On a Dirt Court, a Ravaged School Planted the Seeds of a Championship

A Louisiana high faculty lost its gym when a storm tore through the city. 

Practicing on a dirt court, the ladies’ basketball group followed a defiant motto: No health club, no problem.

Hicks, Los Angeles. — For the primary time in months, there was no want to scramble for an area to practice basketball on Monday at Hicks high school. 

Now not on the dust court on its campus. no longer at a Pentecostal church half of an hour away. 

Now not at a rival college 15 miles down the street.

Final Friday, the ladies’ basketball group (34-five) won its fourth consecutive national championship amongst Louisiana’s smallest colleges, an amazing achievement beneath any instance. 

However, the Pirates’ streak has required awesome perseverance. 

The college has been without a fitness center on the grounds that typhoon Laura made landfall in August 2020 with one hundred fifty-mile-an-hour winds and a tidal surge that reached 17 toes before scything through the state’s western and vital parishes.

The auditorium roof ended up inside the teachers’ automobile parking space. 

A part of the gym roof peeled away like the shell of a crawfish. 

The courtroom buckled. 

For extra than a yr, the roof becomes not waterproofed; water endured to pour in with each storm, leaving the dreams and their help to rust.

Abandoned lockers inside the women’s dressing room remain packed with moldy footwear and peeling pictures. 

The empty fitness center smells of decay, as does the barren auditorium. 

The teacher’s pickup truck is now efficiently his workplace. 

There are plans, but no ensures, to have the gym repaired in time for the subsequent season.