Rangers to the Rescue, Northwest players players assist with flood clean up @NW_Rangers

Tagged under: District 2, pfn

Billy Splain | August 23, 2018

The Northwest Rangers rounded up their team and volunteers to help those in need

Look up “small town” in any dictionary and it wouldn’t be far fetched to see a picture of the Country Fresh Market, The Brass Pelican and of course the Benton Dam, all located in this tiny hamlet that lies just west of Wilkes-Barre and north of Bloomsburg near Ricketts Glen State Park. It’s a town know mostly for two things: wrestling and trout fishing. PSU national champ Zain Retherford learned on the mats there as have many others great high school wrestlers. As for the trout fishing, it’s a huge tourism feature to the town. Fishing Creek runs right along the center of town, just yards from the high school. On a normal summer day, it’s common to see fishermen all along the stream, and people of all ages enjoying the swimming at the Benton Dam. Benton is one of those towns that has a high school but doesn’t have it’s own football team.

There are football players who wrestle at Benton, a Benton student who plays football at Northwest. There are relatives living in both towns, and there are people from each town who work near or in the other. All those connections collided in an unfortunate yet meaningful event this past Sunday. It’s been a very wet summer this year in PA, and the waterways have reached boiling points several times this year. In the week leading to the 19th, mother nature unleashed a torrent of rain that seemed to last days, taking Fishing Creek to historic levels and inundating Benton.

This video by Newswatch 16 shows the extent of the flooding:

As always, flooding recedes leaving many people with huge messes to clean up. Some elderly, some overwhelmed, some just needed an extra hand. On Sunday, August 19, Benton had a football team. Enter the Northwest Rangers. There’s a special bond between the two schools located just 11.8 miles and a short 18 minute drive from each other. “We used to have a football co-op with them just a couple years ago but that ended. We do have one player from Benton who was grandfathered into the co-op by the state a couple years ago” said Rangers Head Coach Lon Hazlet. Benton and Northwest do have a co-op in several other sports. “As a matter of fact, we have a number of football players who wrestle for Benton because we don’t have a wrestling program”.

“We couldn’t believe the devastation. We are two very close communities. We got a group together, and through Lucas Acornley’s mother, (Lucas is the lone Benton football player at Northwest) we got in touch with the emergency management leader, Matt Goode. We met with him at the firehall at 8 am. He took us right to the Mayor, George Remphrey. We had 70 people in our entourage. Actually, Mr. Goode’s wife was a teacher at Northwest, so there was another connection” said Lon Hazlet.

Linebacker Tyler Stevens was among the players who lent a helping hand. “We used to have some kids play for us from Benton and ever since then we have always consider them our “neighbors “. When we saw all of the flooding our coach, Lon Hazlet, took action. He wanted to help them the first day it happened. We as a team wanted to give back because everyone around us supports us. He told us after our scrimmage (at Selinsgrove) that we were leaving at 7:45 to help everyone out there.”

“The town was hit harder than it ever was” said Mayor Remphrey. “It was even worse than in 2011. It was faster, higher and did more destruction than ever. People lost everything. It just ripped everything apart. Those boys were so kind to everyone, so understanding to everyone and so polite. They weren’t afraid to get into the mud, get dirty and just work. Everyone in town just loved them. They gave the town such a jump start. They way they worked, they get an A+ and they really listened to their coach.”

Enter the twist to this story. “We were at our scrimmage when we were informed our school had a fire and it was really disheartening. The damage is pretty bad on the second floor, but the district is finding us a way to go back pretty soon. We put the school in the back of our mind for Sunday though, because we knew how many people were in need of help in Benton” said wide receiver Connor Hazlet. So off they went, even though they knew they had trouble at home, they knew the people of Benton needed their help. “Yeah, we come home and there’s fire trucks all around our school, it was really crazy” said coach Hazlet. “It’s gonna delay school a few weeks but that didn’t matter to us, we wanted to help those people”.

Once there, the players were split up into teams to head off in different directions, assisted by other adults, to help the people of Benton. “The people who I helped out were extremely grateful and even shed tears. It really had an impact on me because helping out people in tough situations is way bigger than a football game. When it all comes down to it the only thing we have as humans in other people so it’s essential to create a spiral of good deeds” said Rangers QB David Piestrak.

The groups went off, then were regrouped to head off to the next place of need. ” Me and some of my teammates were assigned this man named Jimmy’s house. Jimmy is a volunteer firefighter for Benton and was so busy helping out other people that he had no time to work on his own house. We helped him take care of his yard, and also helped him get rid of 2 feet of water in his basement. When we were done we had brought tears to his eyes, it was a great feeling” shared Connor.

The team took some tools, and Goode also supplied what they needed to clean up. “We just kept piling stuff up in the streets, and they were coming behind us with skid steers and front end loaders and scooping it up” said Coach Hazlet. “I told my wife, “picture a one stall garage. We probably put 20-25 piles in the street that would fill a one stall garage.

“Forty guys prepared to work to help people in need. I got there and was immediately put to work by Coach Hazlet. I had to help a guy named Rick and his yard had stones all over it and he wanted to put them back in the driveway and sidewalk. A few of my buddies came to help me and more came and then more, after awhile a guy with a skid loader showed up and help us finish it. I just thought to myself, man it is just awesome to see everyone helping out. To say i’m proud of our team is an understatement! They didn’t have to go and get up at 7 am on our only day off of the week, but they did because we care about people in our community and our “ neighbors “. We saw tears in peoples eyes, happy tears, which means you made a difference” said Stevens.

The team spent 5 hours cleaning up, that’s about 350 man hours that is extremely valuable to a town in great need. “Everybody kept saying they couldn’t have done what we did in a week” said Hazlet. “A couple people literally cried. On one hand it made me really feel said, but on the other it made me feel really good that our boys and our coaches went out of their way to step up and help. The kids really wanted to help and it just made me feel really proud to be their coach.”

“They wanted no compensation. The only thing they asked was to have everyone come to one of their games and be their guests” said Mayor Remphrey. “We’ll be there once they tell us which game is best. We owe them that much.” PAFootballnews.com will be there once it’s determined.