RUSTON — Anyone who lived in Louisiana or along the Gulf Coast in August of 2005 has a story.
Some are more horrific than others.
Twenty-years ago last Friday, I was standing on the football practice field at the Jim Mize Track and Field Complex watching Louisiana Tech head football coach Jack Bicknell and Co. leading the Bulldogs through a workout.
Although Tech’s season opener at No. 10 Florida was still over a week away, the level of focus that Monday morning was far from intense.
The skies were overcast. The air was still.
It could have been mistaken for a normal August day, except everyone knew – at least to a point – what was occurring hundreds of miles south of Ruston. It was surreal.
Only a few hours earlier Hurricane Katrina had made landfall in New Orleans. The Big Easy was in the early stages of being battered and beaten and, in some ways, forever changed by the Category 3 storm.
The Tech roster was loaded with players from south Louisiana and the Mississippi coast. Their minds were far from a football practice field.
Understandably.
In a practice report I wrote for LATechSports.com the following day, Bicknell had canceled Tuesday’s workout because “as many as 15 players had still not heard from parents or other family members.”
“We’ve tried to stress to our players that they shouldn’t think the worst,” Bicknell said on that Tuesday. “No one is having any success calling people in these areas. Our No. 1 priority is the well-being both physically and emotionally of these young men. This just would not have been a good day to practice.”
Who will ever forget the images from the Superdome and of levees breaking, flooding over 80 percent of the city.
It was just the start of a fall football season that was like no other that Louisiana Tech ever experienced.
Let me make this clear: we had it easy in north Louisiana. In fact, if memory serves me correctly, Ruston did not receive a drop of rain from Hurricane Katrina. Not a drop (and according to everything I find online, that was right).
What it did receive were thousands of Hurricane Katrina evacuees. Local churches became shelters. The Ruston Civic Center too. A few of the older dormitories at Tech that were not in use became shelters.
Ruston, like so many cities outside of the path of the storm, became refuges for those directly impacted by “the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history,” causing more than 100 billion dollars of damage and killing more than 1,800 people.
An ESPN.com story by Ivan Maisel dated Sept. 5, 2005, talked about the fact a delegation from Tulane was going to venture to Tech to gauge if it was a fit to house their football program that fall.
“University administrators and football personnel will evaluate the viability of Louisiana Tech becoming the host school for Tulane football,” said then-Tulane assistant sports information director John Sudsbury in the story. “We’re hoping to make a decision within 24 hours.”
Just days later, Tech and Ruston welcomed coaches, players, and support staff comprising the Green Wave football program.
Although the reason for their fall-long visit was not a positive one, Louisiana Tech did its best to make their south Louisiana neighbors feel welcomed. Tech officials, cheerleaders, Champ, band and more were on hand as the Green Wave arrived in Ruston.
It was the start of one of the most interesting falls for both schools.
Two Division I football programs – calling a campus that was really equipped to hold just one – shared facilities.
The Bulldogs would practice. The Green Wave would practice. Jack Bicknell would talk to the media. Chris Scelfo would talk to the media.
The Waggonner Room in the Thomas Assembly Center turned into a pseudo dressing room for the Green Wave (by the end of that fall the carpet had to be replaced … if you have ever smelled a football locker room, you understand).
I remember hosting Sudsbury – one of the true good guys in the profession – all fall in our communications department. Talk about a guy who had his hands full that fall. The Green Wave were a national story.
The most surreal memory for me came during a Tech football road trip to Reno to face Nevada on Saturday, October 15. While sitting at a table playing Texas Hold’em on that Friday night before our game, I looked up at the TV: Tulane playing UTEP at Joe Aillet Stadium.
In what world? A hurricane tattered one.
That Green Wave team posted a 2-9 record that year, but I think anyone and everyone who lived just a fragment of what they did can truly appreciate what they had to experience and endure.
Tulane played 11 games in 11 different stadiums in 11 different cities that year.
They were the true definition of road warriors on the football field.
In some ways it is hard to believe that it was two decades ago. In some ways it feels like yesterday.
Twenty years later, we all have our stories.
Contact Malcolm at lpjnewsla@gmail.com