CCU football squad reflects on Hurricane Matthew, how it affected team

Hurricane Matthew made landfall in South Carolina on Saturday, with residents either evacuating or opting to stick it out as flooding, power outages and strong winds ensued. The storm would leave in its wake enormous amounts damage across the state, as well as a large portion of the East Coast.

And the Coastal Carolina football team found itself in the middle of it all.

The Chanticleers were on their bye week as Matthew made its way to South Carolina as a Category 1 hurricane, the storm forcing the entire school to evacuate. Head coach Joe Moglia said some players and coaches – including himself – stayed in the area, but the majority either went to their hometown or somewhere outside of Horry County.

Fortunately for Coastal Carolina, all of its players and coaches made it through the storm.

“Probably 80 percent of our guys wound up leaving and going someplace else, often times to home. About 70 percent of the coaches left. So, everybody had to go through the inconvenience of the storm,” Moglia said. “What we asked our guys to do while they’re away, they do a good job of making good decisions, and do a good job of taking care of themselves.”

And inevitably, some had stories to tell.

Redshirt freshman running back Ra’Quan Bennett of Manning reflected on what occurred in his hometown after the storm rolled through.

“There were trees all over the road. Shingles, tons of debris. We actually didn’t get our lights back on until Monday night. My whole hometown was out of lights. There were light poles down, power lines down, street signals down,” Bennett said. “Actually, one of the signal lights flew off and hit somebody’s house. So it was crazy out there. That Monday after the storm, the roads were flooded and you really didn’t want to travel. If you chose to and didn’t have any food in your house, you had to take 45 minutes to an hour just to get something to eat.”

Food was an issue for one member of the Chants – Casey Barker, a redshirt freshman defensive lineman from Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. His parents evacuated their home, and Barker stayed with punter Evan Rabon in Florence.

When Rabon’s power went out, they went to the home of a friend who wasn’t fully prepared for the storm. They then went to one of Rabon’s friends’ houses and were forced to stay there into Sunday when flood waters rose.

“We stayed at his buddy’s house and he didn’t have power and he didn’t have any food, so we kind of had to make eggs on a fire out back,” Barker said. “They were some country boys and they whipped [the fire] up themselves, I just let them do it. We were roughing it for a little bit but it turned out alright.”

They drove through flooding and downed power lines back to Rabon’s house before returning to Myrtle Beach on Monday afternoon.

Offensive coordinator Dave Patenaude lives in Garden City in a house just across the street from the beach. He and his family left the day before the storm and stayed at The Market Common as the storm came in.

“We boarded up our house and wished for the best. We saw on the news the storm surge was coming, and there was a lot of tense moments there as you watch the storm come in. You’re really helpless,” Patenaude said. “You do everything you think you can do. You board your house up and you go; I mean, we’re in the first row, right across the street from the beach.”

It wasn’t until the next day that Patenaude surveyed what happened around his residence.

“Most of the roads were closed off,” he said. “There was sand in the roads, there were propane tanks all over the place, there was signs, posts, there were docks blown off.”

Despite the toll the storm took in his area, Patenaude was thankful that pretty much the worst thing that happened is his power going out, which still had not been restored at his home as of Tuesday.

“There were in angels in heaven watching over my house. Because everybody got flooded out there; we didn’t have one drop of water in the house, and there was about two twigs in my yard,” he said. “My neighbors were not nearly as lucky. We had been blessed, and our house sits right on the ground – it’s not even up on stilts. We had no water, we just had built an outdoor pool house and nothing affected that. Not a shingle missing, nothing. We were totally blessed.”

Others weren’t so lucky.

Strength and conditioning coach Anthony Decker drove to New Jersey to avoid the storm, but the ride back wasn’t very pleasant.

He left at 9 a.m. Sunday and couldn’t reach Myrtle Beach until noon Tuesday. Decker planned to drive Interstate 95, but that was shut down below Richmond, Va., so he switched to Interstate 85 to Raleigh, N.C., then was taking Interstate 40 toward the coast but that was shut down. He was rerouted to I-95 again, but it was shut down again at the Dunn, N.C., exit, so he took U.S. 421 and a couple other roads to U.S. 701, which goes through Conway.

But U.S. 701 was shut down, so he drove back about 75 minutes to spend the night in Raleigh because he struggled to find vacancy at hotels.

Decker was on the road 12 hours before calling it a night.

“All the hotels right around the Dunn area were booked, and there was no power and no gas stations were open. It was crazy,” Decker said.

He tried again Monday, taking N.C. 115 to U.S. 74, S.C. 38 and U.S. 501, which brought him into the Grand Strand.

Freshman offensive lineman John Mays III, a Jacksonville, Fla., native, stayed through the storm with his aunt and family on the west side of Jacksonville, Fla., where the hurricane was located at its peak as a Category 4.

Matthew arrived early afternoon Friday there. A tree fell, snapping a light pole that fell in front of the driveway.

Electricity was out for a couple days at his aunt’s home, with the tree and pole being removed a couple days later. He left for Myrtle Beach at 10 a.m. Monday.

“I stayed inland so it wasn’t as bad as like on the beach,” Mays III said. “They had a lot of flooding and like a 6-foot surge. There were sharks swimming around people’s houses right there on the beach. It was on video, sharks swimming around people’s houses.”

Sophomore safety Michael Billings, a former Georgetown High standout, returned home to weather the storm with his family.

“My whole yard was flooded and my neighbor’s. My neighbor actually had a tree fall on their house. My man cave that was my garage a few years ago got flooded, but not the main house. We had the windows boarded up so the trees and branches wouldn’t break the window, and the power went out Friday night and was out for a few days.”

Billings looked at the bigger picture and was appreciative things didn’t get too out of hand for himself and the people he cares about.

“It’s a blessing because it could have been worse. It was only a Category 1 when it touched down in South Carolina. It could’ve been a [Category] 4 like it was in Florida. But I’m really thankful that my family stayed safe, my teammates made it back home and everything is good.”

In the meantime, team officials helped tremendously, emailing the players to keep them updated on the team’s plans.

A lot of the team was back in the area Monday, but not everyone was there until Tuesday. They still weren’t allowed back on campus as Coastal Carolina was closed until Wednesday.

The Chants and the coaches – who had 10 total days off due to the storm and an open week – stayed in the Mariott Hotel in Myrtle Beach, which Moglia said would have been closed Monday but accommodated the team anyway. The team also needed to hit the practice field Tuesday, and Myrtle Beach High School seemed to be the most viable venue to do so at the time.

They didn’t get to practice at Doug Shaw Memorial Stadium due to an issue with glass and debris on the field so they did so at Ashley Booth Field, adjacent to Doug Shaw.

Moglia told his team it just needed to adjust its thinking due to the unusual position it was in after the storm.

“Part of our philosophy when we teach them and talk to our guys is that they understand why we do something. I think that’s important, our staff thinks that is important. So in terms of how we had to adapt and adjust to the schedule over that span was really, really very important,” Moglia said. “You almost treat it like it’s an away game when we have to worry about meals, we have to worry about meetings, and we have to worry about film. We have to worry about all those things. So in effect, that’s just the way we adjusted.”

Moglia also credited Coastal Carolina director of football operations George Glenn for putting everything together nicely.

“He’s methodical in terms of the detail he spends with regards to things like this and he got everything up and working pretty quickly,” he said.

And now that everything is starting to get back to normal, Bennett put things into perspective.

“The bigger picture and one lesson I actually learned from the storm is to cherish your family time. And that applies to our team, too,” Bennett said. “As the lights were out and nobody had anything but each other to keep each other entertained, I realized that it’s good to have an experience and a day like that just to bond. It means a lot to spend time with those you love. It’s just a blessing that we all made it through.”

This story was originally published October 13, 2016 at 6:33 PM with the headline "CCU football squad reflects on Hurricane Matthew, how it affected team."