There are certain sounds we all identify with high school baseball – most notably the reverberating ping of a metal bat making contact with a ball or the thud of a fastball popping into a catcher’s mitt.
But after Wednesday’s outbreak of severe storms swept through the area, many prep athletes took time to help with the cleanup process – helping create another, all-too-familiar sound across the tri-state area.
“Pretty much all you can hear all around our neighborhood are chainsaws cutting trees,” said Lookout Valley senior outfielder Jordan Butler. “Even when you stop to take a break from working, you’ll hear several more all around.”
Butler was one of several Lookout Valley baseball players who began helping clear debris almost immediately after the first wave of storms blew through. Fifty-five trees went down along the street where Butler’s and five other houses sit, including 11 in his family’s yard alone.
“Luckily none hit our house, but they got close,” Butler said. “When we got out of school Wednesday, it took about an hour to get home, when it normally takes me less than five minutes. I didn’t know what to expect, but as soon as I got there and saw everybody was OK and my house was there, we had eight chainsaws and a backhoe working to clean up our neighborhood. We would take a break when another storm would hit, and then get back to work after it passed.”