JACKSONVILLE BEACH, Florida — No gym?
No problem.
It's a phrase St. Paul's Middle School principal Krissi Thompson coined last fall after the school lost its gymnasium to Hurricane Irma. And through the outdoor practices, in the borrowed gyms, despite the shortened work-out's, that's the mantra that played over and over in the Warriors' minds.
No gym.
No problem.
"It just shows that even though our gym was destroyed, we're still here," 8th grader Brooks Utter explained.
When head coach Tommy Hulihan received the initial call that the gym was destroyed, he thought it was a joke. A trip to the Jacksonville Beach school several days after Irma, though, left him and Thompson speechless.
"The middle of our gym, there was a probably a 50-foot hole in our roof. And the baskets -- some of them were a foot off the ground. Our doors were blown open. Nobody spoke," Hulihan said.
That's when the Jacksonville Beach community stepped in. After the Warriors spent the first few weeks of the 2017 season practicing outside, Fletcher and Beach's Chapel lent their gyms to the Warriors' boys and girls teams. St. Paul's began fundraising for a new gym.
But there were still challenges.
"Other teams practice like 16 times. We only practiced 10. Maybe less than that?" 8th grader Josh Deegan said. "We would share the gym. Coach would be with us half the time, [he] would be with the girls half the time. So it was basically like a cut practice."
The Warriors' focus never faltered.
Utter continued: "Even though we only had 10 practices and other teams had more, we were still able to keep up with them."
More than keep up: St. Paul's made it all the way back to the league championship, where this time they came out on top.
"It gave us way more desire to try to push and win it for our school. To put a meaning out there," 8th grader Will Kachergus said.
Because even with no gym, the Warriors still win.