High school sports have become a prime indicator of the challenges Louisiana faces with climate change: rising sea levels, coastal erosion, more muscular hurricanes, rapid intensification of storms and heavier rainfall.
The gym at South Cameron High, along the state’s southwest coast, was destroyed by Laura, leaving the basketball teams to practice in the cafeteria. St. Louis Catholic High School of Lake Charles, La., just inland, also lost its gym in the storm. Last month, its girls’ basketball team won a second consecutive state title among private schools despite having played every game on the road for two years.
Laura’s destruction continued, tragically, far from the coast. Hicks, an unincorporated community in Vernon Parish, is roughly 100 miles inland. Cynthia Miller, a 14-year-old freshman at Hicks High, was killed when a tree fell on her house. Two men in their 40s died in the parish from heat-related illnesses while clearing hurricane debris as the heat index climbed above 100 degrees. Sixteen thousand acres of timber, worth $70 million, were heavily damaged in the portion of Kisatchie National Forest located in the parish, according to the U.S. Forest Service.
Another catastrophic storm, Hurricane Ida, also punishing with 150 m.p.h. winds, battered southeast Louisiana last September. Grand Isle School, located on a barrier island south of New Orleans, was forced to cancel the 2021-22 basketball season when it had not reopened by January. Its players remained scattered around Louisiana and neighboring states.
The Hicks High Pirates have kept playing and kept winning, but as a vagabond team that has held its designated home games for two seasons at two other schools in Vernon Parish. This past season, players wore the team motto — no gym, no problem — on shirts during pregame warm-ups.

Source: New York Times

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