Below is a link to a good background article from a mainstream paper in Perth, Australia. They say that the 25-year old assistant coach went in after the boys the day they went missing!? But if so - did he not tell anybody he was going in? Brave if he did so, but foolish for not telling anybody.
Although he is still fairly young, and maybe he thought if he could just get the boys out, the boys wouldn’t get in trouble from their parents? Or maybe he knew of their plans, thought it was foolish but didn’t stop them.
“Family members raised the alarm later that day. Where were they?
Their parents’ concern drove their coach 25-year-old Ekapol Jantawong, a stateless orphan who shared their love of football, to the cave. Near the entrance, he found their bikes, a discovery that meant he had to go deep inside to try to locate them and bring them back.”
It is said he went quite a way into the cave entrance to locate the boys when a flash flood caused he and the boys to scramble for cover. This was how they ended up miles from the entrance deep in the cave as they were running from the flood waters.
The cave was a well-known spot with a large opening that went on for quite a ways and with a mini-temple and lights at the entrance. It is said to be a favorite spot for kids to meet and in this case, the team members rode their bikes there, entered the cave entrance to get out of the rainstorm. As the rain increased outside, they apparently played inside and went deeper into the entrance where the overhead was quite high. As the flood came, the boys did not know hot swim and climbed up the sloped sides to be free from the water. Apparently, this led to them going into smaller passages to away from the rising waters,
They ended up trapped miles into the cave as they ran from the flood.
The 25yold assistant coach took them there, they didn’t go there to play. It was the 29 yr old head coach who alerted authorities when he found the bikes at the entrance.