Rivals for Relief: Levasseur, Seahawks top Freeport on a night that was bigger than football

Oct. 21--SANTA ROSA BEACH -- Mason Levasseur thought he was going to die.

He was sitting in his room, its walls convulsing as winds in excess of 100 mph tried to pry loose a home from its foundation. Outside, trees and utility poles snapped like toothpicks as Hurricane Michael made landfall on Oct. 10 in Panama City.

His mother, Connie, was in her room. Both were trying to gather their frightened dogs as sheer terror crept into their own minds.

"Are we gonna be alive?" Mason said. "That's what I was thinking. My mom, we were thinking the same thing. We didn't know if we were gonna see another day."

That's when the ceiling caved in.

It fell first in Mason's room, drywall cracking and crumbling under such a sheer force of nature. Moving quickly, Mason moved into his parents' bedroom to be with his mother. Neither saw the living room ceiling cave in, too.

They could only hear it, the sound of their one-story home on the east side of the Hathaway Bridge being torn apart.

In that moment, Mason wished his family had evacuated like so many others. He wished his family would not have stayed to weather the storm.

Football was furthest thing from his mind. A senior linebacker on the South Walton football team, Mason Levasseur had no idea five long days later he would be back at practice. That nine days later he would play the game of his life.

That football, an activity that seems so trivial with a FEMA station erected only blocks from his home, would play such a pivotal role in putting the lives of he and his family back together.

*****

The game wasn't even supposed to happen.

South Walton was scheduled to host Rutherford on Friday night. The Rams -- like so many other schools from the Panama City area -- were not ready to play football again. Some schools might not play again until next fall, their players and coaches scattered to the wind, displaced or evicted by the storm, and their campuses and practice facilities tossed asunder.

It left an opening on coach Phil Tisa's schedule. Across the Choctawhatchee Bay, it also left a void on Freeport coach Shaun Arntz's schedule; the Bulldogs were supposed to play Bozeman.

That gave Arntz and Tisa, longtime friends, an idea. Both of their schools had already started to engage in relief efforts, raising donations and collecting supplies to be sent into affected areas and help families like the Levasseurs, but Tisa and Arntz believed they could do more.

They could play each other, a "Battle of the Bay" for Bay County.

"It was an idea that we had started throwing together toward the end of last week," Tisa said Wednesday. "Really it started out with just getting a game.

"It started out that way and then we were like, 'Well, what can we do with this to help?' It just kind of blossomed from there."

With the idea in place, the two coaches and the two schools went to work on the logistics. South Walton was picked to host, Arntz said, so the Seahawks could have their senior night; Freeport was guaranteed at least one more home game with Northview scheduled Nov. 2.

Per FHSAA rules, the game wouldn't count toward either team's record or playoff resume, but the two schools were determined to make it count for something.

Entry fees would be waived in favor of donations. Trucks would be loaded with supplies; flyers were printed asking for toothbrushes, soap, hand-sanitizer, diapers, non-perishable food and anything else that might help. The South Walton band, which was running the concession stand, collected work gloves.

Sensing an opportunity, Freeport teacher Hillary Williams took inspiration from Choctaw and Niceville. The two schools had shirts made bearing "Stronger Together" across the chest before their matchup only two days after the storm hit.

"We've made shirts for Battle of the Bay in the past, so tonight we just wanted to make shirts to make sure that all proceeds go to hurricane relief," Williams said.

Working with fellow Freeport teacher Vanessa Bump, Williams worked with a pair of local vendors -- Deanna's Embroidery in Ponce de Leon and School Spirit Supplies, Inc. in Crestview -- to get 600 shirts, 300 from each vendor, turned around in only three days. The vendors sold the shirts at cost.

By Friday night, every other person dotting the stands donned the gray T-shirts with "RIVALS for RELIEF" and "Panhandle Strong" across the chest. The coaching staffs on both sides of the field used them as mandatory uniforms.

"We could go with a color both our schools kinda use," Williams said. "That way it kinda fits and brought our unity together."

Selling the shirts for $12 apiece, Bump said she and Williams had only 73 left when they headed home Friday night. They hope to sell the rest next week on campus.

Between shirt sales and the donation buckets, the two schools raised more than $7,000, Tisa said.

"To be able to give back because we can just means a lot," Tisa said. "And the fact that our two communities were able come together -- we're rivals every time we step on the field, the court, whatever, but to be able to pull together and do this as a joint effort means a lot."

*****

Three days after the storm passed, Mason Levasseur and his family started to pick up the pieces.

The devastation outside was unimaginable. The National Hurricane Center later said the storm was the third-most intense hurricane to make landfall in the United States in recorded history, but the pictures didn't do it justice.

In a way, living through the storm was the only way to mitigate the horror, Mason said.

"I don't think I could have come back to what we had," he said. "It would have upset me too much. I don't know if I would have been able to continue."

The Levasseurs spent their Saturday and Sunday cleaning up as much as they could. Unlike some, their home was still livable.

Mason's father, Charles, stripped off the roof and started laying down new tar paper. Having lived in Pensacola, he has dealt with this kind of devastation before.

Inside, he and Connie tried coordinate with insurance companies and relief workers to organize repairs when not picking pieces of their ceiling off the floor. Mason helped where he could.

"That's gonna be a little bit of a process," Charles said. "But we'll build it back."

By Monday, Mason was back in school and back at football practice. For that, Connie was grateful. School and football could be his escape.

"Just getting him back to his new normal and into school and back playing football was all that we really wanted to do," she said.

When practice ended, Mason went home and went back to work, cleaning what he could before bed and school the next day. It's a process, he said, one that will likely bleed into the coming months as the weather gets colder and the days shorter.

"We're working," he said. "We're getting there. It's a slow process, but it's happening."

*****

The trailer was hard to miss.

Hooked up to a crimson Chevy Silverado, the 20-foot utility hauler was parked just inside the main gate of South Walton's football field, adorned in hand-painted banners. The side closest to the gate read "RIVALS 4 RELIEF" painted in each school's colors. The side closest to the field read "#850STRONG."

At 6 p.m. Friday, one hour before kickoff, it was almost a quarter full with supplies and surrounded by local TV and newspaper cameras on hand to document the generosity.

The trailer belongs to Bruce Bates' father-in-law. Bates, a science teacher and the offensive line coach at South Walton, said his father-in-law bought it to move he and his wife into the area from West Virginia. He likes to joke that he will use it "for my daughter's future race car," Bates said.

Monday, he used it to race supplies to a FEMA station in Lynn Haven. Along with coaches Derrick Bumpers, Dave Page, Dave Roberts and nine players, Bates piled the trailer halfway to ceiling from end to end with supplies the school had collected.

The drive was heartbreaking.

"I've lived here my whole life and we've rode out every hurricane that's come through here, and I've never witnessed anything like the destruction that is over there," Bates said. "I was here for Opal, Ivan, all those big storms, and it's just nothing like those people are experiencing right now.

"Downed power lines. Trees. It looked like a giant had just walked through the woods and just snapped off pine trees 15 and 20 feet above the ground. Homes destroyed. Roofs of houses layin' over away from the house and almost in the road.

"There's a couple times where we actually had to get out and spot the top of the trailer to make sure that we weren't gonna be taking power lines down as we drove through there. It was just crazy."

When they arrived, they unloaded the trailer and did what they could to aid the relief workers. Some of the players helped people out to their cars with grocery carts full of food and water. Others cooked hot meals.

Saturday, Bates did it all over again. The trailer was filled once more Friday night, piled halfway to the ceiling, end to end with the generosity of human beings. Freeport, too, filled a school bus, which headed to Cottondale, a small town just west of Marianna, on Saturday morning with Bulldog players ready to help in any way they could.

"This is where I grew up," Bates said. "This is my home. There's nowhere else in the world I'd rather live than right here. I grew up in Walton County, but everything in the Panhandle, to me, is one.

"To be able to provide assistance to people that need it in the time of need, it just means everything."

*****

Mason Levasseur lingered on the field longer than most after the game Friday night.

He talked with his friends and parents and took pictures, holding on to what might be his final moments on a field he had dedicated the past four years of his life to. A single bank of stadium lights painted the quiet scene in long shadows.

Only 45 minutes earlier, the stadium, filled nearly to capacity, had roared.

South Walton led for much of the game, growing the advantage to 20-6 when tailback Elias Foreman rumbled into the end zone for a 22-yard touchdown three minutes into the third quarter.

Freeport didn't go away quietly. Running back Brandon Siples scored two of his three touchdowns in the fourth quarter to cut the Seahawks' lead to 20-18.

After forcing a South Walton punt, Freeport took over at its own 14 with three minutes left. Three plays later, the Bulldogs faced fourth-and-1 with the game on the line.

"We had a blitz called, and I saw it was power," Mason said. "I rushed straight through. I got held a little bit, but I rushed straight through.

"I just knew that I had to stop him."

The fear he felt when the ceiling collapsed, the shock when looking over the devastation, the pain of working to make a house a home once more, the joy of seeing so many come to his aid and the aid of others, everything he had suppressed to just keep on living, Mason Levasseur channeled it all into his left shoulder.

Siples never stood a chance.

When the play was blown dead, Mason leapt into the air, meeting defensive back JM Allen for a chest bump three feet off the ground.

On the sideline, his coach beamed with pride.

"We talked the other day and I just told him how fortunate he was, and he goes 'You know, you're right,'" Tisa said afterward. "For him to come out and have a game like this on senior night after going through what he's been through, I couldn't be prouder for him."

In the stands, Connie fought back to tears.

"I'm so proud of him," she said. "We didn't know if this night was gonna happen and they've worked real hard for four years. To be able to see them have their senior night and play one more football game, it meant everything to us. We just didn't know if that was gonna happen and it kind of got us through everything.

"It's like everything's gonna be OK. We're gonna get through all of it."

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