Uniting Through Adversity: How Rugby Can Help Rebuild Communities After Hurricane Helene
Life in 2024 America can be exhausting. Wars, elections, disasters—all of these can merge together into one miasma of pain and anger, and it becomes very easy to shut off the parts of our brain that are developed to care. It becomes difficult to isolate individual stories within this lava field of trauma. Our eyes tend to glaze over and cross when the numbers of lives affected gets bigger, but we get laser focus when we can see the particulars.
Recently, Hurricane Helene has wreaked her devastation upon large portions of the American southeast, especially places who rarely list hurricanes as possible natural disasters. These are places like Asheville, North Carolina or Johnson City, Tennessee, and so many more small towns and villages throughout the mountains of the upper south. The numbers are still coming in, but over a hundred people have lost their lives, hundreds of homes destroyed, limited or no access to internet, cell service, food, water, transportation, and medication.
At times like this, flooded rugby pitches and lost equipment pale in comparison to the human toll currently faced by these regions. Members of Asheville RFC, Johnson City RFC, and other area clubs have had members lose their homes, a family from Raleigh RFC has a family member missing, perhaps there are others facing the same situations throughout the area.
And so, the question becomes, what can we, as the rugby community, do? Rugby is a sport of teamwork, of support, of “with you” and rucking over. Our brothers and sisters are in need of our support. There are GoFundMe’s and Venmo accounts that are easily accessed—I know of one for Asheville RFC and one for Radford University and I’m certain more will be coming. If you don’t want to go the financial route, there’s always the physical one. As ruggers we can show up for these communities. Call it a rugby missions’ trip. Reach out to the affected clubs, load up the vans and trucks, and move some stuff. Deliver some water. Bring some medical supplies—I know we all have extra rolls of tape and gauze in the bottom of our kit bags.
Above all else, let’s find ways to support our brothers and sisters. A recent aid worker in Asheville said, “We are focused on: Food. Water. Medication. Transportation. Hygiene. Who is alive. Who is missing. Who is dead. I feel that we are very much still in triage and cleanup hasn’t
even really begun.”
In rugby, we all support differently. Whether you’re on the wing or in the front row of the scrum, there’s a role to play and a job to do and an efficient team has all of those roles filled. Donate—your time, your money, your muscle—spread the word, send a note of encouragement, but do something. Ask the clubs who are rebuilding what they need on the ground and then find a way to support those needs being met.
On September 11, 2001—a tragedy of a much different nature and magnitude—the rugby community was present. New York Athletic Club still sings “Country Roads” before every game in memory of a teammate who gave the ultimate sacrifice on that day. Now, in October of 2024, the country roads of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee and north Georgia and southwest Virginia are calling. Time to rugby up and support our teammates.
As always, onward and with you.
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