By Will Kimmey
September 6, 2005

Players, coaches and administrators from Tulane and New Orleans moved moved to campuses in Louisiana, New Mexico and Texas after Hurricane Katrina left metropolitan New Orleans flooded and without power.

“It’s been pretty hectic; we’re moving about 150 or 200 student-athletes,” Tulane media relations director Donna Turner said from Dallas, where the school’s athletics department was taking refuge. New Orleans, a state school, moved its athletic department to Baton Rouge.

Tulane’s baseball and women’s basketball teams moved to Texas Tech in Lubbock, some 850 miles from the school’s New Orleans campus. Texas Tech will provide schooling, housing and meals to the Tulane students and will find time and space for the teams to practice, meet and work out.

“We wanted to do something to help out New Orleans,” Texas Tech athletic director Gerald Myers said. “We talked to (Tulane athletic director) Rick (Dickson) and asked him about baseball and helping out Tulane athletics. As we talked, we added women’s basketball because we have the facilities and the ability to handle that. Our coaches, staff, administration and our athletes are pleased to help out. We felt that if we could do anything, we needed to, and we’re pleased that it’s worked out.”

UNO’s baseball team will receive the same treatment 1,100 miles from home at New Mexico State’s Las Cruces campus. The two schools were Sun Belt Conference rivals until NMSU left for the Western Athletic Conference beginning this academic year.

“New Mexico State and UNO have been friendly rivals in the Sun Belt Conference for the past several years, and the hand of friendship extended by the Aggies in our time of need is deeply appreciated,” New Orleans baseball coach Tom Walter said.

UNO’s men’s and women’s basketball players went to UT Tyler. New Orleans will offer online classes beginning in October and hopes to open its main campus in the spring.

Tulane’s baseball team flew into Lubbock on Sept. 6. The program is coming off its best season in school history, one in which it set a Tulane record with 56 wins, was ranked No. 1 for nine weeks and reached the College World Series for the second time.

Texas A&M will serve as host to four Tulane teams—men’s basketball, women’s swimming and diving, women’s volleyball and women’s soccer—and the football team will move to Louisiana Tech. The men’s and women’s tennis teams headed to Rice, and the men’s and women’s golf teams went to Southern Methodist. Tulane’s cross-country teams will not compete this fall.

“I can’t say enough about the tremendous outpouring of support we have received from every single person we have spoken to over the last several days, not only from these five schools, but from other schools we contacted and our conference office,” Dickson said. “Our priority was to continue to provide a high quality academic and athletic experience for our athletes. This plan could not have come together without their help.”

Cincinnati coach Brian Cleary, Tulane’s recruiting coordinator from 1994-96, was calling and emailing fellow baseball coaches to get them involved in an online college coaches charity auction set up by Virginia Tech men’s basketball coach Seth Greenberg. Greenberg hoped to get coaches from from every sport to participate and the auction site (www.allcoachescare.com) already featured Big 12 Conference basketball tournament tickets donated by Texas Tech coach Bob Knight and tickets to a Notre Dame-Navy football game.

“I can only imagine how difficult it is to carry on for the people of New Orleans and the other areas affected by Katrina,” Cleary said. “The worst disaster we have seen will need to be met with as much support as can be provided and so I am anxious to help. So many lives have been disrupted and will need significant help to return to normal.

“As someone who lived in the New Orleans area for three years as an assistant coach at Tulane and who still knows many people in the area, I feel a personal obligation to lend as much assistance as I can.”