Hope returns for King football after Harvey
Their lives were turned upside down by Harvey, but even so, the C.E. King Panthers are proof you just keep carrying on one step at a time
Hurricane Harvey flipped everything upside down for the C.E. King High School football team. Players take multiple bus rides a day. Some return to temporary homes in the evening. But the feeling of hope has slowly returned.
It’s the Wednesday before homecoming and C.E. King High School is empty when it should be buzzing.
The school’s doors are locked and it’s dark inside. No decorative banners hang and no announcements scroll under the school sign. Only the words “Sheldon Strong” are highlighted in red followed by “Houston Strong” on the school’s marquee.
At about 3 p.m., though, a row of buses begin dropping students off at the front of the campus in northeast Houston. They’re coming from Sheldon Elementary School five miles up Highway 90. It’s where C.E. King students are taking classes and where some of the homecoming festivities are happening instead of at the high school, which was damaged by Hurricane Harvey.
A number of C.E. King’s football players have been on two or three bus trips throughout the day — from the elementary school for classes to San Jacinto College for extra studies and back to King for football.
For others, the day starts with a ride to the football facility from coach Derek Fitzhenry for firstperiod athletics. The school district is short on bus drivers, so Fitzhenry heads to the district’s
bus barn at 6 a.m. every day, hops in a Ford Expedition and picks up some of his players from west of Loop 610 so they can get a morning lift in.
“I doubt there’s many AD’s driving an Expedition picking up kids,” said Fitzhenry, who has had his hands full in his first year on the job. “I don’t mind. It’s just part of it.”
At the end of the day, some players will return to places they have no choice but to call home for now.
Hurricane Harvey flipped everything upside down for this team.
Time to get to work
It’s close to 4 p.m. when players file into the locker room before practice. Fitzhenry said there are times when it seems like the team is dealing with everything except football.
But a few assistant coaches wait outside, giving the kind of look to each player that indicates it’s all about business once they step inside the facility.
It’s not easy to dismiss what they’ve been surrounded by. The floor of the weight room is ripped up and gone.
Water was nearly knee-high in the facility once the storms were gone. Lockers had fish in them. Water seeped into the wooden closets in the equipment room. Holes even had to be drilled in at the bottom of the closets to release more water. New equipment was lost in this room. There are only two or three pairs of extra shoulder pads now.
Some of the weight bars rusted. Medicine balls were rendered useless. Fabric on the bench press was ripped just to make sure it wasn’t filled with water. Computer equipment in the coaches’ office was lost. Drywall in that office is ripped and peeling.
A restoration company told Fitzhenry it would take about two months to clean the facility. But with help from volunteers, coaches and players made it usable in about a week.
Everything is a work-inprogress. Away from the facility, it has been worse for players still trying to piece their lives back together. At least this season is starting to feel like any other.
This Wednesday practice before hosting Baytown Sterling at Crenshaw Memorial Stadium is hard-hitting. Players are focused. Music is blaring to set the mood — Z-Ro and Lil’ Keke balanced out by Bruno Mars and Kenny Chesney.
The “Good Morning America” cameras are long gone. The team has practices and games under its belt.
The feeling of hope slowly creeps back.
“This is a different deal,” Fitzhenry said this week. “We’re back on our feet. We’re just not staggering through it like we were then.”
Hope on an uphill climb
Senior offensive lineman Mark Evans II isn’t paying too much attention to the high school homecoming fervor at Sheldon Elementary School.
He’s had no choice but to carry a stoic demeanor. Evans and his family lost everything in the storm. He went from a shelter at George R. Brown Convention Center to living in a house with 13 other people.
Evans, his mother, brother, sister and her boyfriend sleep in one room.
“It’s cramped so you can’t really do anything,” Evans said. “It’s like jail.”
Sophomore linebacker Tyler Scyrus and his mother Jennifer Rodriguez were displaced to a hotel, which they couldn’t stay in for long because it had mold.
Their home had five feet of water in it. It is still being rebuilt, but enough progress has been made to move back in.
Evans is taking every lesson he can from his experiences and applying it to the game. He wants to leave the school with more than he came in with — a playoff berth in a turbulent year to prove there is always
C.E. King High School’s Pantherettes get ready in a room with drywall and carpeting removed before the team’s first game. Top: C.E. King High School football player Tyler Scyrus plays with his brother, Tyran, 3, in their hotel after being displaced by Hurricane Harvey. Above: Tackle Mark Evans II prays before the team’s first game on Sept. 15.
some good in an uphill climb.
There is time for humor, too.
Senior quarterback Tarron Donaldson entered the facility this week wearing highwaisted pants with a walking cane in his left hand. It’s part of the school’s theme days during homecoming week.
Fitzhenry could only look and smile.
Donaldson moved to Houston in 2005 from New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Another life-altering hurricane isn’t going to stop him from having fun, especially during his senior year.
Donaldson is one of those players on a bus during the day as much as he is in a classroom. He takes one to the facility for first-period athletics and another to San Jacinto College’s North Campus to earn early college credit. He’s on another bus to Sheldon Elementary School for high school classes and yet again for a trip back to the facility for practice. Donaldson is tired of buses. This season is bigger than him, though. He cites teammates like Eddie Lewis, who had to be taken by life-flight helicopter out of his home during the storm. Lewis recently lost his mother (her death was unrelated to the storm).
The funeral was Saturday and Donaldson was one of the players in attendance.
“If it was no more than holding a hand, making sure everybody is OK,” Donaldson said. “We were there for him.”
Winning matters
Fitzhenry is as bullish about C.E. King’s reputation — or lack of one — as he is about its future.
The former North Shore assistant says the school and the district are sometimes overlooked compared to nearby counterparts.
So, the head coach hopes to be around for C.E. King’s new three-story high school campus in 2020, complete with a new 10,000-seat stadium.
As devastating as the storm was, it won’t close the high school campus all year. January is the target month students will be able to move back in.
Winning matters along the way, too, and it will especially on Friday in front a bustling crowd at Crenshaw Memorial Stadium.
The Panthers are 2-3 overall and 1-2 in District 21-6A, but they have a chance at the playoffs.
“They’ve earned it, man,” Fitzhenry said. “They’ve been through a lot. The coaching change, the hurricane. They’ve been through quite a bit and here they are with a chance to win.”
Elizabeth Conley photos / Houston Chronicle