(3-27-23) Friday night will long be remembered in Amory, Rolling Fork and Silver City Mississippi as a F5 tornado would rip thru their community. In the wake of the storm was Amory High School.

Spring sports were all in full gear at school. The Panthers have a very successful athletic program, the events that took place will challenge all of the sports as they try to start over, rebuild and continue their seasons…but what we have heard this community has the will-power and never give up attitude to make it work.

A tweet from Amory Softball team on Friday morning indicates that they were aware of the impending bad weather –

Amory football coach Brooks Dampeer told the Clarion Ledger about seeing the athletic facilities for the first time after the tornado had hit-

“Like any other time when you have warnings you hope that nothing bad happens. That wasn’t the case last night.”

“It’s kind of like a dream. That these things really happened. We’re walking over wires, watching our step and as your walking the whole time you’re thinking ‘Maybe it’s not as bad as we think at the school.’ We get there and it was bad.”

“We’re thankful for the majority of people we could get in touch with that were OK. You can always rebuild these structures, but we are thankful that our kids are OK”

Amory Baseball Coach Chris Pace told the ledger –

“We lost our whole facility.”

Tornado destroys football stadium at Amory High School

WTVA 9 News – You Tube Video

The high school building also received significant damage that was caught on the school’s security camera.

Wild CCTV: Tornado damages high school in Amory, Mississippi

KPRC 2 Click2Houston – You Tube Video

CCTV footage posted by Sam Strickland, IT director at Amory School District, shows a tornado damaging the ceiling of Amory High School. Strickland also shared a photograph in order to “show the rest of the school is safe,” he said. “We do not want to give the local parents and students a false impression that the entire school was damaged or destroyed,” he said.

Starting over

Although high school athletics is a key part of any small community…what happened to all of these Mississippi communities will change their lives forever. For those who lost loved ones, around 26 at this time have died, businesses and the many homes and vehicles that have been destroyed….basically everything they own. It will be some time before the pain and anguish of this event will remain with each resident. The thoughts and prayers from around the country will be a key part of the revovery process.

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