Gators eager to play after lengthy delay
GAINESVILLE — Josh Hammond’s family has no power, but he knows it could have been worse.
“Other than the power going out, the house is fine,” said Hammond, a sophomore receiver on Florida’s football team. “It's just out of their control."
The Florida football team returned to practice on Tuesday, nearly a day after Hurricane Irma finished passing through Gainesville, causing minor flooding, downed trees and power outages.
Some players, including Hammond, whose family lives in Hallandale about 20 miles north of Miami, treated practice as a welcome relief.
“When the hurricane hit, guys were ready to just go practice, just to get things off their mind, just tired of hearing about the hurricane and devastation,” Hammond said on Wednesday. “When you’re at practice, you just kind of forget about everything. You just feel like [you’re] in another world.”
This week, many of the Florida players are in need of a distraction. UF coach Jim McElwain said about 60 of the players’ families, many of whom live in South Florida, were affected by the storm in some way. He also said UF kept in constant communication with its players throughout the weekend and has tried contacting each of their families since. Florida has reached out to most of them, but some players’ families have been displaced, McElwain said.
“We’ve got guys who are affected, and the one thing that you really feel down here is there’s a really resilient piece to that,” McElwain said. “People have gone through this before. Rebuild and come back better, and that’s what our focus is.”
Some players’ families drove up to Gainesville before the storm hit to stay with the players in their apartments. Others were able to stay in UF’s team hotel, whose rooms would have went unused after the school announced that its game against Northern Colorado was canceled last week.
With no game to prepare for, UF turned its attention to stockpiling water and snacks before the hurricane hit, handing them out to players who wanted them.
But McElwain said he wished he could have done more.
“I wish everybody had their power on and mine was still off,” he said.
David Reese, whose family is in Detroit, stayed in his Gainesville apartment during the hurricane, passing the time by playing the board game Trouble with Hammond, redshirt senior Marcell Harris and redshirt junior Antonio Riles. Some time during Sunday night, Reese said, a tree was knocked down next to his apartment complex and hit a house, but it didn’t injure anyone.
“I wish we would have got a chance to play — not just for us, but for the people around Gainesville just to give them something to think about,” Reese said. “We’re excited that we have the opportunity his week.”
His teammates agreed. Senior cornerback Duke Dawson of Cross City said his family is still without power, and defensive lineman Khairi Clark from Hollywood said his family is doing fine, and they were mostly unaffected. But both are eager to get back to football and face No. 23 Tennessee on Saturday.
“I just had to sit around and just think about football, man. It was kinda hard to not be able to play this past weekend,” Clark said. “It’s brought me to be real anxious and excited for this upcoming game.”