WINNER, S.D. (KELO) — Many parts of KELOLAND are once again cleaning up after damaging storms.
One area that got hit hard last night by 80 mph winds was the town of Winner.
But Tuesday morning, as soon as the sun came up, the high school football team sprung into action and scored some big points with the community.
The Winner High School football team is used to hard hits, but last night might have been the hardest, so they decided to tackle it.
“Just so much damage, so many trees everywhere and we talked about it as a coaching staff we had camp in the morning and we decided to cut that a little short to get kids out here,” head coach Trent Olson said.
And that’s what they did; 35 football players teamed up with the city.
“We had a guy from the city meet us at 9 o’clock and told us the different places to be and some of the older people who couldn’t move things,” Olson said.
The team’s quarterback, who’s used to dodging tacklers, says this time it was Mother Nature who put on a full-out blitz.
“I looked around I was like holy crap there’s a lot of damage and a lot of people to be helped,” Quincy Phillips said.
Their primary job was to move tree stumps and branches to the curb.
“I didn’t know we had this many trees in this town, I thought we lived on the prairie, but I guess not,” Olson said.
The city would come by with a loader and pick them up.
“This community gives the football team so much support we want to give back and we want to be there for them when things aren’t going great and help some of those people, some of them couldn’t get out of their driveways big trees had fallen across their driveways some on top of their cars so that was sort of our first priority was to get to them so they could get out of their houses,” Olson said.
It was definitely a team effort
Don: Was anyone injured?
Trent: Not to my knowledge, I have not heard of anyone being injured, which is a miracle.
The football team worked from nine in the morning until four o’clock Tuesday afternoon.
