Ross Cash’s normal drive from his home in Jonesborough, Tennessee, to Asheville, North Carolina, takes roughly 45 minutes.
Right now, it’s impossible for him to make the journey. The women’s golf coach at UNC Asheville has no idea when he will get back to campus, let alone what will be at campus when he returns. Hurricane Helene ravaged Asheville and other places in the lower Appalachia region, causing historic flooding that has wiped out towns, livelihoods and will take years to recover from.
The UNC Asheville women’s golf team will also have to find a way forward. Its entire facility, an indoor annex just off campus and along the French Broad River, was completely underwater when the river crested over the weekend. A photo of the facility, featured at the top of the story, shows when the waters have receded a bit. There’s a shed, Cash doesn’t know from where, now in the parking lot where only hours before the rains started, numerous cars from the golf team were parked as they returned from the Golfweek Red Sky Classic in Vail, Colorado.
“Everything is going to be ruined,” Cash said. “The whole building was under 15 to 18 feet of water. We thought the structure itself was gone.
“Everything that I ever really cared about in my career, or just personally, I had in my office, too, and it’s just all gone.”
Cash estimates the golf team has more than $150,000 worth of equipment, clothing and other items in its facility. Now, until he and members of the team can get back to campus to examine the full extent of the devastation, they’ll have to wait and see.
Cash and his team were not able to fly into Asheville after the Red Sky Classic, so they flew into Knoxville, Tennessee instead and made the drive down Interstate 40 as Helene was barreling north. Cash’s leadership at the school, athletic director Janet Cone and chancellor Kimberly van Noort, wanted Cash and the team to check in every 30 minutes on the drive because they were worried about mudslides in The Gorge, an area that meanders between the mountains in a river valley on the interstate between Tennessee and North Carolina.
Only a few hours later, flood waters from the river next to the highway washed away portions of the Interstate, including the lanes the golf team was driving on.
The team made it home safely before Helene reached Asheville, and with the students secure on campus, Cash made his trip home. While the team was gone, Cash had all of his player’s cars towed…
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