Walker's Easton Cifreo (24) defends Dunham's EJ Hitchens (5) during Walker's jamboree football on Friday.
Walker tight end Judd Lockhart makes a catch during practice on Wednesday.
Walker linebacker Easton Cifreo paues to listen to coaches during a practice on Wednesday.
Walker's Judd Lockhart (32) runs for a first down after catching a pass from Jacobi Scott.
Easton Cifreo and Judd Lockhart had been through a lot during a friendship that stretches back to when the biggest decision of the day was whether to choose white or chocolate milk at lunch time.
So the baseline of memories was already on solid footing earlier this month when everything was pretty standard as the two Walker football players went through the paces of preparing for their final high school season together with the Wildcats.
Then things changed. As has been the case for most residents of Livingston Parish, Aug. 12-14 changed things.
The two WHS seniors were at home on Friday, Aug. 12 waiting for the weather to take its course when they started getting calls and text messages about friends and families around the parish whose homes were filling with water and needed help to get out.
Lockhart’s father sent them to the Livingston Parish Sherriff’s Office to see if they could help and the two were sent out on a boat with a deputy to assist.
“The first day we got eight people out and then 9-10 the next day and third day we went down to an area that got hit real hard and helped about 60 people get out at a nursing home,” Lockhart said. “We went to a lot of area that were under water and where people needed help.”
The fact that a pair of teenagers were among dozens of Wildcat players who helped in any way they can and went back out day after day makes Lockhart’s and Cifreo’s story special on its own.
What makes it even more memorable is how disastrous it could’ve become.
During the first of their days on rescue patrol, Cifreo got a late-night call about a family in St. Helena needing a rescue. So he and Lockhart went out on a boat with two other men from the National Guard in the inky darkness to make trhe 35 mile trip to find the folks in need.
“We put the boat in the water and didn’t know how bad the current was,” Cifreo said. “We were going along at a good clip and we hit a cast iron fence behind a gas station.”
The boat capsized and Cifreo was pinned behind the vessel to a tree. At one point, Lockhart said all he could see of his friend was his head bobbing in the darkness.
“My life jacket deployed so I was floating, but I had to hang onto the tree for so long that my hands and arms were getting numb,” Cifreo said.
Lockhart was with the other two men on the opposite side of the boat and he knew Cifreo needed help. One of the men swam to Cifreo and guided him to the boat.
“It was only like 10 minutes, but it felt like it went on for a long time,” Cifreo said. “The other guys kept asking me if I was OK and that helped. But I was scared. My adrenalin was rushing, so I just tried to stay calm.”
He wasn’t alone with his fear. Lockhart said thoughts that are hard to put into words were racing through his mind about a friend he had known since they started playing baseball together when they were 7.
“When we first flipped over and I saw Easton pinned like that, I didn’t know what to do about it,” Lockhart said. “I felt helpless.”
A sheriff’s patrol showed up and took the four rescued rescuers back to dry land in shifts. Once they were reunited on the ground, Cifreo ran over and embraced his longtime friend.
“It was scary because that current wasn’t like anything we’d ever seen,” Lockhart said. “I was just glad Easton was OK.”
The close call was just part of a three-day whirlwind when Cifreo, Lockhart and many of their Wildcat teammates went above and beyond to help anybody who needed it and as a result grew closer as a team. Social media documented how the Walker players got involved and stayed involved for days and weeks as the parish began to get back on its feet.
As frightening as that one memory is, the two players said it’s just part of something they won’t ever forget.
“I’ve been sitting back thinking about it – about how many people we ended up helping,” Cifreo said. “After the water went down, we were still gutting houses. You see that there’s a lot of people out there that need help and in this community, you learn from the time you’re a little kid that you go and help. Stuff needed to be done and we had to make sure everybody was safe. You can’t leave anybody behind.”
Added Lockhart, “This is a really good community around here. We have a lot of supporters and we don’t like to see people who have worked so hard for all these year to have their stuff and homes taken away.”
Remember, too, that Cifreo, Lockhart and their teammates went about their heroic actions not knowing when – or if – their 2016 football season would be played.
That’s a tough-to-grasp emotion for a high school athlete to manage, let alone push to the backburner while helping others.
So when it was clear that, yes, football would go on, the emotions were much easier to turn loose.
“Anybody affected by the flood came very close to having the season taken away, so when the coaches told us we were going to play, that was some really good emotion,” Lockhart said. “Our team is made up of a lot of seniors who have worked really hard and we wanted to play together this season. We didn’t want to have to scatter to different schools and see if we could fit in somewhere else.”
All of those possibilities are in the rearview mirror now.
Walker began the 2016 season Friday at Northeast. Life is getting back to normal. And there are new memories to build off of.
“I think this season is going to be special no matter what because we can look at what the community has gone through,” Cifreo said.
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Randy Rosetta is Sports Editor of The Livingston Parish News.
You can reach him at (225) 610.5507 or RandyR@LivingstonParishNews.com.
Follow on Twitter: @RandyRosetta | @LPN_Sports
