The North Carolina football team is helping with relief efforts following the devastation of Hurricane Florence by donating per diem allotments, sports drinks and use of the team’s equipment truck, head coach Larry Fedora said Wednesday.
UNC’s Week 3 game against UCF was canceled due to the hurricane, but Fedora said players decided to use the per diem money they received to help with relief efforts in the eastern part of the state, which was ravaged by Florence.
“Our players wanted to do something,” Fedora said. “We had 100 percent participation in donating their per diems.”
Former Tar Heels player Kevin Reddick, who is from New Bern, North Carolina, helped coordinate the efforts, and Fedora said the team has reached out to the larger university community to collect donations.
“We also donated our equipment truck so that people in the community could donate water, Gatorade, canned goods, supplies,” Fedora said. “Our truck is being loaded up, on campus in front of the Dean Dome. Probably about two-thirds full right now. That truck will be taken to the eastern part of the state to try to help some of those people that have been devastated over there.”
Fedora said a number of his players were impacted by the storm, though all players are now back on campus and their family members have been accounted for.
“Some of their families have not been able to get back home yet because of the flooding that’s still going on, but everybody is safe and everybody is OK,” he said.
The Tar Heels returned to practice this week after having the weekend off, and they’re set to host Pittsburgh on Saturday. Fedora said the team has had numerous visitors at practice, and he’s hopeful Saturday’s game can be a return to normalcy for many impacted families.
“I think it’s important for everybody to have some normalcy,” Fedora said. “There’s a lot of people that want to get back home, can’t get back home because of the flooding, really have nothing to do. We’ve had quite a few people come to practice that are out of school, those kind of things, just looking for something to do.”