Felipe Fernandez called his mom Monday morning to find out the damage.
Hurricane Irma had just gone through Florida, and Fernandez, from Tampa, needed to know what happened. There was no answer on the other end.
Fernandez called two or three times with no better result.
Later that day, however, while Fernandez sat in class, his mom called back. Everything, for Fernandez at least, was OK.
“It’s just instant relief," Fernandez said of the call. "It’s a wave of ‘I had no more anxiety at all.’ It’s hard to put into words, honestly.”
Perhaps that best characterized Hurricane Irma for at least three Bobcats: A wave of terror, but eventually relief.
For Fernandez and kicker Louie Zervos, it was supposed to be so much worse. Zervos' hometown of Tarpon Springs, a suburb of Tampa, was supposed to be underwater, too.
On the western side of the state, Tarpon Springs is north of St. Petersburg and northwest of Tampa. And it would have been destroyed if Irma had unleashed its full wrath on that particular city.
“The surge was supposed to be 12 feet," Zervos said. "That would have wiped out our whole town and most of the other counties. It was only like a two-foot surge, so it wasn’t bad at all. Just like a heavy day of rain.”
Zervos' family evacuated his house, as did Fernandez's.
Fernandez's family, however, decided to stay in a hotel. Zervos's family headed up to the panhandle, near Pensacola, or in Alabama.
Then the waiting game took place, as Irma unleashed its Category 4 status on the entire state of Florida. Irma made landfall on the morning of Sept. 10 with winds over 100 mph.
“The whole weekend I couldn’t eat," Fernandez said. "I’m not an anxious person, and the whole weekend I couldn’t eat. Just thinking if my family and friends are going to be all right, is my house going to be there come Monday? Luckily, everything worked out for the best.”
The Bobcats were already back in Athens as the storm made landfall, but even as the team went to Purdue for a Friday night game just days before, their thoughts were still with their families in Florida.
“It was very stressful, but I won’t say that dictated my game," safety Javon Hagan said. "I just prayed over it.”
Zervos's family had plans to fly up for the Purdue game on Friday night, not knowing what fate waited after the trip.
“My friends called me, told me they’re going to move out," Zervos said. "Close friends boarded up my house, cause they didn’t know how bad the damage was going to be. They pretty much told me they boarded it up and left as quickly as they could.”
It's impossible to know the fear and anxiety that one could feel, just under 1,000 miles from home as a hurricane is barreling toward the place they called home, ready to tear apart everything that they knew. But Fernandez found out on Twitter.
He checked his feed to see Irma on a radar map, placed overtop of a map of Ohio, his adopted home.
Irma was bigger.
"That was when I was like ‘OK, this is something serious,’” Fernandez recalled.
So it wasn't just the western side of Florida that was hit, it was the entire state. Hagan, from Jacksonville, has felt the impacts, too.
Hagan contacts his mom every day, so naturally, his conversations drifted to the oncoming hurricane.
"She’s good, the backyard just flooded a bit," Hagan said. "The apartment across the street flooded up to car level, halfway. It’s just flooded, but the home is safe. Mom is safe.”
Downtown Jacksonville has experienced major flooding in recent days. Hagan's house on the south side of the city is fine.
There are 10 other Bobcats on the roster that call Florida home, from all different places across the state. Miami, Tampa, Jacksonville, Gainesville, all homes to Bobcats of every position on the roster, have all been hit hard by the hurricane.
As of Thursday afternoon, 6.8 million people are without power — a third of the state's population, according to CBS News. About 13,000 Floridians are still in shelters, and 69 people across the Caribbean and U.S. have died as a result of the hurricane. Twenty-six have died in Florida.
The damage could also be upward of $55 billion, which will takes years to rebuild. Those in Athens have sent their thoughts and prayers back down to Florida, however, still hoping for the best for friends, family and community members.
For those three, it will be different when they return to Florida. But in a sense, they were lucky. Their families are safe.
“It was a big relief," Zervos said. "My house is gonna be there when I go back.”
