Saturday’s game between Colgate University and Furman University was cancelled due to Hurricane Florence, but just because the game won’t be made up doesn’t mean the Raiders’ football program isn’t walking away with a win.
Colgate head coach Dan Hunt announced that his team released their hotel rooms so storm evacuees would have a place to go for shelter. Also, the team, which was supposed to eat Chick-fil-A meals on the way home from Greenville, South Carolina, will donate their food to storm evacuees.
“We immediately gave up our hotel rooms so that rooms are now available for those coming inland,” Hunt said in a statement. “We still bought the meals we were going to have and requested that the hotel serve those meals to the people who have been relocated, on us.”
Hunt clearly sees the bigger picture, and where football sits in it all.
Photo: Colgate University
“It’s obviously a disappointment that we are not playing but at the end of the day, there are decisions bigger than football that need to be made for the safety of a lot of people,” Hunt said. “This is 100 percent the right decision.
“At the end of the day, you have to look at the big picture and the safety of everyone involved,” he told said. “And by that I mean the teams and families, but also the allotment of resources used for the game that could be better used somewhere else.”
Hunt has been honored with the Patriot League Coach of the Year title twice in the last three seasons. With a move like this for Hurricane Florence evacuees, he’s definitely a contender for Coach of the Year again, no matter what the Raiders’ record ends up being.
Colgate, a Division-I Patriot League program from New York, will next face Lafayette on Sept. 22.
