Nov 19, 2014 10:29 AM EST By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

29 players, coaches and family members on the Niagara University Purple Eagles women's basketball team were stranded on their bus for 26 hours due to massive snowfall in western New York.

According to NBC News, a five-member rescue team with two snowplows got to the bus around 4 a.m. Wednesday morning after cutting through five feet of snowfall. The Eagles were 50 miles from their Buffalo campus when their bus became stuck on the N.Y. Thruway while driving home from a game.

Those aboard the bus, which included Niagara's director of women's basketball Rene Polka, were able to first see the extent of the snowfall Tuesday morning. They first became trapped early Tuesday morning, but were shrouded in darkness.

"It was an amazing feeling," Polka told NBC News after the bus was freed. "It was dark when we first became trapped early Tuesday, but when the sun came up we saw how bad it was. Then it literally did not stop snowing all day so we thought we might have been trapped for a lot longer.

"We thought we would be able to clear the weather, but in the early hours of the morning on Tuesday we hit snow outside the Buffalo metro area and the bus just came to a standstill."

On the bus, any food or water had to be rationed while the bus' electricity kept cell phones charged. The players, coaches and family members prayed every hour and updated their many supporters and well-wishers on Twitter intermittently.

Prayer does work

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