Storm Front: Two Tigers deal with disaster from a distance
Andrea Fuentes and Dariana Hollingsworth were freshmen, two thousand miles from home, when one of the worst hurricanes in history ravaged their home land. This is their story of challenges, trials and recovery.
Andrea Fuentes did something never before seen by the Missouri coaching staff during the first home match of her Missouri career.
She didn’t make a highlight reel dig; she couldn’t because she was redshirting. She didn’t seize the mantle of leadership with an impassioned speech; instead she kept mostly to herself. But, she did take her phone out while on the bench as Missouri was squaring off with then-No. 10 Kentucky.
The act would have solicited a grave reaction from coach Wayne Kreklow in the past – he had never allowed a player to have her phone even on her person while she was on the bench – and would result in the same admonishment if it were happen today. But September 20, 2017, was different.
That was the day Andrea’s home was hit with the 10th strongest Atlantic hurricane in history. Andrea had her phone out because she hadn’t heard from her father in almost a day.
Meanwhile, teammate and fellow Puerto Rican Dariana Hollingsworth was on the court, holding her ground as a true freshman and finishing the day in Missouri’s top three in kills, aces and digs. This came just moments after she broke down in tears on the court before eventually being settled by volunteer assistant coach Molly Taylor.
Hurricane Maria battered the island, leaving its population of over three million people with extensive damage, widespread power outages and more than 4,600 deaths according to a recent study. The effects of the storm are still being felt by Puerto Rico’s population almost a full year later. It is something Andrea and Dariana were able to able to see upon returning home, and something their teammates and coaches were able to see last weekend when the team traveled to Puerto Rico to play in a tournament.
While the tournament’s main purpose was to prepare the team for its upcoming regular season, Kreklow told reporters prior to leaving for the island that a large reason the team chose that specific tournament was to give Dariana and Andrea a chance to go back to where they started as the island works its way back to being the place they remember.
Dariana hated volleyball when she was first introduced to the sport.
Her father, Juan Hollingsworth, describes Dariana as being a TV-buff as a child. Courage the Cowardly Dog was a no-go because it was too scary, but if SpongeBob Squarepants was on, it was a good guess that Dariana would be somewhere where she could watch it. While she would run around with other kids while Juan played basketball, sports were not her first choice.
However, when Dariana turned 12 years old, her mother decided enough was enough and that she needed to find a sport that was right for her.
“It was kind of a disagreement, but my wife was telling me that (Dariana) was getting kind of fat,” Juan said. “She would actually agree that she was kind of heavyset and that’s when my wife decided to get her involved in a sport and volleyball was the first thing.”
After Dariana came home from her first practice unimpressed, her parents had to get creative to keep her in the sport. Dariana was promised $10 after each practice. If she still didn’t like it after 10 practices, she could collect all $100 and wouldn’t have to play anymore.
Not a bad deal for a 12-year-old whose favorite hobby was watching cartoons.
But by the fifth or sixth practice, it was Dariana pestering her parents about being late for practice.
As Dariana grew into her frame – she now stands 6-foot-2 – she began to dominate the sport on the island. She quickly progressed through the ranks of Puerto Rican volleyball all the way up to being selected to play with the Puerto Rican National Team while still in high school. Somewhere along the way, she ran into Andrea, who was on a similar rise toward the top.
Unlike Dariana, Andrea was never given much of a choice to play volleyball, picking up the sport when she was a 4-year-old.
Her father, Roberto Fuentes, was a former player in the Red Sox organization and had also played professional basketball on Puerto Rico. His vision was always for Andrea to find her way in a sport that would pay for her schooling and possibly provide for her afterwards.
“When I started to play (volleyball) with her, I noticed her hands were so soft by that age,” Roberto said. “I have a lot of friends who played volleyball, so I asked some friends to show her in a volleyball club.”
While Andrea never struggled with the sport, she just went through the motions until she turned 11 years old. From there, she rose up through the Puerto Rican club system and eventually made her way into the Puerto Rican National Team’s youth system.
With both being the same age and on the same teams, it was only a matter of time before Kreklow and staff found them.
“The better Puerto Rican club teams will always try to get over to the mainland to play some type of tournament here,” Kreklow said. “We saw them in Florida at one of those tournaments and that’s when they got on our radar.”
When both decided to go to Missouri, the time allotted to travel the 2,112 miles to Columbia arrived quickly. Dariana left San Juan the day after her senior prom while Andrea stayed behind a few more days because of a volleyball tournament but similarly left a week after her final high school dance.
As volleyball activities picked up, both were forced to adjust to the dramatic differences between San Juan and Columbia. They stayed in Missouri for two months of summer workouts before returning home for a brief break prior to school starting.
“I got homesick quite a bit because of how different it was,” Andrea said. “My teammates kind of knew. I mean I never openly said (I was homesick), but they could sense it. So they would always kind of be laughing with me, making me laugh, pushing me around, joking around, trying to be supportive.”
However, no level of bonding, no level of acclimation could have prepared Dariana or Andrea for the catastrophe that would blow its way into their lives less than a month into their collegiate careers.
The first hurricane was supposed to be the worst.
As Dariana sat in Boise State’s locker room scrolling through her phone ahead of the Tigers’ match against then-No. 10 Brigham Young, she noticed news spreading of a storm rapidly approaching her home.
It had began as all hurricanes do; a tropical storm in the eastern Atlantic before the warm, deep waters near Cape Verde allowed for the hurricane to condense above it and begin its journey east. Soon, it had a name as it strengthened into a Category 5 hurricane.
Irma.
Hurricane Irma barrelled its way toward Puerto Rico, causing many to fear the worst. Days after Missouri left Boise State, the hurricane narrowly missed the island to its north, saving the island from the worst of the storm but still leaving thousands without power, including the Hollingsworths.
Dariana and Andrea were able to breathe again as the after effects of Irma dissipated, ironically, over Missouri a week later.
But, no sooner had the island caught its breath as Irma swept past it than it was forced to prepare for another storm that was just as menacing: Maria. While the Hollingsworths would miss the storm because they were traveling to the Kentucky match, Roberto Fuentes would remain in Puerto Rico.
Roberto didn’t even bother taking the boards off of his windows that had been set up in the event of Irma finding its way to his home in Guaynabo. But, like many other Puerto Ricans, he was unsure whether the storm would be real or if it was another false alarm. The reality of the situation was confirmed when he was unable to sleep as the winds of the storm swept through his neighborhood, ripping leaves off trees and rattling anything that wasn’t secured. It was 10 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2017.
By 5 a.m., Roberto was still awake and was listening as the full power of the storm made landfall, with the wind causing his garage door swing open, at one point almost whipping it up and onto his house. At four separate times during the day, Roberto was forced to climb onto his roof in the middle of the storm and remove leaves that had been ripped from the trees and were now clogging his drains, causing water to start seeping into his home. This was all while winds that reached up to 155 mph, just two miles per hour short of being a Category 5 hurricane. It was the first Category 4 hurricane to hit Puerto Rico since 1932.
Meanwhile, Andrea’s mother, Edilsa Sepulveda, was staying with Andrea in her dorm in South Hall ahead of her daughter’s first home match. When Andrea woke up around noon, the parent who wasn’t in Missouri was unaccounted for. He would remain that way for the next several hours as his daughter would try to call or text anybody she could to find out his whereabouts.
As the match drew near, Andrea was barely holding it together when Alyssa Munlyn walked up to her and asked if she could give her a hug.
‘You can’t hug me right now because I’m going to start crying,’ Andrea said.
Munlyn hugged her anyway.
Around 4 p.m., the storm began to move away from Roberto’s house, leaving an alien landscape behind it.
He noticed his fence and garage door were damaged as he pulled his black Jeep Grand Cherokee onto the road, but nothing too serious had befallen his home. Tree limbs and sometimes trees themselves littered the road, impeding his route as he made his way around the neighborhood.
After surveying the damage in his immediate area, Roberto’s thoughts turned to his daughter. She had been worried sick before the storm had hit; her condition now couldn’t have been much better.
Cell phone service was out in his area, as it was for much of the island. Roberto stayed in his car, sticking his phone out his car window as he drove to see if he could find a bubble of service as he drove down a highway. The route, which would normally have taken him 20 minutes, more than twice that long.
When he finally found a spot where his phone could get through later that night, he was able to call Andrea and reassure her that he was safe, along with the rest of her extended family. Nobody in the Hollingsworth or Fuentes family was hurt due to the storm.
Despite not being on the island during the storm, the Hollingsworths still felt the effects of Maria immediately. They had been hearing from Dariana’s older brother, Valarian, throughout the storm using WhatsApp’s video calling option.
With an idea of what to expect but not a complete picture, the Hollingsworths were scheduled to fly home from St. Louis on Sunday, Sept. 24. But, because of the extensive damage and the limited flights going in and out of the island, they were forced to wait until the following Thursday to board a plane with the intention of getting them to Puerto Rico.
Upon seeing the island from the air, Deborah Hollingsworth burst into tears along with many others on the plane. The tears didn’t stop as the couple waded through hundreds of people covering the floors of an airport without air conditioning, waiting for their flights away from the devastation.
Both families were without power for three months following the storm. On Dec. 6, around 3:30 p.m., the lights in the Hollingsworth’s home came on. Deborah and a few other neighbors ran outside and hugged the Florida electricians on the street who had flown in to help rebuild.
Still, the aftermath of the storm was noticeable a few weeks later when Dariana and Andrea returned to Puerto Rico for the first time since the storms had taken their toll. The sights ranged from the rebuilding to the unrecognizable. Andrea sometimes missed the highway exit she had always used to return home because the trees that had served as a landmark were gone.
The Hollingsworths and Fuentes’ families were among the lucky, as large portions of rural Puerto Rico were without until early August, 2018. The rebuilding process was still in full swing when the Dariana and Fuentes returned to Puerto Rico, this time in the company of their teammates and coaches as they arrived for the Puerto Rico Invitational.
Both players played under a little more pressure, as large portions of the crowds watching were made of their family members, many of whom had never been able to see them play in a Missouri uniform.
Not only did the pair play, but they dominated as Missouri won the tournament, only losing three games in three matches. Dariana was named to the all-tournament team while Andrea led all other Missouri players in assists in the championship match against Arizona State, tallying 32.
The hurricanes’ visible effects are starting to disappear as the island rebuilds itself, but the memory of what happened will stick with its population for the foreseeable future. As Dariana and Andrea prepare for their first home game this Friday, almost a year after both were forced to watch their home be torn apart from two thousand miles away, they choose to look at the events not as something that tore down the island, but allowed its resiliency to push through the wreckage and create a better home for the people affected.
“We’re an island reborn,” Dariana said. “We need to take this and make ourselves better.”