Ten years ago, Hurricane Katrinacaused unprecedented damage and changed the lives of a high schoolteam destined for greatness  The humidity was suffocating, but man, that sky. Even if the storm never came, Jordan Page would remember that day 10 years later for the sky alone.  In four hours he would lead his team, the Carver High School Rams, onto the field for the first football game of the year — the 2005 Jamboree, a New Orleans tradition.  All summer under the most extreme Louisiana heat, Carver head coach Ricky Williams — or Coach Ricky, as he was known — worked his players past the point of exhaustion. They would arrive at the practice field at 6 a.m. and wouldn’t get home until close to 10 p.m. — every day. In July they dominated two statewide 7-on-7 tournaments. Their entire lives revolved around the upcoming season.  “We were going to win state that year,” defensive end Brad Watkins said. “It was going to change our lives.”  When the players arrived on campus before the Jamboree, they made their way to the cafeteria, a spacious room with six long rows of tables. Spaghetti marinara and cold cut sandwiches were laid out.  The offense took one table. Tailback Terrance Salvant was there, and speedy Corey McKnight — names that should have been etched into the folklore of the Ninth Ward. Larry Congress — “Fat Boy,” they called him — was on the end. He was ranked one of the best quarterbacks in Louisiana.  On the other table, the defense sat together, led by senior captain Jordan Page. Blessed with the reflexes and grace of a trapeze artist, he was the catalyst of the team, a pre-season All-State pick. Next to him was his more laid-back counterpart, Russell Roy Jr., then linebacker Ellis Hansel. There were no five-star recruits but the pieces fit perfectly — and they loved each other.  Two years earlier in 2003, Carver beat Northern Louisiana’s West Monroe High School, a team ranked in the top five nationally, in a regular season game. When Carver returned the following Monday to practice, more than 2,000 people from the neighborhood lined up along the fence circling the field to congratulate the team.  “Carver isn’t just a part of the community,” Coach Ricky said. “Carver is the community.”  Located in the Ninth Ward, in the eastern part of New Orleans, across from the Desire Housing Development, one of the most deplorable projects in Louisiana, Carver is boxed in on all sides by railway tracks, and surrounded by industrial facilities and shanty houses. As Leonard Smith, director of “A Place Called Desire,” says, “It is the neighborhood the city forgot.”  When the government did come to the Ninth Ward, it came in army tanks, like it did in 1971, to flush out the Black Panther Party. Or it came in the form of greedy speculators, who sold the American Dream — single family homes — only for residents to find they were built on top of a toxic dump. Growing up there is a constant battle; it's boxing in quicksand. If the streets didn't pull you down, the New Orleans establishment would knock you over. Football, then, became not just an outlet; it was subversive, and liberating, and the deepest sense of pride for the community. There’s hope on that field.  Every year the Carver Rams would compete for the District championship, but of all the great players — Marshall Faulk is an alumnus — and all the great teams, there’s never been a Carver High School state champion.  “This team was different,” Coach Ricky said.  At 2 p.m. on game day before the Jamboree, Coach Ricky came into the cafeteria and handed out the new-look jerseys and helmets. They were patterned after the Miami Hurricanes’ logo, the “U” turned horizontal on the helmets as a “C.” The players ooh’d and ahh’d. Shortly after, Coach Ricky’s phone rang. It was the Athletic Director of Orleans Parish. When Coach Ricky hung up, he gathered the team together. Offense, next to defense. Sophomores, next to juniors and seniors. Jordan Page in front.  Look at them. Take a snapshot. Aspirations as big as that sky.  “Game’s canceled,” Coach Ricky said. “They say Hurricane Katrina is coming. When it passes over we’ll play the Jamboree on Tuesday. Let me know where you’re going to be.”  In the coming days much would be lost. The team that would bring pride to the Mighty Ninth scattered, decimated. Hope turned to survival and certainty stripped away.  “Lead me, guide me, to the faraway deep down”  Jordan took a bus from Carver, over an hour, to his home six miles southwest in Broadmoor, uptown. When he walked in the front door, the first thing he did was put in a game DVD. Before the Jamboree, Coach Ricky had challenged Jordan to hold Karr High School’s All-District tailback, Jeremy McGee, to under 50 yards rushing. He knew if he pushed Jordan, his captain would in turn push the rest of the team.  Coach Ricky liked to delegate leadership. Every day before classes, seniors would meet with a group of six to eight younger players to go over their progress in the classroom. If any underclassmen slipped up, Coach Ricky would hold the seniors responsible. “If I put you in charge, you’re a stakeholder,” he explained. “If I babysit you, there’s room for error.”  Jordan thrived in this role. Once during wind sprints under the brutal summer heat, the team’s top cornerback, Ralph Parker, fatigued and, nearing exhaustion, refused to run anymore, picked up his things and headed for the gate. Jordan and Ralph had grown up together, and when the cornerback left, Jordan felt he had abandoned the team.  “He called me a ‘muthafuckin’ ho,’ every name you can think of,” Ralph said.  The next day when Ralph returned to practice, he sheepishly apologized — but not to the coach. He apologized to Jordan. “He’s all about loyalty,” Ralph said. “He wanted to do good, but he wanted us to do good too.”  “We were going to win state that year.It was going to change our lives.”  Jordan got his fire from his mother, Lynette. Like Jordan, she was sweet with a hardened exterior, always measured in her words and reactions. But when she came in the room that Saturday evening, she had a concerned look on her face. New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin had held a news conference. The storm was coming and he suggested voluntary evacuations for the city.  “What do you think, baby, should we leave?” she asked Jordan.  Twelve months earlier, as Hurricane Ivan was ripping through the Caribbean, Mayor Nagin had also advised voluntary evacuations. Jordan, along with his mother and sister left for a shelter at Louisiana State University, only for Ivan to veer away from New Orleans. Another false alarm in a long list of hurricane false alarms. In fact, no hurricane had caused widespread damage to New Orleans since Betsy in 1965.  Jordan thought for a moment, then pressed play on the DVD player. “We’ll be fine,” he said.  linebacker Russell Roy Jr. had a decision to make. The hurricane warnings were intensifying and his father and mother decided to seek shelter in Carver’s three-story building. Russell Jr., though, didn’t want to leave their home. He loved that place. Every weekend he and his father would manicure the lawn, or fix the window shingles until the place sparkled. His father would tell him about how he had been a star cornerback at Carver in 1977, but didn’t receive a scholarship offer. Thinking he’d missed his only chance to leave the Desire projects, his father, Russell Sr., worked night and day as a busboy and parking attendant. He saved every penny. Two years before Russell Jr. was born in 1985, his father had enough to buy a 1960’s style one-story home in New Orleans East. It wasn't much, but it was everything.  The storm will pass over quickly, his father told him, but you have to get to higher ground. Go with your sister to her boyfriend's second floor apartment. Russell Jr. reluctantly agreed and brought an overnight bag and a radio.  On Sunday evening, Russell Jr. lay on the couch with his sister and turned the radio to WWL, an AM station. When Garland Robinette, a native of Louisiana with a silky baritone voice, began his report, the hair on Russell Jr.’s neck stood up.  “You’re going to think I’m stone cold crazy,” Robinette began. “But the birds are gone. I know the powers that be say not to panic. I’m telling you, panic, worry, run. The birds are gone! Get out of town! Now! Don’t stay! Leave! Save yourself while you can!”  Jordan along with his mom, Lynette, and his 10-year-old sister, Qia, left their home Saturday night. His grandmother, Bobbi, a 23-year veteran of the Sheriff’s Department, called them and said simply, “There’ll be a car outside in 10 minutes.” Lynette frantically packed bags of canned goods, clothes and games for Qia. They were taken to a makeshift shelter for families of deputies adjacent to the women’s jail at the administration offices for the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Department on Tulane Avenue, three quarters of a mile north of the Superdome and five miles southwest of Carver High School. Partitions normally used for cubicles were set up for privacy, and TVs were rolled out for children to watch movies.  “In the beginning it was like a house party,” Lynette said.  The next night, as Sunday turned into Monday morning, the lights in the building went out. The kids rolled into their sleeping bags, and parents found whatever empty space they could to get a few hours of rest.  “You’re going to think I’m stone cold crazy.But the birds are gone. I knowthe powers that be say not to panic.I’m telling you, panic, worry,run. The birds are gone!”  Garland Robinette, New Orleans radio DJ  Jordan, though, couldn’t sleep. He liked solitude. Sometimes he would stay up late and imagine where he’d be in 10, 20 years. The summer before, he was invited to a football camp at Auburn University. Few knew who he was beforehand. Afterwards he began to receive recruiting letters by the truckload. Schools like Florida and South Carolina were interested, but he hadn’t yet passed the ACT. He never missed a class, but studying was challenging. His mind was programmed to differentiate between the “wing T” and “I” formations. Coach Ricky recently set him up to start a test prep class that fall.  On the second floor of the shelter, near the stairwell he sat and stared out of the window in near darkness. The winds started first, slowly sweeping trash up and down the street. Then the rain came, unrelenting rain. For miles above him, monstrous clouds were swirling, wind thrashing and pounding against the window. He was mesmerized.  Many of the players had left town. When the hurricane made landfall Coach Ricky was driving north. He stopped in every city, unable to find an available hotel room. Finally, when he reached Arkansas, he found a spare room. Immediately, he began scrolling through his phone book to check on his players. “I knew by then it was going to be bad,” he said.  But it seemed there was little to worry about. As the sun came up that morning and the winds receded, Jordan looked outside. A stop sign at the corner of Tulane Avenue and Dorgenois Street was swaying back and forth in just a few inches of water and a couple was calmly walking through the shallow pool. Jordan thought about the game on Tuesday. Karr High School’s running back flashed across his mind. McGee liked to pause at the line, then dart left. Or was it right? Jordan couldn’t remember. He needed to get home to watch that game tape again.  Quarterback Larry Congress. 6-foot-3, 260 pounds. “Fat Boy.” “The Daunte Culpepper of New Orleans.” He could run over any linebacker and throw 60 yards in the air. Once during the championship of a 7-on-7 tournament at the Superdome, Congress – with the game tied and no time on the clock – avoided the rush and let fly toward the back of the end zone. “I never thought anyone would catch it,” Congress said. But somehow Tony “Skinny Man” Anderson leapt seemingly from nowhere to snatch it before it hit the ground. Fat Boy to Skinny Man for the win.  At 11, his mom died. Heart attack. His dad was long gone, and Larry drifted. He played football, but he couldn't focus, his talent crushed under the weight of sorrow. His grandmother soothed his pain. She took him shopping, and picked him up from school; she was always there, always reliable. Football once again came easily. Before Katrina hit, his grandmother got on one bus. He got on another. When he arrived in Houston he looked for her. He couldn’t find her. He searched, he asked for help. No one could help him. ‘Please God,” he pleaded. “Don’t do this to me again.”  Jordan would not get home to watch that tape. Over the next 24 hours, flood water on Tulane Avenue would rise at an astonishing rate. Some claimed they heard explosions during the day Monday when the levees on the 17th Street Canal and London Avenue Canal were compromised. Jordan hadn’t heard anything, but by Tuesday morning the sound of babies crying inside the Sheriff’s Department shelter became incessant.  Most of the roughly 100 people inside the shelter thought they would only be there a night or two at the most and that deputies would provide meals. But there had only been a single table of fruit. “We ran out of food. We were stuck,” Jordan said. “I don’t know where the police were at. They weren’t in there with us.”  With scores of New Orleans police officers abandoning their posts – over 200 would be investigated in the aftermath for allegedly doing so – the Sheriff's Department was needed to maintain order, as well as guard the Parish’s prisoners. Jordan’s grandmother was on duty on the other side of the building, working in the women's jail.  Jordan surveyed the situation. Outside it was desolate. He checked for the stop sign he’d spotted earlier. It was steady, but now the water was nearly up to the word “STOP,” and the first floor of the shelter was completely flooded. Jordan had a chilling thought. If it was this bad here, what was it like at the Carver practice field on the other side of town, near the Industrial Canal?  In the shelter, on the opposite side of the room, Jordan noticed a slim but muscular man with blond hair and dark skin pacing back and forth. “He was saying, ‘I’m gonna get you out of here; I’m going to save everyone,’” Jordan said.  The man enlisted an off-duty deputy and the two pounded one of the windows with their shoulders, cracking the glass. Then in one swift movement, the blond-haired man punched out the window.  “He was saying, 'I’m gonna get you out of here;I’m going to save everyone.'”  JORDAN PAGE, on UFC fighter Melvin Guillard  Jordan would remember that fist. A year later while watching a UFC lightweight fight at a friend’s house, Jordan would nearly jump out of his seat when one of the fighters punched his opponent in the stomach, hard enough to make him crumble. “That’s him!” Jordan screamed when the camera zoomed in on Melvin Guillard Jr.’s face and blond hair. “That’s the guy!”  Melvin Guillard looked down from the shelter and scanned the water below, then let himself into the murky abyss. He had finished filming The Ultimate Fighter 2 and was training for his first UFC fight in November. Raised in nearby Kenner, his fiancée was a sheriff’s deputy and, like Jordan’s family, they came to the shelter for refuge.  In the water, Guillard wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but it found him. Floating swiftly down Tulane Avenue was a corrugated metal piece of roof that had flown off in the hurricane. He grabbed it, then scanned for anything that could be used as a paddle — sticks, steel rods. Once back at the shelter, he wedged the raft between two poles, but quickly realized there was no easy way to get people on board.  “I was the only person in that whole building who knew how to swim,” Guillard said.  Sopping wet, he pulled himself up to the shelter and headed straight to three empty five-gallon water containers. Jordan looked on in disbelief.  “It was crazy,” Jordan said. “He tied them together like a raft.”  With this makeshift floating device in tow, Guillard helped his fiancée and her family onto the large raft outside. Then, without a word, he tapped Jordan, who, at 6-foot-2 was one of the biggest men there. Guillard figured if he could get the raft to safety without capsizing, then Jordan could aid in rescuing the rest of the people.  This simple gesture seemed to kickstart Jordan’s inner leader. He picked up his sister and led her to the raft first. His mom, though, who is only 5-foot-4, couldn’t get down the flooded stairs and out to the boat, so Jordan placed her on his back and trudged through the water onto the raft.  From the second-floor window they could hear pleas for help. “People were crying, like, ‘You coming back, right? Please come back,’” Lynette said. “They had babies up there.”  Guillard handed Jordan a stick, and they began paddling, one forceful stroke at a time. Jordan searched for the stop sign but it was gone, completely submerged in the water.  It was 5 p.m. Tuesday. The sun was shining. The sun was shining! This is the time Jordan Page was supposed to be leading the mighty Rams in prayer on the field before the Jamboree. Our father which art in heaven … he would begin before breaking off into an inspirational chant. Instead he was in 10 feet of water, on a raft that was violently rocking back and forth.  “It was like I was in a dream,” he said. “That was the first time I didn’t think about football.”  Ken McRoyal was a sophomore receiver. He didn’t play much. His sister Keahsha helped out with the team, and dated Jordan. Ken looked up to Jordan. If he could work as hard as Jordan did, he knew he would find a place on the team.  Ken also had a dog, a pitbull he raised since birth named Trouble. He loved that dog. He was beautiful. When Ken walked down the street with Trouble, people stopped and asked him about that beautiful dog. His confidence grew alongside Trouble.  As the hurricane approached, a U.S. Marshal knocked on the door. Ken lived with his family in the Lower Ninth Ward, a block from the canal. “You have to leave now,” the Marshal said. The family packed up and made reservations at a hotel on Canal Street. But pitbulls weren’t allowed. Ken was distraught. Trouble stayed at home. The waters rose and the Lower Ninth was devastated, water as high as roofs. How could a dog survive that? But Trouble was smart, he would find a way. Wouldn’t he?  Jordan and Guillard paddled a few hundred yards up Tulane Avenue, away from the shelter, the raft swaying but still maintaining. On the way they saw a man waving his arms trying to swim in the swamp-like water. Guillard snatched him by the shirt and pulled him on board. When they turned left on the first major street, Broad Street, and passed the men’s jail, Jordan noticed smoke.  “The water was so high at the jail,” he said. “They couldn’t get everyone out. You could see people hanging their hands out of the window with rags on fire.”  Once the group arrived at the Broad Street Bridge, half a mile from the shelter, they were dry, but they weren’t alone. Only a few yards away, the prisoners that did leave the men’s jail were escorted onto the bridge and surrounded by as many as 10 deputies with their hands over their gun clips. Jordan’s mom considered moving further along the bridge, but there was comfort in staying close to the inmates. At least the group was visible and could be saved.  Jordan and Guillard and another middle-aged man paddled back to the shelter. They rowed in silence and never knew each other’s names. They first picked up the small children and disabled, delicately carrying a woman in a wheelchair over their heads above the water and onto the raft. They devised a method. Jordan and the other man would hand people from the shelter down to Guillard, who stayed on the raft.  On the way back to the bridge, someone broke the silence with a prayer. “Help us, Jesus,” they said. They’d drop off a group, then return, sometimes together, but often Guillard would go alone. Each trip taking over half an hour.  The situation on the bridge, meanwhile, was becoming increasingly dire. The prisoners had begun to rebel. “The police pulled out their guns,” Jordan said. “One hundred inmates who had nothing to eat or drink, and all of them are starting a riot.”  Cops were screaming orders. The prisoners were yelling back. “It was pandemonium,” Guillard said. The deputies were able to push back the inmates, forcing them to the ground without firing a shot. Amidst the chaos and desire to survive, the roughly 100 people from the shelter were losing energy. They were starving. As night was falling, Jordan’s mom remembered there was some food and juice in a bag in the shelter. Enough to sustain the group until morning.  Jordan and Guillard returned again and placed the remaining people in the boat, then searched desperately for the bag. Guillard, though, couldn’t afford to wait. It was too hard to maneuver the raft in darkness. Finally Jordan found the bag and returned well over an hour later.  “I wound up getting the wrong bag,” he said. “It was full of clothes. I told my mom I can go back but she was shaking and crying. She said, ‘I’m not worried about the bag. That’s not important. I don’t want you to go nowhere.’”  “One hundred inmates who hadnothing to eat or drink, andall of them are starting a riot.”  The following morning their prayers were answered.  Sunlight sparkled off of a row of 10-12 yellow school buses a few hundred yards away on relatively dry land.  Jordan got up and stood next to his little sister Qia in a disjointed line. He looked after her. When their father was sent away to prison for seven years, their home life became chaotic. They moved a lot — Upper Ninth, New Orleans East, Uptown — and their mother was always working. Jordan raised his sister, he was there the first time she walked, and held her hand on the first day of kindergarten. As they walked toward the buses, he squeezed her hand again. But they were stopped. The deputies, Jordan said, first escorted the inmates off the bridge, two by two. By Jet Ski, then by bus and out of the city.  The deputies themselves then made their way to the buses, and a few family members were allowed on until all the buses were full. The group watched the buses drive onto the freeway and disappear on the horizon. They waited, but it was soon apparent no buses were coming back.  “They abandoned us,” Jordan said. “They didn’t care nothing about us.”  Guillard refused to wait any longer. He paddled with a small group to the nearby water company. Although Guillard grew up by the New Orleans airport, he spent his weekends on hunting or fishing trips with his father and learned survival skills from a young age. At the water station, he found the lockbox and picked the lock, taking the keys to the water trucks. There was no way to drive them yet, but when the waters receded, he could ferry the group to safety.  ​New Orleans rests in a bowl, Lake Pontchartrain on one side and the Mississippi River on the other. When it floods, water rests in the basin, but within the bowl there are ridges and plateaus. One neighborhood or even block could be five feet below sea level, while another five feet above. On the way back from the water company, he passed an abandoned convenience store on a street where the water was relatively low.  “I grabbed all the canned goods you could find,” Guillard said. “Similac milk for the babies. We put them on floaters and floated them back.”  When he returned to the bridge, three elderly people, two men and a woman, said they were diabetics and were in desperate need of help. Their sugar levels had dropped to dangerous levels. Guillard handed them candy he’d taken from the store, but it had little effect.  By Wednesday, the group on the bridge was slowly growing. A few stragglers managed to get to the bridge searching for food or a way out, but instead found themselves further isolated from the city. Without any working phones, nobody knew if their homes were still standing or even what they’d find just a few blocks away. All they could make out from the crackle of the deputy radios the night before was that there was help at the Superdome, and that was only a mile away. But they could also tell by the increasing urgency of the deputies’ voices over the radio that it didn’t seem safe.  ​The Superdome may have been a center of chaos, but Broad Street Bridge was turning into a burial ground. The heat was more than 90 degrees and one of the men with diabetes had gone into shock. Within 48 hours, Guillard says, all three elderly diabetics would die on the bridge.  Before 9 a.m., Jordan grabbed a floating device, picked up his little sister and mom and made their way for the stadium.  Guillard, however, refused to leave. “He was a hero,” Jordan said. Guillard made roughly 14 trips in total from the shelter to the bridge, according to witnesses, and rescued every person there. He stayed five more days on the bridge until the waters receded. Then he packed everyone that remained into the water truck, started the engine and drove to Houston.  Terrance Salvant ran a 4.42 40-yard dash. He was from Tennessee. He was funny, easy-going. The team gravitated toward him. Short and stout, he moved like Emmitt Smith. When the waters rose, his family was stuck, and starving inside their home.  Terrance said nothing. He jumped out of the window, swam across the street, and unhinged a boat from a neighbor’s house. When he got inside, an older man leaned down from the second floor and pointed a shotgun at him.  “Take that boat, and I’ll kill you.”  Salvant froze, then looked up. “If you shoot me, you gotta shoot me in the back, sir. Because I gotta save my family.”  The Inevitable and the Impossible  As soon as Jordan arrived at the Superdome with his family on Wednesday, he spotted Russell Roy Jr., his linebacking partner, near the will call booth outside the stadium. It wasn’t hard – they were each wearing their Carver Rams practice shirts and green Carver shorts.  “We looked at each other, shook our heads and just smiled,” Jordan said. They embraced, the same way they would after a tackle during practice or a game. Russell Jr. left the Superdome in search of his parents.  The day before, after walking six miles along Interstate 10 from New Orleans East with his sister and her boyfriend, Russell Jr. had entered the dome just after dawn.  “It was like walking through fog. The roof, something had cracked and light was beaming through,” Russell Jr. said. “The field was filled with people, and the seats were filled like a Saints game.”  As a kid, Russell Jr. lived a block away from Tyrann Mathieu, who played football at nearby LSU and is now a safety for the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals. Mathieu’s uncle had a connection with the Saints and got Russell Jr. a job selling gameday programs in front of the Superdome when he was a freshman in high school. When the game would start, he was allowed to enter the stadium and watch the game. Without an assigned seat, he learned the intricacies of the stadium — the back entrances and private areas. Russell Jr. led his sister up a side staircase to an enclosed area behind the luxury boxes.  The entire time, he had his radio nearby, always on. At one point, though, he mistakenly left it outside and went into a panic. When he hurried back to retrieve it, a dozen or so people were standing or sitting around the radio in silence — listening to Garland Robinette passionately describe the scenes around the city.  “They just wanted to know if their families were OK,” Russell said.  Jordan, though, didn’t know any secret passages to the Superdome. He and his family walked up the ramp to the second level and were immediately overcome by the stench. “It’s the worst smell you can imagine,” Jordan said.  Rumors had become the de facto currency inside the dome — passed and traded back and forth. There were rumors of people jumping off of the top level to their death and rumors of mass rapes in the bathroom. The plumbing was dysfunctional and shit, and piss, and vomit, and garbage lined the edges of the building.  They found a spot near the concession stands on the second level, but as the sun began to set, it became unbearable. “It was so dark, you pretty much didn’t see anything,” Lynette said. “You could hear it. Fights, and screaming.”  For the first time, Qia, Jordan’s younger sister, was crying. Throughout the week, she was resolute, but now she just wanted to go home. They found a place to lie down just outside the stadium, and Jordan returned inside for water.  When he entered, the scene was almost ethereal. Above the second level, a second line — a New Orleans-style parade – started. About 15-20 people were waving imaginary umbrellas, and rags singing gospel hymns:  This little light of mineI’m gonna let it shineLet it shineLet it shineLet it shine.  Slowly everyone in the vicinity stood up and sang along. Their battered voices struggled to carry a note, but they sang anyway.  “The thing about us,” Jordan said, “we can find happiness anywhere.”  The singing, however, was broken up by a sudden commotion. A medical team was sprinting through the stadium. In one of the locker rooms a man had apparently snuck up on a Louisiana Guardsman, hitting him over the head and attempting to steal his gun. The gun went off in the guardsman’s holster, ripping through his leg.  “Everyone thought someone had a gun in there,” Jordan said. “It just took one person running and everyone started running.”  A flood of people rushed through the doors screaming — a stampede. “There was a little baby sleeping on the ground and someone stepped on its head,” Jordan said.  Police tried to push back the onslaught. One man was badly beaten by a billy club, Lynette said. But the uproar only lasted a short time; there was nothing left to sustain it. Throughout the night, Jordan stood over his sister and mother with a pocketknife.  “Everyone thought someone had a gunin there. It just took one person runningand everyone started running.”  The next morning, buses were lined up near the Superdome. Jordan pushed to the front of the crowd holding his mother’s hand, with Qia next to him. They weren’t going to miss these buses. But as they neared the front, Jordan’s mother collapsed. Her hand, intertwined with Jordan’s, broke away and the crowd swallowed her up.  Jordan turned. “Momma!” he screamed. In a panic, he rushed to find a Guardsman, who pushed through the crowd. And there lying on the concrete was Jordan’s mom, barely coherent.  “You go ahead, baby. Take Qia,” she told Jordan. “I’ll meet up with you.” Jordan bent down and picked up his mother. They followed behind the Guardsman to a bus with “HOUSTON” written on the front. Lynette was escorted up the stairs first, then Qia and Jordan. When the engines started, Jordan rested his head against the window and went to sleep.  The Greatest That Never Was  The team that was supposed to bring home a state title to the Ninth Ward never played a game. The players scattered across the country. Jordan stayed a few days at the Astrodome, then ended up in Baton Rouge, where he finished high school. His mom found a place in Slidell, 90 miles away. Jordan stayed with the team’s offensive coordinator, missed the first few games, and struggled in class. School was difficult. For six months he didn’t return to New Orleans. Carver High School had closed, the main building abandoned and then torn down due to damage from Katrina. Jordan rarely spoke to his old teammates. “There was so much pain there,” he said.  As Mardi Gras approached the following February, he decided he wanted to go back. He called Coach Ricky, who invited Jordan to his house in New Orleans and told Jordan he had something he wanted to give him. Coach Ricky found a coaching job in Baton Rouge (he was never a head coach again) but kept his house on the West Bank back in New Orleans. The oak tree on the front lawn fell forward, thrashing the power lines but leaving the house unscathed.  When Jordan came by, Coach Ricky handed him his sparkling white Carver jersey, the name “Page” scrawled on the back. When the Jamboree was canceled, two days before Katrina, Coach Ricky had kept the team’s jerseys and handed them out to each of the players before Mardi Gras.  On Saturday, Feb. 25, 2006, most of the Carver players were a team again, for one afternoon. The best team the Ninth Ward has never known. They wore their jerseys up and down St. Charles and Napoleon. “We were just joking and reminiscing,” Jordan said. “Just us again.”  There was Russell Roy Jr., who reunited with his parents and made it to Austin. He finished high school there but almost every weekend he’d drive back to New Orleans with his parents, 7.5 hours each way. Their home on Curran Road was submerged in eight feet of water during the hurricane. They gutted the house, fixed the roof and walls, replaced brick – nearly every inch they refurbished. After five years, they moved back in. Russell Jr, went to a junior college in Victorville, California, before finishing at NAIA Langston in Oklahoma. He returned to New Orleans East. He still lives in the house on Curran Road.  There was little Ken McRoyal. He never found his pitbull Trouble after the storm. He ended up in Los Angeles, finished school at Carson High, then walked on at Idaho University. His junior year he earned himself a scholarship, then came back down to L.A. to see family. He was shot and killed on Mother’s Day.  There was running back Terrance Salvant, who took his neighbor’s boat and saved his family. They were taken to Houston, but Terrance struggled to find his footing there. He never played college football, tried his hand at semi-pro ball, and eventually settled back in New Orleans.  Quarterback Larry Congress, “Fat Boy,” was there as well. He found his grandmother. She had been moved to a military-run shelter. Larry left to play high school ball in Florida, then joined Russell Jr. at junior college in California, but he soon lost interest. He now works for the sanitation department in Metairie, outside New Orleans. “I always think my life would have turned out so much better if it wasn’t for Katrina,” he said.  And then, of course, there was Jordan Page, in the front, leading his team. He never passed the ACT. Louisiana Tech and the University of Cincinnati showed interest, but eventually he decided to sign at McNeese State as a Prop 48 candidate, the NCAA’s rule for minimum grade and test score allowance. He had a solid career and after school had a tryout with the Saints, but nothing came of it. Once on a night out on a crowded Bourbon Street, he spotted Melvin Guillard. Jordan hesitated then pushed through the masses to formally introduce himself, but by the time he got to Melvin’s spot, he wasn’t there. Jordan looked around, but it was as if Melvin was an apparition — a guardian angel.  ​Left to Right: #88 Ncozi McCormick, #72 Justin A. Poye, #53 Dennard Johnson, #51 Russell Roy Jr., #52 Jordan Page, Coach Ricky WilliamsPhoto by Kevin Blakes Photography Russell Roy Jr.Jordan PageReunited on Carver's old football field. Left to Right: #72 Justin A. Poye, #52 Jordan Page, Coach Ricky Williams, #53 Dennard Johnson, #51 Russell Roy Jr., #88 Ncozi McCormick<>  “For a while I wanted to make the NFL,” Jordan said. “So I could come back and find him and say thank you.”  Carver High School is being rebuilt, the new building is scheduled to open up where the old one stood in the heart of the Ninth in the fall of 2016. A new football stadium will be built alongside it, funded by Marshall Faulk. The Mighty Rams will be mighty once again.  “I always think my lifewould have turned out so much betterif it wasn’t for Katrina”  Jordan now lives in Lafayette, Louisiana, and works at FedEx. He also has a 1-year-old son.  “Sometimes I wonder what my life would be like if we got to play that year,” he said. “But I know if it wasn’t for Katrina, I wouldn’t have gone to Baton Rouge and I wouldn’t have had this beautiful baby boy.  “How else can you look at it?”  FLINDER BOYD is a former European professional basketball player turned writer. On Twitter he can be found @FlinderBoyd.
When Hurricane Katrina tore through New Orleans 10 years ago, it did unfathomable damage -- including forever changing the lives of players on a high school football team that seemed bound for destiny. #TheLostSeason