Amid Hurricane Helene’s destruction, sports organizations launch relief efforts to aid storm victims

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — UNC Asheville soccer player Xander Naguib and his teammates are preparing to spend the next several weeks — or perhaps months — at the state’s sister school in Charlotte, where they will be housed, fed and be able to continue playing sports.

Given what Naquib has been through in the last week, he couldn’t be more grateful. He and his teammates are among many programs in the area that have relocated to other schools in what one athletic director called a stirring example of colleges helping each other amid dire need.

Naguib and his friends were in Asheville when Hurricane Helene arrived, leaving a path of destruction in its wake with more than 200 people dead and countless others still missing. Without power, water and cell phone service and their off-campus apartment taking on water, Naguib was forced to evacuate even as flooding washed away local roads.

“It felt like we were blocked off from the world,” Naguib said.

Hours later, Naguib found a hotel and contacted his worried parents in Frisco, Texas, who quickly booked him on the next flight out of Asheville.

With UNC Asheville’s campus closed for the next 10 days and classes cancelled until at least Oct. 28, the school has asked students to return home or placed them on other campuses. Athletic teams have the benefit of being with their teammates; for Naguib, it means living and playing soccer two hours away in Charlotte.

UNC Charlotte athletic director Mike Hill had reached out to Asheville AD Janet Cone to offer any assistance in the wake of the disaster.

Cone took him up on his offer, and Charlotte will host Asheville’s men’s and women’s soccer teams and volleyball squad in the days ahead, putting them up at an overflow dormitory, feeding them meals in the cafeteria and allowing them to use their athletic facilities. They will have access to medical attention to treat injuries.

“We want them to feel comfortable,” said Chris Thomasson, Charlotte’s executive associate athletic director for internal affairs. “A lot of people worked hard to make it happen. And our coaching staffs have been terrific. It’s interesting, on the field or the court our coaches are fierce competitors, but when they heard Asheville needed help they were like, ‘whatever we can do — anything.'”

UNC Charlotte hasn’t been the only school to step up.

Asheville’s tennis teams will be living and practicing at High Point University. Its swim teams will stay at Gardner-Webb University. The golf teams will be head to Wofford College next week.

Cone is still working to get all the school’s athletes placed, including the school’s basketball teams as part of what she called “a logistical puzzle with a whole lot of pieces.”

But she’s confident the school will get through it.

“The world of college sports is a really tight-knit group,” Cone said. “It’s been really heartening for me to see. So many people have gone out of their way to help us. I’ve received calls from schools all over the state and all over the country saying, ‘what can we do?’ There is a lot of trouble in this world and people sometimes do crazy things, but at times like this it makes you feel good to the see the care in people’s hearts.”

UNC Asheville isn’t the only college impacted by the hurricane. Schools such as Tusculum, Lees-McRae, Western Carolina, North Greenville, Appalachian State and Montreat are among those whose campuses were hit hard, including sports facilities. Fall sports schedules are severely disrupted.

Still, colleges and high school sports teams are finding their way.

With no water available in Greene County (Tennessee), Division II college Tusculum had its teams leave the Greeneville campus with help from sports rivals, a pair of former Tusculum coaches, alumni, friends and neighbors. Josh Ealy, Tusculum’s vice president for athletics, said the school won’t be able to do anything on campus until water service resumes.

Tusculum’s football team is staying in spare space at a residence hall and eating on campus at rival Carson-Newman in Jefferson City. The Pioneers are practicing at Jefferson County High School, which is coached by Spencer Riley, who was Tusculum’s offensive line coach for seven seasons.

The Pioneers’ women’s soccer team is in Baneberry, Tennessee, with former head coach Mike Joy reaching out to family and friends to host the players. Joy helped coach many of the current players who are practicing at Lakeway Christian Academy in White Pine.

The men’s soccer team accepted help from rival Lincoln Memorial University to stay, eat and train on campus in Harrogate.

Lincoln Memorial also is serving as the host for games for both of Tusculum’s soccer teams and volleyball. Tusculum’s first-year women’s volleyball coach Hannah Barrett tapped into her connections for her team to stay with people in the Knoxville area. Her team is practicing at the University of Tennessee.

“This has been a tremendous undertaking which came together very quickly due to the hard work of so many people,” Ealy said.

Cone said she is optimistic that UNC Asheville’s fall sports teams will play close to a full schedule, even if games will mostly be away from campus.

On Friday, Cone and her staff returned to Asheville to retrieve sports equipment and uniforms that were left behind in the evacuation process. They plan to distribute them to their students hosted at other schools.

Returning home was tough. The destruction to the tight-knit community is unspeakable.

“I can’t emphasize this enough, sports is a very, very small part of all this because we’re talking about people who’ve lost their lives and their homes — they lost everything,” Cone said. “It’s my job to try help our student-athletes get back to some sense of normalcy and our staff is working to do the best we can to help them.”

For Naguib, that means the world.

“If we are able to play, that’s all that matters,” Naguib said. “I feel thankful and blessed to have a place to stay and do what I love.”

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AP journalists Teresa Walker, Aaron Beard and Barry Bedlan contributed.

___ AP’s coverage of the hurricane:

REGINA – Saskatchewan Party Leader Scott Moe say if re-elected his party would increase and reintroduce a pair of tax credits designed to help current and prospective homeowners.

Moe says the First-Time Homebuyers Tax Credit would increase to $15,000 from $10,000.

He says the Saskatchewan Party would also reintroduce the Home Renovation Tax Credit, which was a temporary program the government piloted between 2020 and 2022.

That tax credit would allow homeowners to claim up to $4,000 in renovation expenses on their income taxes.

May says seniors would be able to claim up to $5,000.

The provincial election is set for Oct. 28.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 4, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

MONTREAL – In a victory for air travellers, the Supreme Court of Canada has upheld rules that bolster compensation for passengers subjected to delays and damaged luggage on international flights.

On Friday, the country’s highest court unanimously dismissed an appeal by a group of airlines that challenged Canada’s passenger rights charter.

Air Canada, Porter Airlines Inc. and 16 other appellants had argued that the Air Passenger Protection Regulations launched in 2019 violate global standards and should be rendered invalid for trips into and out of the country.

The legal challenge, which kicked off that year, said that by imposing heftier compensation requirements for lost baggage and late or cancelled flights abroad, the regulations exceeded the Canadian Transportation Agency’s authority and breach international rules known as the Montreal Convention.

In December, the Federal Court of Appeal dismissed the carriers’ case, with the exception of one regulation that applies to the temporary loss of baggage.

The Canadian Transportation Agency and attorney general argued there is no clash between passenger protections and the Montreal Convention, a multilateral treaty signed by Canada in 2001.

On Friday, the Supreme Court effectively agreed, stating in a decision written by Justice Malcolm Rowe that the regulations “do not conflict with the Montreal Convention.”

Under the federal rules, passengers must be compensated with up to $2,400 if they were denied boarding because a trip was overbooked — so-called flight bumping. Delays and other payments for cancelled flights warrant compensation of up to $1,000.

Travellers can receive up to about $2,300 for lost or damaged baggage, though the exact number fluctuates based on exchange rates.

The airlines’ argument that the regulations contravene the Montreal Convention rested on that agreement’s “exclusivity principle.” The convention states that any “action for damages” — a lawsuit seeking financial compensation, for example — relating to an international flight is subject exclusively to the conditions of the treaty, rather than any other set of rules.

However, the court found that while actions for damages are pursued case by case, Canada’s passenger rights charter lays out a blanket approach and thus falls outside the Montreal Convention.

“The regulations do not provide for an ‘action for damages’ because they do not provide for individualized compensation; rather, they create a consumer protection scheme that operates in parallel with the Montreal Convention,” Rowe wrote.

“Accordingly, they do not fall within the scope of the Montreal Convention’s exclusivity principle.”

Since the rules came into force five years ago, the government has taken further steps to tighten them, a move prompted by scenes of airport chaos, endless security lines and overflowing baggage halls in 2022 during a surge in air travel after COVID-19-related shutdowns.

In 2023, it amended the law to close loopholes that have allowed airlines to avoid paying customers compensation and worked to establish a more streamlined complaints resolution system.

The new provisions also sought to ratchet up penalties via a $250,000 maximum fine for airline violations — a tenfold increase from the previous regulations — in an effort to encourage compliance.

Another amendment — both have yet to take effect — would place the regulatory cost of complaints on carriers’ shoulders. The measure, which would cost airlines $790 per complaint under a recent proposal from the regulator, aims to encourage them to brush up their service and thus reduce the number of grievances against them.

Meanwhile, the complaints backlog at the country’s transport regulator continues to mount, standing at about 78,000 as of last month.

Gabor Lukacs, president of the Air Passenger Rights advocacy group and an intervener in the case, said the Supreme Court ruling “breathes new life” into the move to revamp the traveller protection regime.

“The decision upholds Canadian passengers’ right to be treated fairly,” he said in a release.

However, the existing regulations fall short of the European Union’s “gold standard of passenger protection,” he added, calling for reforms that mirror EU rules.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 4, 2024.

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