When the devastating storms blew through the south suburbs Aug. 11, Homewood-Flossmoor senior Kendall Hardy was watching her 2-year-old nephew.
Trees were falling in her backyard, doing damage to her house.
“The first thing I thought was ‘oh my God, go get the baby, go get the baby!’’’ she said. “We went into the basement and we were all right.”
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Meanwhile, at Marian Catholic, varsity coach Julia Glomb was conducting tryouts for the junior varsity and freshmen teams in the main gym when the storm hit. Glomb and 35 players were in the hallway when a part of the gym roof was blown off.
“In my 12 years of coaching, it was the scariest moment of my life,” she said. “You could feel the roof lift. You could feel the gravity pull. If the roof (in the hallway) came off, what is our next move?”
Luckily, that didn’t happen and everyone was safe.
T.F. South volleyball player Candace Irving was home and sought shelter in the basement. She turned on the TV and did not like what she saw.
“On the news, they were zooming into our area in Lansing and Lynwood,” Irving said. “The power went out and the winds started coming. Trees were falling over.
“That was really scary.”
The aftermath of the storms, especially the loss of electricity in the schools, played havoc with preseason practice schedules as the three teams missed a week or more.
The regular season opened Monday in Illinois and the trio of teams were trying to return to normal.
H-F opened the season Tuesday on the road with a 25-11, 25-9 win at Beecher. T.F. South narrowly missed having to forfeit because of Illinois High School Association-mandated practice-day minimums and beat Chicago Horizon Science Southwest 25-8, 25-10 in Lansing.
Marian was scheduled to open the season Saturday morning at the Quincy Early Bird Tournament.
While the other two schools will try to get back to normal, Marian’s season is turned upside down. The damage to the gym floor was severe enough that it won’t be ready until December.
The Spartans are likely playing the full season on the road, although Glomb would like to schedule one senior night match in the tiny second gym at the Chicago Heights school.
“We’ll be living on the road,” Glomb said. “It’s hard to see your community crumble like that. I saw really raw, sad emotions.
“That broke me. As adults, we may take things like this for granted but for these kids, it’s super unfortunate.”
Glomb said she hopes because of the adversity, the players may have some extra fight in them.
Homewood-Flossmoor had tryouts outdoors in the grass during the storm’s aftermath.
The Vikings woke up early Aug. 20 and donated time working at the Calvary Assembly of God food bank next to the school. The number of families in need passed the 325 mark after the storm.
The Vikings planned this project well before the storm hit but it took on even more importance because so many people lost food and some were displaced.
“This is important because I love helping the community any way I can,” Hardy said. “I volunteer a lot.”
Vikings coach Nate Nesbit said he normally has seen food stock high up to the upper windows in the facility but Cavalry, too, had to throw out a lot of food when its electricity vanquished.
Rebecca Husbands, who is co-pastor of Calvary with her husband, John, was happy to have the assistance.
“It’s great for us to have hands helping us,” she said. “But it’s a great experience for the students. They get to see what it is to serve and help and hopefully catch that bug so that later in life that’s something they can take with them as well.”
At T.F. North, more than 100 fans stuck around for Thursday’s nonconference match even though it started an hour late because Horizon was late.
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For Manuella Boutcheko it was fun to compete on the court after the crazy couple of weeks prior.
“It was a little more rushed because of the small timeframe that we had,” she said. “I’m excited to play because of everything that happened.
“It was great that the fans stayed and it showed they will support us no matter what.”
Red Wolves coach Mark Misch praised his team’s resiliency through the storm ordeal.
“They had no cell service or Wi-Fi for almost a week,” he said. “I live in Frankfort and we did not lose power. I have four kids under 10 and we would have been able to make it maybe one day.
“But this is a good group of girls and have done a great job under tough circumstances.”
Jeff Vorva is a freelance reporter with the Daily Southtown