Tre Lamb sounded extremely chipper, provided the situations.
“Welcome to the bus league, child,” the first-year coach of the East Tennessee State Buccaneers chirped Saturday early morning.
Life in the bus leagues of FCS has actually hardly ever been this daring. The buses carrying ETSU to Charleston, S.C., for its video game versus The Citadel were stranded by flooding from Hurricane Helene in the mountains of western North Carolina for more than 12 hours Friday and early Saturday early morning. This was a tale of problem with a favorable result, much better than lots of in Appalachia have actually experienced as their neighborhoods are damaged by the storm.
The ETSU odyssey consists of an info blackout, a fortuitous restroom journey, a Good Samaritan who used a trip– and some essential news– complimentary sandwiches from a supermarket, time parked by a shelter for unhoused individuals and an early-morning Waffle House shipment. And after all that, the Buccaneers played a Southern Conference football video game and beat The Citadel, 34– 17.
Guy, speak about feeling, and tears simply putting out. Speak about a scenario even worse than you can think of, and a group galvanizing for a win.
ETSU head coach Tre Lamb, actually in tears speaking about the Helene experience. Stuck in a homeless shelter parking area. No cell service … pic.twitter.com/NbXzAfbMnQ
— Scott Eisberg (@SEisbergWCIV) September 29, 2024
This journey from hell– or through hell– started with the ETSU group filling up the buses on school in Johnson City, Tenn., on Friday early morning. After being informed Thursday the highways were anticipated to be O.K., reports that early morning turned alarming– the Nolichucky River was reaching flood phase, which would cut off departure to the south. ETSU entered into hurry-up mode to get on Interstate 26 and beat the flood out of town.
“We beat it by 10 minutes,” Lamb states in a text.”[The highway] closed behind us and rinsed. We had no method to get home. Reversing [was] not an alternative. We are scheduling it through Asheville [N.C.]Historical flooding.”
We run out the flood trap. @ETSUFootball is beyond the flood/headed to Charleston. We reach 5AM. We were stranded for 14 hours. It got really frightening on some low ground for a couple of hours, we needed to discover high ground. Shoutout to our bus chauffeurs, athletic fitness instructors, personnel, officers …
— Tre Lamb (@CoachTreLamb9) September 28, 2024
The scenes around them were sobering. Assistant athletic director Jay Sandos, who drove individually from the group in a van, stated he saw U-Haul trailers drifting down a river, sheds getting rid of, damage all over. The group passed near the Unicoi County Hospital in Erwin, Tenn., that made nationwide news with 54 individuals stranded on its roofing as water flooded the whole center. Clients and employees needed to be saved by means of helicopter.
After getting a report that Interstate 40 was closed, the ETSU buses selected to remain on I-26 in hopes of squeezing through the worst locations before that,