PILGER — A group of Arlington student athletes and coaches walked down what remained of First Street in Pilger Wednesday. Buckets in hand, they were ready to help.
The street, which had once been lined with homes and businesses, including the Farmers Co-op, was now empty — lined with large holes, remnants of foundations and littered with corn, twisted metal and other debris — following the June 16 twin tornadoes that hit the town.
The only structure that remained, an old co-op building used for storage, was in the process of being demolished.
“It’s good for our kids to see this,” said Morgan Smeal, a second-grade teacher at Arlington Elementary and an assistant girls basketball coach.
Volleyball coach Jessica Scott spearheaded the effort to bring the 18 students and coaches to volunteer in the battered town after seeing some of the devastation while taking her team to a camp in Wayne.
“Even just seeing that little bit was a huge eye-opener for the volleyball girls when we went up there for camp,” Scott said. “It’s unreal when you hear about it on the TV and then you get here and you’ve just never seen anything like it until it happens to surrounding areas and/or yourself.”
“As a coach and athletes that most of these kids here today are, we think of smaller surrounding schools as rivals; however, in the end we all come together and help each other out,” Scott said.
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