Rice team stranded in Fort Worth

The Associated Press

FORT WORTH, TEXAS» Josh Rahman and the Rice football team were about 8,500 miles from their Houston campus, in a time zone 15 hours ahead, when they started to hear about a tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico.

At first, they didn’t think much about the system that would become Hurricane Harvey.

“It escalated very quickly,” said Rahman, a senior defensive end. “Then we learned this thing is different.”

And now, even while back in Texas after playing their season opener in Australia, the Owls still feel a long, long way from home.

With the city of Houston overwhelmed by flooding from the catastrophic storm that is the heaviest tropical downpour in U.S. history, Rice’s 101 players are now based at a downtown Fort Worth hotel.

They were going to TCU’s campus Wednesday for some running, stretching and weightlifting — their first football activity since getting back from Sydney, where they lost to 14th-ranked Stanford on Sunday afternoon, or late Saturday night Texas time.

“We all want to be back in Houston. We just can’t get there,” said Rice coach David Bailiff, whose team doesn’t play again until Sept. 9 at UTEP.

Bailiff is constantly in communication with his wife, stuck at their home near a levee after floodwaters cut off access to get out of the neighborhood. Bailiff said the immediate family members for all his players and coaches are safe, though many did evacuate their homes.

“We have high anxiety and worry, but I also have a job to do taking care of these young men here,” Bailiff said. “I know my wife’s safe upstairs in the house. She’s dry . ... She’s really handled it pretty dang good.”