Busted water pipes and flooded gym floors at OCU, Langston, Millwood reveal kindness of others

Corey Bray wasn’t planning on going to the office on Christmas Eve.

Then the athletic director at Oklahoma City University got word a water pipe in the gym had burst and flooded the court.

He hurried to the Freede Center as fast as he could.

“I got here and came into thankfully a lot of people working really hard to try to get the water out of the arena as fast as possible,” Bray said.

Members of OCU’s facilities team led by Mark Clouse, as well as employees from restoration service Blackmon Mooring, worked nonstop for several days removing water, then drying out the hardwood, as well as the wood underneath the court. When an insurance adjuster arrived a few days later, Bray was crossing his fingers that all the work had been worth it.

“I was preparing for the worst and hoping for the best,” he said, adding that parts of the hardwood floor were already buckling, creaking and popping.

“So it wasn’t a surprise when the insurance adjuster said it was a total loss.”

Thing is, OCU wasn’t alone.

During the pre-Christmas cold snap that plunged temperatures well below freezing across Oklahoma, water pipes burst and flooded the floors at Langston University and Millwood High School, too. Like OCU, Millwood’s was a total loss. Langston’s was only partially damaged and has since been repaired.

Still, teams at all three schools were forced out of their homes. Practices have been disrupted. Home games have been moved.

But even as administrators, coaches and athletes at OCU, Langston and Millwood faced huge disruptions, they found a silver lining.

The kindness of others.

Gym doors have opened all across the area. Even though Langston and Millwood had auxiliary gyms where their basketball teams could practice while the wrestling teams at OCU had their own practice facility, five other teams at OCU (men’s and women’s basketball, competitive cheer, competitive pom/dance and stunt) needed places to practice.

And all needed places to compete.

Stan Wagnon received calls for assistance from OCU and Langston. The athletic director at the University of Central Oklahoma worked with both schools in his previous job as commissioner of the Sooner Athletic Conference, and he wanted to do everything he could to help.

“These things happen,” Wagnon said of teams needing alternate venues, “and you don’t know if it’s gonna be you or somebody else that it happens to. This time, it happened to be them, and so we’re in a position to help.”

The Langston men’s and women’s basketball teams had been practicing at Coyle High School, which is only four miles from the Langston campus, but because the 3-point lines are different, Langston wanted to have a few practices on a college court. UCO was able to accommodate them starting on New Year’s Eve.

“It takes a little bit of cooperation from our basketball coaches to be willing to share their locker rooms and make their schedules work,” Wagnon said. “There’s a couple of days where all four teams, our men’s and women’s and their men’s and women’s, were all practicing in one day.”

Then with UCO having home basketball doubleheaders on Dec. 31 and Jan. 2, their opponents were also coming in and wanting to practice before the games.

But even with all those moving parts, Wagnon wanted to make it work because he was mindful of commonalities. His men’s basketball team is having a big season, ranked in the top five nationally, and Langston men’s basketball is having a similarly great season. After going 1-27 last season, it finished January with a 21-1 record and a top-five national ranking.

“And you kind of put yourself in their shoes,” Wagnon said. “I know our coach would be anxious about a situation like that: ‘How are we going to minimize the disruptions and the distractions?’ So I think that helped my mindset to say, ‘Hey, let’s do what we can to make this easy for them.’”

UCO hosted Langston’s men’s and women’s games on Jan. 5 and Jan. 7, and on Feb. 11, OCU will play a basketball doubleheader at UCO, too.

Langston athletic director Donnita Drain-Rogers said her teams tried to look at their home-away-from-home games at UCO as marketing opportunities. With many Langston alumni living in the Oklahoma City area, they could attend the games in Edmond and be home more quickly afterward.

The messaging paid off: Langston had its largest gate for a non-playoff game of Drain-Rogers’ eight-year tenure as AD.

Even though the women lost both of their games at UCO, the men continued their red-hot start and won both. That was a sigh of relief to Drain-Rogers, who will long remember first telling men’s coach Chris Wright about their floor damage.

“I’ll never forget the look on his face,” Drain-Rogers said.

She could see the worry and concern.

“He was super stressed about all of those pieces, about everything that they had done to get to that point in their season,” she said.

Initially, no one at Langston knew if the floor would be salvageable. Water from the pipe burst had only gotten to a portion of the floor, and the university’s operations team sprung into action, removing the water, then placing weights on the floor to keep the wood from buckling and putting a canopy over the floor in hopes dryers would be more effective.

“I thought they did a great, great job,” Drain-Rogers said “I’ve seen the courts when they’ve buckled. Blessedly, ours didn’t do that.”

Langston ultimately determined the floor had been saved. Even though the entire surface will have to be refinished over the summer, the affected portion could be sanded and prepared for use again this season.

Langston had its first home game back at home on Jan. 19.

But here’s a twist: Langston is actually opening its gym to Millwood and OCU in the coming weeks. Millwood will play its remaining girls and boys basketball games at Langston while OCU has moved the NAIA Southwest Qualifying Group Championships that its competitive cheer team was set to host Feb. 25 to Langston.

Langston just started a competitive cheer team, so Drain-Rogers said it has limited experience hosting competitions. But with a practice gym perfect for warmups and a calendar that was open Feb. 25, she wanted to help like Langston had been helped.

“It was a little bit like, ‘Put your money where your mouth is’ on that a little bit,” Drain-Rogers said with a smile. “But it’s nice to be on someone’s list where they call you first. I’m thankful that they thought, ‘Well, maybe Langston will help us,’ and I definitely wasn’t gonna turn them down after we received so much help.”

The list of schools helping others is long.

Langston helped Millwood.

UCO and Coyle helped Langston.

Bishop McGuinness and Westmoore high schools, Redlands Community College, Oklahoma Christian University. Mid-America Christian University, Langston, UCO and even Texas Wesleyan are among the schools that have helped OCU.

Why have they done it?

“Just being a good neighbor,” said McGuinness athletic director John Hamilton, who has opened the school’s doors to allow five OCU teams a place to practice. “I’ve been at two different schools and have had to call and ask for facilities for almost every sport, so it just happens.

“It takes a village.”

Redlands athletic director Eli Zucksworth said, “We’re all kind of on the same team. … They’re our opponents at times, but at times, we need to support them a little bit, just try to help them out. Because if it’s not us, it’s gonna be us eventually.

“So, you might as well … be nice and play nice.”

Jenni Carlson: Jenni can be reached at 405-475-4125 or jcarlson@oklahoman.com. Like her at facebook.com/JenniCarlsonOK, follow her at twitter.com/jennicarlson_ok, and support her work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Burst water pipes allows Oklahoma. schools to see kindness in others