime minister that drilling wasn’t the best rescue option. Thanet was recognized for his expertise, and even though he had no official military rank or leadership title, his knowledge and action proved essential to the rescue’s success.

Considered two of the world’s best cave divers, Rick Stanton and John Volanthen were the ones Vern recommended as the men for the job at Tham Luang. Although many other experienced cave divers contributed to the rescue, Rick and John were the first on the scene and did many of the scouting dives, including the dive when they found the boys alive in Chamber 9. Rick and John are both from England, where they have encountered some of the hardest sumps in the world to dive. The sumps on the British Isles are known for their murky, cold water, which is what the cave divers were dealing with at Tham Luang.

Soontornvat highlights Rick and John’s bravery and the way they balanced their willingness to accept risks with their ability to be thoughtful decision makers. They wanted to reach the boys as much as anyone else, but they realized that by making poor choices, they could put more people in danger. Furthermore, if Rick and John died before reaching or rescuing the boys, few people in the world would be able to replace them. Their refusal to enter the cave under extreme flooding conditions frustrated the Thai rescuers, but Soontornvat shows that Rick and John were acting in the boys’ best interest by choosing to wait until water levels began to recede.

Rick and John are exceptionally levelheaded. They know that maintaining mental focus and calm is essential for cave diving, since panic can be a death sentence. Their excellent problem solving abilities were put to the test, as they ran into difficulties both before and during the rescue dives. When they made rescue dives three days in a row, they showed their resilience. Rick and John are experts who balanced their emotions with logical decision-making and balanced risk with the principles of safe diving. They persisted in their rescue efforts despite adversity and, along with other divers, performed a feat no one thought was possible: rescuing all 12 boys and their coach.

A highly trained special operations unit, the Royal Thai Navy SEALs are modeled after the US Navy SEAL program. SEAL stands for Sea, Air, and Land, and the group is trained in all of these areas. When the Thai Navy SEALs arrived at base camp early on June 25, they had high hopes for rescuing the boys quickly. However, they soon learned that the flooded cave situation was more complex than they initially realized. The SEALs have an immense amount of open water diving experience, but Soontornvat points out that open water diving is quite different from cave diving. Without cave diving experience or expertise, they’re at risk of making several dangerous mistakes. Amazingly, even though the SEALs hadn’t dived in caves before, they made it past Sam Yaek without a guideline in the strong current. However, they realized that they didn’t have enough air to go any further, and their air tanks didn’t fit well through the narrow cave passages.

The SEALs are exceptionally brave and are action-oriented, which was evident in the various jobs they did to help with rescue efforts and their willingness to risk their lives to reach the boys. Furthermore, many SEALs came out of retirement to help any way they could. Through the example of the SEALs, Soontornvat shows that while bravery and experience in high-stakes situations is admirable, the circumstances at Tham Luang were so specialized that rescue efforts required cave experts and cave divers to map out a successful rescue. Sometimes, even those who are highly qualified must step out of the way and let others who specialize in a particular situation take the lead.