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“We had a great senior class, I think 16 total. We had just played Shaw, we felt like we did pretty good in the Jamboree. Traded that film, Newman film, that morning and then, well, the rest is history,” said former Hannan head football coach Corey Bordelon.
On August 29, 2005, South Louisiana was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, and Hannan’s Meraux campus, like much of the New Orleans Metro area, would never be the same.
“My wife and I drove back. We went through campus. I got a football off the grounds. Amanda got a volleyball and a basketball. It was still kind of covered in everything, I guess. And, so we did go back a couple of different times and try to take it all in, but that was it,” said Bordelon.
“It was a hard pill to swallow,” added Bordelon.
The Archdiocese elected to relocate the school to Saint Joseph Abbey near Covington, and Principal John Serio made the transition from south to north shore as smooth as possible.
“I don’t think it happens without him. He was in constant communication with all of us teachers, staff, students. And everybody was pretty excited about it. So when it actually came to be, it was a pretty significant moment, I think, in all of our lives,” said Bordelon.
Classes were held in trailers, and the football program began its return to normalcy.
“We had a spring football season. I think we had 11 kids at spring football. We did summer, and by the time in August, we had 18 guys on the team,” said Bordelon.
In the fall of 2006, Hannan played one game at Mandeville, the rest of their home games at Strawberry Stadium, and finished the season with a 3-4 record.
Corey Bordelon left Hannan in 2007 to be an assistant at Jesuit, and 20 years after Katrina, Archbishop Hannan calls Covington home, and Bordelon is back with the Blue Jays.
He’s experienced many things in his coaching career, but he will never forget the resilience in the aftermath of destruction.
“Watching what those kids went through and how they dealt with everything, they were coming from all over. We had kids who were still in St. Bernard Parish coming to Hannan. We had kids that lived in Mississippi coming to Hannan, and not necessarily just the ball players, but the students in general who wanted to graduate with a Hannan diploma. Watching them and just their measure of resolve, how much they were able to handle and still persevere, was amazing. So for me, it was, you know, don’t take anything for granted. I got to watch these kids do it, watch their families do it. And it was inspiring,” said Bordelon.
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