Two Bathust High School administrators testifiying at a coroner's inquest Monday gave different recollections of the weather on the day of the deadly crash in January that killed seven basketball players and a coach's wife last year.

Coleen Ramsay, the school's principal, told the inquest on Monday morning that she was not aware of the looming winter storm before the team left the northern New Brunswick community.

Ramsay also said she makes the decisions on whether a team should travel, and she is always cautious when it comes to bad weather.

Not only was she not aware of any potential winter storms, Ramsay said, but no one discussed with her whether the boys' team should travel to its game in Moncton, roughly 200 kilometres away.

Don McKay, the school's vice-principal at the time of the crash, testified he knew there was a winter storm warning on the night of the accident, but he didn't stop the team from travelling.

McKay said there was no protocol in place about travelling in bad weather, so that decision was left up to coaches and drivers. He said if a team needed to spend the night out of town to avoid bad weather, the school would find a way to pay for it.

But on that snowy night, he never received that request, he said.

The RCMP has said there was light freezing rain at the time of the collision, and the highway was covered in three centimetres of slush and was slippery.

Principal also president of Bathurst Van Inc.

Ramsay is also the president of Bathurst Van Inc., a corporation that she and three other school administrators set up to purchase the school's vans, including the 15-passenger van involved in last year's accident.

Ramsay said the school uses vans instead of yellow school buses because there aren't enough buses or drivers to meet the school's transportation needs.

For the amount that students travel, she said, the cost would be too high to use the buses.

Ramsay said she was not aware of any specific problems with the van before the accident.

She said the school had plans to replace the 15-passenger vehicle as soon as the school did some fundraising and had enough money.

Ramsay also said she didn't know that the van was classified as a bus, and that's why the school only had it inspected once a year rather than every six months as required with commercial vehicles.

'I'm disappointed in her'

Ramsay also said she thought the van had winter tires on it, but in fact, they were all-season tires.

Outside the courthouse Monday, Isabelle Hains, whose son Daniel died in the crash, said she was frustrated by what she heard.

"You're a school principal. You should know all those guidelines and policies. I'm disappointed in her," she said.

Last week, collision reconstruction experts from the RCMP and Transport Canada and a mechanic that inspected the 15-passenger van told the five-person coroner's jury about the factors that led to the tragic accident.

The van failed the inspection on Oct. 29, 2007, because there were problems with a wiper, one of the passenger doors and the ball joints were loose. The van was back in the shop a few days later, and, according to inspection documents, the problems were fixed and it passed.

The jury also heard on Friday from Curtis Bennett, the mechanic who inspected the van after the crash. He said the front-end alignment was off, and the tires were worn, scalloped and improperly inflated.