Courtesy: I.C. Murrell Port Arthur News
PORT ARTHUR, Texas- Joyce Kennerson's head basketball coach at Texas Southern called her over the weekend.
"It was like, 'Are you ready to see us?'" Kennerson said. "I was like, 'Huh? Yeah, you're talking about ready to go back to school?'
"She said, 'No, we're coming down to help.' I said, 'OK.'"
Tropical Storm Harvey splashed trillions of water on the Texas coast in two trips from the Gulf. For days, the world watched in horror the devastation the once-hurricane left on greater Houston and Southeast Texas.
Harvey left behind a flood that leaves many residents in Port Arthur and Jefferson County still recovering from a week later. While many local athletes have volunteered in shelters and helped with damaged homes, a whole team came from Houston to help the Kennersons — and their entire neighborhood — clean up the mess Harvey made.
"The next thing I know, they were calling me and asking me where to pull up at," said Anthony Kennerson, Joyce's father. "So, it was an awesome surprise."
That was Sunday, one day before Joyce's teammates and coaches parked their team bus just across from her home in the Bellbrook Estates subdivision in west Port Arthur.
The team that plays together stays together
Joyce, a 2015 Memorial graduate, is set to begin her junior year at the historically black Texas Southern University, a campus whose eastern entrance is adjacent to the University of Houston's TDECU Stadium. Classes were actually to begin Aug. 28, two days after Harvey finished wreaking havoc in greater Corpus Christi and arrived in the fourth-largest city in America.
Almost six months earlier, Joyce helped the Tigers make school history.
Not far from the campus at the Toyota Center, the 5-foot-4 point guard scored 29 points, making 11 of 22 field-goal attempts and scoring the final point of a 70-66 win over Grambling State in the Southwestern Athletic Conference championship game. The 20-year-old was named most valuable player of the conference tournament, the first the Tigers won in program history.
Texas Southern finished the season 23-10 following a 119-30 loss to host Baylor a week later in the first round of the NCAA tournament.
Joyce was the team's leading scorer last season at 18.3 points per game. After Harvey made his presence felt, it was only natural her team would turn to her with an assist, but this time Joyce didn't have to deliver.
Her team did.
"Ever since they told us they had the hurricane here, we've all been worried about Joyce and wanting to come down and help her," said senior guard Kaitlyn Palmer, the Tigers' third leading scorer. "They told us [Sunday] we were actually going to come do it."
Palmer is used to tornados blowing through her home state of Kansas, but Harvey was something she had never seen. It was still a hurricane when it flooded Houston.
"All kinds of things are going on in my mind, making sure families are safe [and] kids," she said. "A lot of the homeless people I was worried about. What would they have to do? I'm glad Joyce and her family are OK. Now, we're just here to help them with what they need help with."
Tigers vs. Harvey
Harvey literally and emotionally affected TSU coach Johnetta Hayes-Perry as it continued a path through Southeast Texas.
"My family is from the Orange-Beaumont area, so this is another place like home for us," said Perry, who grew up in Houston. "We wanted to be a blessing to the Kennersons, but also to people in this community as well."
She saw firsthand how her team came together when Harvey gave them their biggest challenge to date. Five of her returning players and three newcomers, she said, were on campus when the storm hit Houston.
"Joyce was at home," Perry said. "I had two stuck in Atlanta — they could not fly out — and one in Dallas that couldn't get in."
H&PE Arena, where the Tigers play their home games, sheltered evacuees, but the team found their sanctuary in their own locker room.
"The team stayed in locker room for four days," Perry said. "They played basketball and lifted weights."
When the flood cleared, the team bought $2,000 in supplies from Sam's.
The football team was stuck on campus as well following a trip to Florida A&M for a nationally televised game. Somehow, Perry said, TSU football coach Michael Haywood made it to H.E.B. and returned to campus to feed the kids barbecue, "so they were OK for days," she said.
Joyce was not there with the team.
She finished her last summer class in July and stayed in her Port Arthur home until Harvey, at the time a tropical storm, reached her community the following Tuesday.
"We told my dad to evacuate," Joyce said. "But you know him; he came outside to the garage to watch the flood. He was like, 'It's not going to do nothing."
Anthony was proven wrong. A foot high of water stains from flooding remained in his house almost a week later.
The Kennersons couldn't stay home. The flood reached their beds, Joyce said.
"That morning, when it really started flooding, that's when we evacuated," she said. "The people in the Jeeps and all that came to the front door and knocked and said, 'It's time for you all to go. The water kept rising.'"
The fourth of six children and her family were sheltered in Sulphur and came back after four days to start cleaning up from the flood.
Perry said she decided to bring the team to help when she realized Kennerson's entire neighborhood was affected.
"We're very grateful," Perry said. "Even through devastation, you have to be grateful. It humbles you a lot. I have five or six new players who are on campus from Philadelphia, Baltimore, St. Louis, and Kansas. They've never seen anything like this before, so to watch it on the news and be so grateful that they were all safe and sound and to have devastation to your house — I lost a vehicle and had some damage at my house — but through it all, we had lights, water, and to come and bring water because we had donations made to us, this isn't just for the Kennersons. We want it to be for the neighborhood where everyone can have water and enough tissue. Whatever we can offer, we just want to be here and give our support to one of our family members."
Early road trip
After handing the Kennersons food and supplies, Anthony led the Tigers down his street and around the corner to the home of Lama Owens, which still had wet flooring. The players removed the furniture and did what so many homeowners along the Texas Gulf Coast were forced to do — strip their houses of flooring and drywall.
Their work wasn't done. Perry took the team to her family's neighborhoods in Orange and Beaumont.
"We have more stuff [to deliver]," she said. "We have another bus ready."
Classes are to begin at Texas Southern on Tuesday, but the Tigers will still be on the road. They're headed to Bay City to assist another teammate whose home was flooded out.
The charity they brought to Port Arthur is the act of not just a basketball team but an extended family. That's how Anthony Kennerson sees it.
"I think the team sticks together real close," he said. "I think of it as a family more than just a partnership, so I can say they're truly family. Something like this makes you feel good that they support us as much as we support them."
None of Joyce's teammates have spent a night at the Kennersons' just yet, Anthony said, but his door is always open.
He believes his family's relationship to Texas Southern women's basketball is just the beginning.
"We don't consider ourselves as a team," Joyce said. "The other people may consider us that, the outsiders. We're really a family, honestly."
Courtesy: TSU Athletics
PORT ARTHUR, Texas- Joyce Kennerson's head basketball coach at Texas Southern called her over the weekend.
"It was like, 'Are you ready to see us?'" Kennerson said. "I was like, 'Huh? Yeah, you're talking about ready to go back to school?'
"She said, 'No, we're coming down to help.' I said, 'OK.'"
Tropical Storm Harvey splashed trillions of water on the Texas coast in two trips from the Gulf. For days, the world watched in horror the devastation the once-hurricane left on greater Houston and Southeast Texas.
Harvey left behind a flood that leaves many residents in Port Arthur and Jefferson County still recovering from a week later. While many local athletes have volunteered in shelters and helped with damaged homes, a whole team came from Houston to help the Kennersons — and their entire neighborhood — clean up the mess Harvey made.
"The next thing I know, they were calling me and asking me where to pull up at," said Anthony Kennerson, Joyce's father. "So, it was an awesome surprise."
That was Sunday, one day before Joyce's teammates and coaches parked their team bus just across from her home in the Bellbrook Estates subdivision in west Port Arthur.
The team that plays together stays together
Joyce, a 2015 Memorial graduate, is set to begin her junior year at the historically black Texas Southern University, a campus whose eastern entrance is adjacent to the University of Houston's TDECU Stadium. Classes were actually to begin Aug. 28, two days after Harvey finished wreaking havoc in greater Corpus Christi and arrived in the fourth-largest city in America.
Almost six months earlier, Joyce helped the Tigers make school history.
Not far from the campus at the Toyota Center, the 5-foot-4 point guard scored 29 points, making 11 of 22 field-goal attempts and scoring the final point of a 70-66 win over Grambling State in the Southwestern Athletic Conference championship game. The 20-year-old was named most valuable player of the conference tournament, the first the Tigers won in program history.
Texas Southern finished the season 23-10 following a 119-30 loss to host Baylor a week later in the first round of the NCAA tournament.
Joyce was the team's leading scorer last season at 18.3 points per game. After Harvey made his presence felt, it was only natural her team would turn to her with an assist, but this time Joyce didn't have to deliver.
Her team did.
"Ever since they told us they had the hurricane here, we've all been worried about Joyce and wanting to come down and help her," said senior guard Kaitlyn Palmer, the Tigers' third leading scorer. "They told us [Sunday] we were actually going to come do it."
Palmer is used to tornados blowing through her home state of Kansas, but Harvey was something she had never seen. It was still a hurricane when it flooded Houston.
"All kinds of things are going on in my mind, making sure families are safe [and] kids," she said. "A lot of the homeless people I was worried about. What would they have to do? I'm glad Joyce and her family are OK. Now, we're just here to help them with what they need help with."
Tigers vs. Harvey
Harvey literally and emotionally affected TSU coach Johnetta Hayes-Perry as it continued a path through Southeast Texas.
"My family is from the Orange-Beaumont area, so this is another place like home for us," said Perry, who grew up in Houston. "We wanted to be a blessing to the Kennersons, but also to people in this community as well."
She saw firsthand how her team came together when Harvey gave them their biggest challenge to date. Five of her returning players and three newcomers, she said, were on campus when the storm hit Houston.
"Joyce was at home," Perry said. "I had two stuck in Atlanta — they could not fly out — and one in Dallas that couldn't get in."
H&PE Arena, where the Tigers play their home games, sheltered evacuees, but the team found their sanctuary in their own locker room.
"The team stayed in locker room for four days," Perry said. "They played basketball and lifted weights."
When the flood cleared, the team bought $2,000 in supplies from Sam's.
The football team was stuck on campus as well following a trip to Florida A&M for a nationally televised game. Somehow, Perry said, TSU football coach Michael Haywood made it to H.E.B. and returned to campus to feed the kids barbecue, "so they were OK for days," she said.
Joyce was not there with the team.
She finished her last summer class in July and stayed in her Port Arthur home until Harvey, at the time a tropical storm, reached her community the following Tuesday.
"We told my dad to evacuate," Joyce said. "But you know him; he came outside to the garage to watch the flood. He was like, 'It's not going to do nothing."
Anthony was proven wrong. A foot high of water stains from flooding remained in his house almost a week later.
The Kennersons couldn't stay home. The flood reached their beds, Joyce said.
"That morning, when it really started flooding, that's when we evacuated," she said. "The people in the Jeeps and all that came to the front door and knocked and said, 'It's time for you all to go. The water kept rising.'"
The fourth of six children and her family were sheltered in Sulphur and came back after four days to start cleaning up from the flood.
Perry said she decided to bring the team to help when she realized Kennerson's entire neighborhood was affected.
"We're very grateful," Perry said. "Even through devastation, you have to be grateful. It humbles you a lot. I have five or six new players who are on campus from Philadelphia, Baltimore, St. Louis, and Kansas. They've never seen anything like this before, so to watch it on the news and be so grateful that they were all safe and sound and to have devastation to your house — I lost a vehicle and had some damage at my house — but through it all, we had lights, water, and to come and bring water because we had donations made to us, this isn't just for the Kennersons. We want it to be for the neighborhood where everyone can have water and enough tissue. Whatever we can offer, we just want to be here and give our support to one of our family members."
Early road trip
After handing the Kennersons food and supplies, Anthony led the Tigers down his street and around the corner to the home of Lama Owens, which still had wet flooring. The players removed the furniture and did what so many homeowners along the Texas Gulf Coast were forced to do — strip their houses of flooring and drywall.
Their work wasn't done. Perry took the team to her family's neighborhoods in Orange and Beaumont.
"We have more stuff [to deliver]," she said. "We have another bus ready."
Classes are to begin at Texas Southern on Tuesday, but the Tigers will still be on the road. They're headed to Bay City to assist another teammate whose home was flooded out.
The charity they brought to Port Arthur is the act of not just a basketball team but an extended family. That's how Anthony Kennerson sees it.
"I think the team sticks together real close," he said. "I think of it as a family more than just a partnership, so I can say they're truly family. Something like this makes you feel good that they support us as much as we support them."
None of Joyce's teammates have spent a night at the Kennersons' just yet, Anthony said, but his door is always open.
He believes his family's relationship to Texas Southern women's basketball is just the beginning.
"We don't consider ourselves as a team," Joyce said. "The other people may consider us that, the outsiders. We're really a family, honestly."
Courtesy: TSU Athletics