A St. Mary’s judge sentenced a Mechanicsville man to serve one year in jail after he pleaded guilty Wednesday to driving under the influence and failing to yield the right of way in a crash last fall in Chaptico that sent 15 high school basketball players and their bus driver to a hospital.

John Patrick Kravats, 45, was given credit for the 64 days he has been in jail without bond after the Nov. 22 nighttime collision.

Twenty-eight players from the Great Mills High School varsity and junior varsity girls basketball teams were returning with their coaches from a preseason scrimmage at a high school in Virginia when a pickup truck driven by Kravats entered Route 234 and hit a car and then the bus, knocking it into woods along the highway.

After the crash, “Mr. Kravats was seen trying to flee the scene. He got tangled up in the brush,” St. Mary’s Assistant State’s Attorney Michael Kane said at the plea hearing. “It was a bad scene, to put it mildly.”

In addition to the 15 girls and the bus’ driver, Kravats and two people in the car were treated at St. Mary’s Hospital and released.

A passenger in the truck with Kravats did not need medical care.

“The good news is nobody was injured seriously,” Kane said.

Kravats had a blood-alcohol level of .16 percent, twice the legal standard for DUI, and the November crash was his fourth alcohol-related offense, the prosecutor said.

John Getz, Kravats’ public defender, said that his client denied trying to run away from the scene of the crash, and that he was driving the truck because “the passenger was in worse condition than he was.”

“I apologize. I should not have been driving,” Kravats said in the courtroom.

St. Mary’s District Judge Christy Holt Chesser said the crash “was very frightening” for everyone involved. She recommended work release for Kravats.

jwharton@somdnews.com