Edgewater High School football players, coaches aid Irma victims

A community took a small step toward normalcy after Hurricane Irma last week as two local athletes rolled up their sleeves and went to work.

Edgewater High School football players David Anderton and Hudson Driggers showed support for their community on Wednesday, Sept. 13, as they helped clean up Princeton Park and the yards of five houses throughout College Park.

But they weren’t alone. They also had the help of head coach Cameron Duke, assistant head coach Steve Woods and defensive coordinator Kyle Joyce.

It was a call from Duke’s church that gave the group an opportunity to serve after the hurricane. The group met at Howard Middle School and went to work from there.

“They were offering some volunteer opportunities, and Wednesday, they reached out to any guys that were in the area that could get to College Park and help out with the cleaning effort,” Duke said. “We had some players and coaches (who) volunteered, got out of the house and served the community.”

Most of the work was cleaning up debris from nearby trees. The call started with the cleaning up the park next to Princeton Elementary School but steadily grew.

The Edgewater group continued to get calls of residents needing help. Edgewater High School SAFE Coordinator Nate Moran needed help moving several heavy logs to the curb. A tree had been cut into several pieces after it fell on Moran’s roof.

Drigger’s grandmother also needed help cleaning up her yard in College Park.

The group of Edgewater players and coaches not only helped her but also her neighbor.

“We ended up helping a lot of people,” Driggers said. “I thought we were just going to help out some people real quick and then go about our day, but we ended up making it an all-day thing. It felt really good to help people out.”

Woods said the community appreciated the effort.

“The first couple people had tears in their eyes thanking us,” he said. “It really hit home.”

Anderton said most of the residents affected by the storm already had cleaned up their own yard themselves, but the residents they helped weren’t physically able to do the work.

“It felt good to help people that we really didn’t know,” Anderton said. “These were the people who needed help more.”

The effort all stemmed from love for the community, and wanting to do the right thing, Duke said.

“I always want our guys to know that this life is bigger than them and that our team is so much bigger than football,” Duke said. “Understanding serving others and putting others before self is kind of a core philosophy of our program. If our guys learn to put other people before themselves, we believe they’re going to be more successful in life, way beyond football.”