’Canes refocus with Irma gone
Zach McCloud says his diet of late has consisted mostly of Nutri-Grain bars and apples. Teammates Kc McDermott and Jaquan Johnson, meanwhile, have relied on workouts that included boarding up windows and lifting broken tree branches, not weights. And Shaq Quarterman, one of the leaders of Miami’s defense, became a driver of sorts, helping get fellow Hurricanes Bradley Jennings Jr. and Derrick Smith out of South Florida and back home to Jacksonville before Hurricane Irma arrived.
For most Floridians, life hasn’t exactly been routine since Irma wreaked havoc on the state and the 14th-ranked Hurricanes haven’t been excluded from that reality.
Before the storm hit, their game against Arkansas State was canceled. Their annual rivalry game against Florida State, one of the most watched matchups in college football, was pushed back three weeks. And after Miami school officials released the team on Sept. 6 so players could either evacuate South Florida or ride out the storm with nearby family, there haven’t been consistent team workouts or practices.
That was until Friday night when, for the first time in more than a week, the Hurricanes gathered on a football field not far from the Magic Kingdom at Disney World and ran. They ran sprint after sprint, trying to get back into some sort of a rhythm. A day later, they practiced together for the first time in 11 days.
Now that they had weathered the storm, that they’d started the process of cleaning up back at home, that power was being restored in their neighborhoods and that Irma was moving farther into their memories, it was time to start thinking about football again.
And it was a more than welcome experience for several of them, including running back Mark Walton, who on Sunday sprinted onto the field from the bus that brought him and his teammates to ESPN’s Wide World of Sports.
For him, for all of the Hurricanes, football was back.
As excited as his players are to return to action, Richt and his staff have tried to take things slowly. The team hasn’t played a game since its 41-13 season-opening win over Bethune-Cookman on Sept. 2. In Central Florida, there’s been a focus on fundamentals in recent days. And Richt has wanted to make sure the Hurricanes are physically and mentally ready for the physical punishment that comes not just from a full-contact practice but from what Toledo will deliver on Saturday.
Like most of his players, he’s never quite faced a situation like the one Miami has just endured.
But like many in South Florida, he’s grateful things haven’t been worse.
“I’ll be honest with you, [Saturday] when we ran, we looked better than I thought we’d run after practice. I wasn’t surprised that we had energy to practice and get out there and work again,” Richt said. “But then we just said we’re going to run and how [I thought] that was going to go, I thought we ran better than I thought we would. That was a good sign. Is it really where we were or where we should be? I don’t know. We’ll find out.”