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    • App State Football has its first home game since Helene against Georgia State
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    App State Football has its first home game since Helene against Georgia State

    Madoc Meredith Posted on

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    BOONE, N.C. — For Shawn Collins, the first sign that Tropical Storm Helene had wreaked havoc on Appalachian State University’s campus was the cancellation of the Mountaineers’ Sept. 28 football game against Liberty.

    Collins, a senior defensive end, said football teams practice with everything going on in the outside world. The cancellation of a game was a sign that Boone was in much worse shape than he realized.

    After Helene ripped through western North Carolina on September 27, most of Boone was without power for a short time and without water for several days. Unlike devastated Asheville, cell service remained intact as Helene stormed through campus and the city, flooding King Street, Boone’s main street, and the homes of many student-athletes.

    Within short trips in all directions there was devastation. Houses and streets have disappeared, washed away by rising floodwaters. Across WNC, trees were felled while rainfall knocked out power grids and water supplies.

    In Boone, a city of 19,000 and a college of 21,000, App State and its athletics program have become a central part of rehabilitation efforts.

    “The longer you’re here, the more you’ll hear people refer to App State and Boone as almost synonymous,” baseball coach Kermit Smith said. “When you say one, you mean the other.”

    Athletes from football to track and field to softball lost their homes due to flooding. Assistant football coach Lance Ware suffered a tree fall on his home. The players lived in their teammates’ apartments. Coaches slept in the football complex.

    However, most of App State’s athletic facilities weathered the storm relatively unscathed. The floor at Varsity Gym, home of the wrestling team, needs to be replaced, but the Mountaineers can lay down mats and play home games. At the Holmes Convocation Center, where App State plays basketball and volleyball, locker rooms, coaches’ offices and academic rooms were damaged by water but are currently being repaired.

    “As bad as it seems, we didn’t have it as bad as a lot of people,” football coach Shawn Clark said. “We can’t complain too much.”

    App State football’s homecoming brings Boone back together

    Cleanup and recovery efforts began in Boone immediately after the storm. The process will take months, perhaps even years, especially in the hardest-hit surrounding areas in Watauga County. But the healing process will culminate Saturday against Georgia State, when football returns to Kidd Brewer Stadium for the first time since Sept. 19.

    The game against Liberty scheduled for September 28th was canceled in the wake of Helene. The Mountaineers played the following two weeks on the road before their open week. Since the Sept. 19 game against South Alabama was a Thursday, this week will be the first Saturday home game since the season opener on Aug. 31.

    “Some people don’t understand it, but football is more than a game,” said sophomore receiver Luke Hale, who graduated from AC Reynolds in Asheville. “It means a lot to people. You can get a lot of hope and a lot of inspiration from a team.”

    The Georgia State game was originally scheduled to be App State’s homecoming weekend, but the events surrounding the game were postponed until November 23rd.

    But after nearly 37 days off between home games, Saturday will still serve as a homecoming of sorts for the community.

    “I quickly learned that App State football is big in this city,” Collins said. “They love it. For most people, the development of football is more important than the impact of the hurricane.”

    Hale’s family still lives in Asheville. He was able to contact her early on September 27, the day Helene reached WNC, but lost contact when cell service went out throughout Asheville.

    Hale said his family is doing well and his parents only got water a few days ago, but he said it was nerve-wracking not hearing about what was happening in Asheville. In early October, he went home and volunteered with his mother at a local church.

    The Mountaineers volunteered with Samaritan’s Purse, an organization that provides assistance to people in disaster areas, including areas affected by Helene and Hurricane Milton. Samaritan’s Purse’s international headquarters is in Boone.

    Collins said players loaded two helicopters’ worth of supplies to take them to hard-to-reach areas and created assembly lines to pack and load supplies.

    “No matter where I go in life, I will always remember the mountains of North Carolina as home,” Hale said. “Seeing my home destroyed, seeing those videos of people who lost everything… it felt good to go out there.”

    The App State teams remain largely untouched and give something back to Boone

    For sports that were not in season, athletes were sent home, some even for two and a half weeks. Smith said that allowed him to focus on helping the community, knowing all the players were OK. This also allowed relief efforts to focus on those who needed help without athletes getting in the way.

    “We tried to tell them to stay home because everyone around us said we don’t want extra people here,” cross country and track and field coach Damion McLean said. “But they said, ‘Coach, I have to get back to Boone.’ It educates you about the region and how much it means to the people.”

    The cross-country skiing’s home course, Don Kennedy Trails at State Farm, was littered with fallen trees, making it feel more like an obstacle race as practice negotiated debris.

    McLean had to cancel a home game scheduled for Oct. 18 and scramble to find competition elsewhere. The men competed in Virginia, while the women went to a meet in Winthrop – and won.

    Days before the storm hit, App State laid down the turf at the new softball complex. First-year coach Whitney Jones said the team walked the field the day of the storm and there was no standing water. Not only did the turf hold up, Jones said she was glad it was installed before the storm because she didn’t know when it would have happened on the back end.

    Jones had just coached their first two games of the fall season when the storm hit, and they had a doubleheader scheduled for the following Sunday in Charlotte. At first, Jones said, they didn’t know if it was safe to travel and play.

    The Mountaineers were home for five days before App State administration decided it was safe to play. They returned on October 4th, in time to play Queens and Charlotte on October 6th.

    “It’s bigger than softball,” Jones said. “People don’t have a home at the moment. You feel a different gratitude for playing the game and you don’t want to take anything for granted.”

    Beaver Field, where baseball is played and goes viral every fall for the bright color of the foliage surrounding it, was covered in branches and leaves. Smith said they had to take this year’s photo soon – as Boone’s fall foliage reached its peak color, the trees lost many of their leaves in the storm. The field remained largely undamaged and was able to avoid flooding.

    “It sounds kind of crazy, but you almost feel a little guilty saying it,” Smith said.

    Jones, who has only lived in Boone for a few months, quickly discovered a close-knit community. She was recognized at a Chick-Fil-A drive-thru weeks after she was hired. That’s why Jones said it’s important for App State teams to help Boone.

    With classes canceled until October 16, the athletes had little to do other than help. McLean said his athletes have logged 300 or 400 volunteer hours in the last month.

    In the days after the storm, when his team was sent home, Smith and his family helped pack supplies and clean up the baseball fields. He encouraged his players to volunteer throughout the community in areas they care about.

    The softball team sorted and packed supplies. The baseball team focused its efforts on a cleanup operation along the Boone Greenway, where a home had been washed away by flooding from the South Fork New River. His belongings were scattered along the river bank. The first thing a player found was a family photo.

    “This is what we were made for,” Smith said. “It’s in the nature of – it’s our DNA. Not necessarily to endure devastation, but our DNA is made up of workers, our DNA is made up of hard work, our DNA is made up of people and relationships.”

    Evan Gerike is a sports reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times/USA TODAY Network. Email him at [email protected] or follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @EvanGerike.

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