Dein erstes Forum » ocess was wrong, the result is wrong, D

LUMBERTON, N.C. -- A handful of volunteers wait outside the nondescript warehouse as an 18-wheeler with the oversized Duke football helmet emblazoned along the sides rumbles to a stop. A few men wear work clothes. A few others are decked out in Blue Devils garb.I thought you were a North Carolina fan, one volunteer teases.Not today, the other replies.This is how it is throughout this region of flood-ravaged North Carolina these days. Theyre all on the same team. Rivalries disappear when someone is willing to chip in with some needed supplies.Dukes equipment truck backs into a loading dock while a half-dozen members of the Blue Devils football team -- all graduate students on an off week from classes -- pile out of a van to help unload the freight.There are diapers and toothpaste, cases of water and Gatorade, towels, blankets and pillows. There are sneakers and sweatshirts and a handful of Pinstripe Bowl Champions T-shirts, all donated from Duke for residents displaced from their homes in the wake of Hurricane Matthew and the flooding that followed.As soon as I told people we were struggling, there was a ton of stuff, said Duke wide receiver Kane Banner, a Lumberton native whose father coaches the citys high school football team. These guys taking time out of their day to come home with me -- theyve got busy schedules, but they saw one of their brothers was hurting.Duke hosted Army on Oct. 8 as the storm dumped rain across the East Coast. It was a bad storm, of course, but it wasnt until the game ended and Banner retrieved his cell phone that he started to grasp the impact on his hometown. There were calls from family and texts from friends. He flipped on the TV and saw the pictures. It was horrifying.Around the same time, Shayla Oxendine was trading texts with her brother. Oxendine is a Lumberton native, too, but she now lives in Raleigh and works for the US Marshals Service. Her entire family still lived in Lumberton, and as the flood waters rose, the text exchanges with her brother became more panicked. Late that evening, he finally decided to evacuate. He trudged through to his car, holding kids in each arm, water up to his waist.The following Monday, as Banner addressed his team asking for donations he could bring back home, Oxendine put in a call to her friend, Gerald Harrison, an associate athletic director at Duke. Both had the same idea.Duke is very giving to the community, so I sent an email in hopes of a reply, Oxendine said. This wasnt the reply I was expecting, but its so awesome. My heart is full.Harrison reached out to Duke coach David Cutcliffe, Cutcliffe talked with Banner and the drive to get supplies from Durham to Lumberton began.Players donated all they could, from old gear to canned goods. The school set up a promotion for the Blue Devils game against Virginia Tech on Nov. 5 -- with donations of three canned goods getting a discounted ticket. The school also gave Harrison a hefty budget to buy supplies to bring to Lumberton, so Harrison took the equipment staff on a shopping spree.We went out and lost our minds, Harrison said. Its funny, when you give yourself a budget thats pretty high, you just start throwing stuff in the cart.For Lumberton, every donation matters. The city -- along with a sizable portion of the Eastern part of North Carolina -- went without power for days, and without water for even longer. Even as Duke was delivering supplies nearly two weeks after the storm, residents were just beginning to return to their homes to inspect the damage. Along Almanac Road, in the Southern part of the town, doors were swung wide open to air out the flood-damaged furniture inside, and clothes hung on chain-link fences to dry. A horse farm still featured massive lakes of flood water. At the height of the destruction, Oxendine said, the heads of the horses sticking above the water line were all that could be seen.Back at Duke, the team felt the impact of the storm, too.I know weve had some parents coming to Durham to stay with their sons [after being displaced], Cutcliffe said last week. We prayed every day as a team for all of those people affected in our state.Banners family was safe. They had a few downed trees and a little water in the garage, but no major damage. They were the lucky ones.One of Banners friends from high school said his mother, aunt and grandmother all lost their homes, and they were hardly alone. More than 150 cots were laid out in a community gymnasium in the center of town for residents with nowhere else to go. Some came from surrounding counties as shelters there closed down; many were unsure when theyd get to go home. Dozens of volunteers from the American Red Cross and other organizations were there to help, and one by one, people from around the community came by to drop off blankets and food and water.They told me yall needed towels, one man told Red Cross volunteer Star Houston, the shelter manager, as he offloaded bags from his pickup truck. So I went and bought all of them I could find.The town simply wasnt prepared for destruction of this magnitude. Its the little things that matter so much now.They were people out on rubber rafts, putting senior citizens in boats to get them out, wading through the water, said Margaret Greene, a longtime Lumberton resident who has been in various shelters since the storm. So any help is good. Theyve been good to us.Dukes donations filled up the majority of the 18-wheeler, and players offloaded each item into the warehouse that now serves as a makeshift distribution center for victims. Its hardly an answer for people who lost everything, but its something, and that was important to Banner.The community in Lumberton and a dozen other small towns surrounding it are still hurting, and recovery is still a long way off, but Banner said he hopes they realize they arent alone.Its not just the stuff were bringing, but from a morale standpoint, Banner said. Lumberton is a tough city, but when you see people coming in to help, it gives you the mindset that things will be OK.Mike Bibby Jersey . The Oilers come in having lost five in a row (0-4-1) and 16 of their last 20 games, dropping a 2-1 decision to the Vancouver Canucks on Tuesday. Buddy Hield Kings Jersey . A big centre with all the tools to be an elite player, Johansen paced the Blue Jackets with a standout game Saturday night. He had a goal and two assists for a career-high three points as Columbus beat the New York Islanders 5-2 to snap a five-game losing streak. http://www.nbakingsonline.com/Authentic-Mitch-Richmond-Kings-Jersey/ . Dukurs winning time was 1 minute, 45.76 seconds, a quarter-second better than Russias Alexander Tretiakov. Lativas Tomass Dukurs was third, 1.41 seconds off the pace. Jon Montgomery of Eckville, Alta. Chris Webber Kings Jersey . Louis Blues. Shane Hnidy joins Brian Munz for the broadcast on TSN 1290 Radio at 7pm ct. Mitch Richmond Jersey .Y. - New York City has been selected to host the NBA All-Star weekend in 2015, with the game played at Madison Square Garden and the slam dunk contest and other skills events held at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.GENEVA -- Michel Platini plans to speak at the UEFA presidential election to replace him next week, despite his current FIFA ban from soccer politics.A spokesman for his Paris-based lawyers said Wednesday that Platini had been invited to the Sept. 14 meeting in Athens by UEFA, and wanted to address delegates as part of a handover of the final two and a half years of his presidential mandate.However, it is unclear if Platini is allowed to attend under the terms of his four-year ban for conflict of interest, over a $2 million payment he received in 2011 from FIFA.A spokesman for FIFAs judging chamber said: This would have to be decided by Mr (Hans-Joachim) Eckert as chairman of the adjudicatory chamber of the independent Ethics Committee. However, so far, he has not yet received a respective request by UEFA.UEFA also invited its outgoing president to European Championship matches in June and July since his final appeal case at the Court of Arbitration for Sport failed to overturn the ban.Platini did not attend any Euro 2016 games in his native France despite FIFA ethics committee advice that he could go to stadiums but not discuss business with former colleagues.The election is a head-to-head between UEFA vice president Michael van Praag of the Netherlands and Slovenian soccer federation leader Aleksander Ceferin. Angel Maria Villar of Spain withdrew from the race on Tuesday.England backed Van Praag on Wednesday, though it is a rare public endorsement for the 68-year-old former Ajax club president compared to public pledges for Ceferin among the 55 UEFA members.English Football Association vice chairman David Gill said Wednesday that Van Praag would be able to provide the strong and credible leadership European football requires at a crucial moment for the global game.Van Praag is the right choice to bring all aspects of the European game closer together, said Gill, who is also a UEFA vice president.France and Germany have backed Ceferin, who was little known before the campaign but has also attracted support in eastern Europe and Scandinavia.Polands federation -- led by Zbigniew Boniek, a fformer teammate of Platini at Juventus -- also came out for Ceferin on Wednesday.ddddddddddddTensions between the two candidates have risen ahead of attending meetings on Thursday with voters in Copenhagen.Responding to a Norwegian magazines investigation into Ceferins alleged alliance with FIFA President Gianni Infantino, Van Praag wrote on Twitter that UEFA did not need a power hungry politician.Denmarks federation, which hosts the candidates on Thursday, had welcomed Ceferins candidacy in June in a joint letter with regional neighbors Sweden, Finland and Norway. The four nations are also preparing a co-hosting bid for the 2024 European Championship.Still, the Danish federation and national league made a joint statement Wednesday that they also want to discuss UEFAs recently agreed changes to the Champions League for the 2018-21 seasons.The deal guarantees more entries and tens of millions of dollars in prize money to clubs from the top four-ranked leagues -- currently Spain, Germany, England and Italy -- at the expense of mid-ranked countries like Denmark.The Danish soccer bodies said they shared great dissatisfaction with the process.The process was wrong, the result is wrong, Danish league CEO Claus Thomsen said. A fundamental change of the format has been rushed through UEFA and the ECA (European Club Association) even though a new UEFA President will be elected in a weeks time and even though there are no publicly elected leadership in UEFA.Van Praag and Ceferin both say they oppose Europes top clubs breaking away to form a Super League. However, Danish officials say they fear a de facto Super League created within UEFA in partnership with elite clubs.Influential clubs, including Juventus and Real Madrid, were seen to have exploited the absence of Platini, the UEFA president since 2007, to pressure the European soccer body this year for a more favorable deal.---AP Sports Writers Rob Harris in London and Samuel Petrequin in Paris contributed to this report ' ' '