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The Hurricanes: One High School Team's Homecoming After Katrina
The Hurricanes One High School Team's Homecoming After Katrina Author:Jere Longman In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina pummeled the lower end of Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, a peninsula housing one of the nation?s most isolated, vulnerable, and vital counties. A year later several ravaged communities came together to form South Plaquemines High. Kids who were former rivals defiantly nicknamed their football team the Hurricanes... more » and made the 2006 state playoffs. In 2007, South Plaquemines set its sights on a state championship. The Hurricanes used a trailer as a makeshift locker room and lifted weights in a destroyed gym that had no electricity. For the players, many of them still living in FEMA trailers, football offered a refuge. Bestselling author Jeré Longman spent two seasons following the team. In The Hurricanes, the team?s journey provides a lens through which to view the legacy of Katrina, the cycle of poverty in rural America, and the attempt to maintain traditions in the face of uncertainty. Football is a familiar remnant of the way things used to be?and a sign of hope in a place of disaster.« less