NRHEG athletes aid flood efforts
An overhead photo shows the effects of floods in New Richland over the weekend after the town received nine inches of rain in one day. Submitted photo
NRHEG’s student-athletes ditched their usual uniforms and canceled games in order to help their fellow community members in a time of need when flash flooding affected much of New Richland last week.
According to NRHEG Activities Director Dan Stork, many football, volleyball and cross-country athletes dropped everything without so much as a second thought to help evacuate residents from the local care facility and put up sandbags around affected properties and businesses.
“It makes me really, really proud of our kids… I was on the phone with our city administrator Saturday morning when I was up at the school at 5 a.m. He asked if we could round up some kids to come help out. I knew they would jump on the opportunity, so I put a message out, and next thing you know there were so many there showing up to help,” said Stork.
According to NRHEG senior Brooks Gilliland, one of the top priorities during the flood-recovery efforts was ensuring the safety of residents staying at the New Richland Care Center in town.
The situation hit home quickly for the senior, as Gilliland also serves as an employee of the care center.
“I heard that the care center was flooded four feet deep. In order to get there, since it was even deep for some of our six-foot guys, one of our community member’s let us take their pontoon boat over to help get some of the residents. We’d walk it over there, put a resident on, and then ship them right back. I believe it was around 36 residents, rough estimate,” said Gilliland.
While rescue efforts were underway, other athletes were helping keep other safe and preventing more damage by creating barriers from more potential flooding.
“Most of us on the volleyball team were just helping fill sandbags and tying them,” said NRHEG volleyball athlete Alayna Groskreutz.
“We’d fill them, tie them and then put them on pallets to ship anywhere they were needed in town,” said Mallory Groskreutz.
The work was hard, but according to Gilliland, there was no other option.
“Nobody batted an eye. We dropped everything and came together as a community. All of the football team, the volleyball team… all of us students in general,” said Gilliland.
