Sometimes leadership skills show up when no one’s watching. For Omaha women’s basketball duo Olivia Borsutzki and Esra Kurban, it showed up at a red light.

On their drive back from practice on Tuesday afternoon, the two Nebraska-Omaha Mavericks players thought they were witnessing a routine traffic accident. Instead, they watched the ground collapse beneath two vehicles as a sinkhole swallowed an SUV and a pickup truck in the middle of an intersection.

While other cars backed away and bystanders pulled out their phones, Borsutzki and Kurban did the opposite. They opened their doors and ran toward the hole to rescue the trapped drivers.

“At first I thought it was just an accident,” Olivia Borsutzki said as per On3. “I pulled over because something was wrong. I was still in the car, and I saw a man in a hole. I was like, ‘I need to help.’ Nobody was helping.”

One of the drivers was trapped inside the hole, struggling to climb out, and without any hesitation, Borsutzki reached the edge and tried to pull him up herself before calling for help from a nearby bystander. Together, they hoisted the man out and onto solid ground.

“I told him, ‘I need your help — come pull this guy out with me.’”

However, Kurban was processing what she was seeing in real time. “I didn’t even know sinkholes existed,” she admitted. “I was thinking, is it going to fall more?”

As per reports, authorities later indicated that the sinkhole may have been caused by a water main break, though the Metropolitan Utilities District cautioned that “it is too early to attribute the cause to any single source.” Thankfully, no serious injuries were reported.

But what stayed with the two teammates wasn’t just the collapse itself. It was the crowd around it. “There were cars driving past, and everyone had their cell phones out,” Olivia Borsutzki said. “Men and women were just recording. Nobody was helping.”

They initially assumed someone else would step in. When no one did, they made the decision themselves. And that’s no small thing at their age. In a moment when many people froze, they chose to act.

No doubt their teammates, coaches, and families couldn’t have been prouder.

How Omaha women’s basketball and family reacted after the rescue

The weight of what these players did didn’t fully hit them until later.

Both Borsutzki and Kurban are international students from Germany and Turkey. And once they called their family members after the incident. That’s when the danger of what they had run toward started to sink in.

“My dad told me that could have been really bad,” Borsutzki admitted.

Moreover, while they didn’t immediately tell their coaches about what happened, the Omaha women’s basketball duo shared a photo in the team group chat. And soon enough, social media did what it does best, made the video of the rescue viral, and their teammates quickly recognized who had sprinted into the frame.

Borsutzki said that once the clip started circulating, teammates and Omaha staff began reaching out after realizing it was her and Kurban in the video. She added that her strength coach even texted her, “Very strong, big dog.”

But the best part about this whole incident is that they got the fruits of their deeds, the very next day.

The Omaha Mavericks, a team that has been a victim of back-to-back losses this season, secured an 84–75 win over Oral Roberts in a historic outing that saw freshman Regan Juenemann drop 40 points, supported by Sarai Estupiñan’s 30-point performance and Avril Smith’s dominant rebounding effort.

Though this win may eventually fade from everyday conversation, the moment Olivia Borsutzki and Esra Kurban chose to step forward and help someone in need won’t.