The King's Court
Oct. 16, 1999
The Hurricanes’ much anticipated home game against Temple on Saturday wascancelled because of a stronger hurricane, Irene. We were looking forwardto coming back home and playing in front of our home fans, but it won’t beuntil another two weeks before that will happen. The team was very psychedup about finally having a home game in the “OB” (Orange Bowl), since ourlast two road defeats. There is just nothing like playing at home — thefans are great and they encourage you up when you need it.
We were supposed to practice on Friday, but that is when the heavy rainscame. About half of the team had already come over to our locker roomsince classes were cancelled for the day. Many of us just watched ESPN& videos on MTV and BET. Other guys played friendly games of dominoesand spades. That all would change at about noon. There was a big stormsurge and the power went out in the Hecht Athletic Center, whichalso houses our locker room. At first guys didn’t know what to do but justsat there and wondered when the light were going come back on. I didn’tfind out about it until a few minutes had gone by, because I tookadvantage of the free time to get a lower leg massage from our trainingstaff.
During the outage, the domino game was played under a very dim emergencylight and that spades game was lit up by a flash light that hung fromthe lockeroom ceiling. Others took advantage of the darkness and slept,while I was on the phone making sure that my wife would be safe drivinghome. Later that evening we learned that the Temple football team hadnot left Philadelphia and the game would be rescheduled on December 4th.
About our upcoming opponent, we are anxiously looking forward to beginningour Big-East conference schedule and it will start on Saturday at BostonCollege. They are a very good football team and they have always playedus tough in the past. I recall two years ago when we played them upthere, the game went into double overtime. That was a game we won and Irecorded my first two collegiate receptions. This should be achallenging game for our team because they always have special playsdesigned to be us. It seems like when they play us they pull out allthe stops, and do whatever it takes to win.
We didn’t want the week off, but the Hurricanes will take it. It’s justanother week to give everyone’s body a rest because we’ve beenpracticing pretty hard. We are just looking forward to gettingback on the field this week and getting to know Boston College.
Of course after the hurricane had passed on Saturday, it washousekeeping time. My wife Jessica and I cleaned the house, top tobottom and I had to do some work in my backyard such as get rid of all thedebris that had blown in because of the strong winds. I also took thetime to call some of my friends to make sure that they were alright. Icalled one of my childhood friends Brian Harff, to make sure he was OKbecause I knew that it was his birthday and I didn’t want him to feeldisappointed. Other than that, I just kicked back and watched some of ourfuture opponents play and enjoyed the day off relaxing.
Well to all the ‘Canes fans, keep supporting the home team and we’ll seeya in two weeks against the West Virginia Mountaineers.
From a ‘Cane to all the ‘Canes fans
Andr? King
