After a long out-of-state road trip to Broken Arrow,brOklahoma the Carroll Dragon varsity football team was exhausted, yet in goodbrsprits after its 21-14 season opening victory over the Tigers. Wasting littlebrtime, the team boarded the bus again for the 280-mile return trip home.
Even after the bus pulled back into the Charlie Stalcupbrpractice facility around 4:00am on September 2, the team knew their work wasbrnot yet done.
After just a few hours of sleep the team was more than readybrto collect a truckload of mops, paper towels, bleach, buckets and otherbrwelcomed donations of cleaning supplies to be delivered to Kingwood, Texas tobrhelp in their clean up efforts in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.
Kingwood, located just north of Houston, borders Lake Houstonbrand saw many of its residents and the high school suffer devastating flooding. Whenbrthe Dragons saw photos of the Kingwood high's flooded classrooms filled withbroverturned desks, ruined books and still under several feet of muddy water,brthey wanted to help.
The water levels were several feet deep as measured on thebrKingwood goal posts and flooded the school's gym, full of hard-earnedbrtrophies. However, the player'sbrconnection to Kingwood was deeper. Dragon Head Coach Hal Wasson began hisbrcoaching career there many years ago, and hearing of longtime friends in need thebrDragons went back into action to gather donations of bleach, disinfectant,brgloves, and other cleaning essentials.
Thanks to the generous support characteristic of DragonbrNation the community came through a 48' truck, loaded with the much-neededbrsupplies. With the support of additional cash donations, a shopping trip tobrCostco was arranged for additional palettes of bleach and disinfectant. BybrSaturday evening, the truck, driven by a Kingwood resident returned to a localbrarea church in charge of coordinating the distribution of the supplies residentsbrdesperately needed to make their homes safe to occupy.
The road to recovery in Kingwood will be long and studentsbrhave been displaced due to the extreme damage. However, with the support ofbrmany Texans, the 2017 Dragon football team included, Kingwood will overcome andbrforever be Texas Strong.
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