From yard sweeps to jet sweeps: Seahawks, others restart football season

The afternoon shadows still hadn’t had much of a chance to lengthen when B.J. Payne called his Hilton Head Island players to gather at the end of Thursday’s walkthrough.

In 27 hours, the Seahawks would finally resume their football season, with region rival R.B. Stall coming to The Nest. The preparation was finished, but the day’s work was just beginning.

“I need five guys to get over with Coach (Steve) Fuller,” Payne said, dividing his players into clusters, not unlike a typical end-of-practice breakdown into position groups.

After some shuffling and a bit of cajoling, Payne had eight groups to his liking. Then he handed out pieces of paper — addresses of families who need hurricane cleanup.

“You have 10 minutes to clear the locker room,” Payne said. “Everybody has one location tonight, so when you’re done, you’re done. If it takes you a half-hour, you’re done. If it takes you two hours, it takes you two hours.”

This is not your typical night-before-kickoff routine. But less than two weeks after Hurricane Matthew leveled its wrath on paradise, it’s what needs to be done.

As the Lowcountry sees its first full slate of games since September — 10 games in all — every team will be changed in some fashion as they walk off the bus or out of the locker room. Not to underplay all the hardship across the region, it perhaps hit hardest for Hilton Head Island’s three teams.

“There are cornerstone events that you’re always going to remember, whether they’re good or bad,” said Hilton Head Christian coach Matt Smith. “This is one of those things that you’ll remember for the rest of your life.”

For coaches and players alike, the past week has been a tough balancing act.

“Football is very low on the pole as far as priorities,” said Hilton Head Prep coach Dave Adams. “Everybody’s here and everybody’s thankful. But their minds are all over the place, just like mine. It was hard to get refocused.”

The Dolphins will welcome Northwood Academy to a campus that suffered surprisingly little damage among its Sea Pines neighbors — though Matthew destroyed the visitors’ stands, the field is good. So are the buildings.

HHCA is on the road, traveling to Savannah to face Bethesda Academy.

The centerpiece, though, comes at The Nest — where the Seahawks are offering free admission to anyone who needs a few hours away from chainsaws and boom trucks and water damage and whatever else Matthew may have laid on their neighborhood.

If you can bring some nonperishable food to help those in the most desperate straits, please do. If not, come anyway.

“Hopefully the community comes out and supports our kids and they can feed off that,” Payne said.

The Seahawks will take the field with just two full practices under their belt. They could have started up again last Friday, but the timing wasn’t right. At Payne’s behest, the team got together and went into yards to help remove debris.

They did it again last Saturday and Sunday. On Monday they held 30 minutes of conditioning, then went back to help friends and neighbors and strangers. Chainsaws are off limits, but they could move a bunch of wood.

Tuesday was their first full practice. Payne joked that his team might not be able to run the fast-paced offense that has become the Seahawks’ calling card. “We might (out)tempo ourselves,” he said.

If it costs them some points against Stall, that’s OK. Even if they struggle — and it’s still early in the chase for playoff spots — Payne and his players can deal with that, too.

“This is bigger than any person, bigger than our staff, bigger than our team, bigger than our program, bigger than our school,” Payne said. “There are people in this community that desperately need our help.”

The Seahawks aren’t the only ones that have reached into their neighborhoods. Smith and the Eagles have donned gloves and masks to rip out cabinets and flooring, too.

“It’s time to help,” he said. “Football’s a game that going to teach life lessons. Now we’ve got to put some of those life lessons into action. How do you face adversity? There are some parallels.”

Smith referenced the biblical story of Nehemiah, who was moved to travel to Jerusalem to rebuild the city’s destroyed walls. “It wasn’t so much the physical wall,” he said. “He was more focused on bringing the people back together for protection.”

On football’s first night back, there’s a similar theme in the air. And come Saturday — well, Payne already has those work assignments made out.

“At the end of the day, we’re in this profession for life lessons,” the coach said. “We’re trying to grow boys into young men.”

This story was originally published October 20, 2016 at 7:51 PM with the headline "From yard sweeps to jet sweeps: Seahawks, others restart football season."