Hopkins County Central moves football kickoff due to remnants of Hurricane Helene

MADISONVILLE, Ky. (WEHT) — Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida Thursday night, but some in the Tri-State are already taking precautions.

Austin Byrum, the Hopkins County Athletic Director, made the decision to push the Storm’s Friday football against Webster County up to Thursday.

“As we looked at the weather, we were like, ‘Man we don’t want to sit in a foot of rain Friday and Saturday,” he said.

The remnants of Helene is expected to bring heavy rainfall to the area. Something that Byrum says he’s not sure if the school’s grass field can hold up to.

“Obviously it plays a huge role when you are looking at Friday and Saturday and they are calling for four to five inches of rain because I don’t know if this field can withstand that,” he said.

The condition of the field also directly impacts one of Byrum’s top concerns: player safety.

“If it’s really wet outside, kids are more likely to slip, fall, tear an ACL, things to that nature,” he said. “They don’t have that firmness of the ground so it’s easy to slip a little bit.”

Off the gridiron, Helene is making an impact with even some of our own. Eyewitness News Meteorologist Joe Bird, on vacation in Panama City, is like many Americans who faced flight cancellations and are stuck waiting out the storm.

“Before takeoff this morning, American Airlines let me know that my flight had been canceled,” he said. “So I thought, ‘Well as a meteorologist, it would be my very first major hurricane to ride out so let’s see what it’s like.”

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