Texas women's head coach Dave O'Neill was listening to the news and watching social media reports of the devastation from flooding rains that were heading toward Houston when Hurricane Harvey headed in that direction.
The idea that families were going to be in trouble caught O'Neill's attention. He spends his time coaching young people, and closer to home, he is a father with very young children. When he heard that flat-bottomed boats were going to be needed to help rescue people caught in the flooding, he knew two things - he had access to flat-bottomed boats and he needed to get to Houston to help.
The first person he told was his wife, who was napping with one of the children. "I woke her and said I have to go to Houston. She looked at me and said, 'OK, be safe.'" The second person he told was Texas assistant coach Kyndal Mancho.
"I texted her and asked if she would go to Houston with me, they need people with flat-bottomed boats. She said yes, and I told her I'll meet you at the boat house in 15 minutes."
Once O'Neill and Mancho had the boat loaded onto a trailer, filled gas tanks, got supplies they thought they may need, they headed into the storm.
O'Neill, who is in Sarasota coaching the Serbian women's pair, who also row for him at Texas, recounted how he and Mancho fought their way through flooded highways, trying to get to somewhere they could help, and then were trapped on a highway overpass surrounded on both sides. It was just after midnight and the storm was raging around them.
At that point, O'Neill said, a large pickup truck driving through the water "up to the grille" told them there was a family with eight children nearby that needed help.
"We launched the boat from the overpass, and we were going through city streets until we got to this family."
O'Neill and Mancho got the children into the boat and drove them to safety and went back out again. "We were driving the boat and had seven children in it, all under the age of 8. We had to leave the mother behind. We had one kid with really advanced cancer and people who had plastic bags filled with their things and the water was gushing by all round us. I thought, man, this is real."
By the time they were done, they had helped rescue 25 children. When had to leave, they left the boat behind to continue being used.
"I got an email later from the guy we left it with who said they had saved another 150 people in it."
The night is not one that O'Neill will forget.
"There was this one little boy without shoes I asked him where his shoes were. He told me they were his school schools and he didn’t want to ruin them. He had on his school polo and he was worried about his school shoes. He was such a sweet kid," he said.
After returning home, O'Neill summed up his overnight efforts on Twitter.
First trip to #Houston. Glad Kyndal and I could help the effort. Heading home to hug the kids. #besafe pic.twitter.com/fIrp0nPSg0
— Dave O'Neill (@TexasDaveO) August 28, 2017
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