RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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An unprecedented crisis hit New Orleans in 2005. Hurricane Katrina had made landfall. The city was underwater. Chaos was taking over.
Nearly all of the city's residents were displaced, the players and staff of the University of New Orleans's baseball team among them. Many of them had nowhere to live, nowhere to go and no blueprint for what came next.
Privateers coach Tom Walter combed through his Rolodex, desperately looking for a place that would take the program in. UNO's season was hanging by a thread, and its salvation came from the last place Walter ever expected.
That place was New Mexico State.
"(Walter) was worried about the program not surviving it," said Rocky Ward, the Aggies' baseball coach from 1997-2000 and from 2003-14. "He told me, 'We need a cool location to take our kids.' And he thought Las Cruces might fill that bill.
"I said, 'Listen, I have no problem. I'll share my facility, we'll share practice time, whatever we can do.'"
What followed was the entire NM State community mobilizing to wrap their arms around a group of stranded strangers. The university cleared out a soon-to-be-renovated dorm, waived tuition and gave extra spots in classes to UNO players. Academic coordinators pulled all-nighters, faculty stepped up to be caregivers and Las Cruces became an unexpected hurricane sanctuary.
The Privateers' scramble for survival became a powerful testament to humanity's healing power. Over two decades later, the story of how NM State saved UNO's baseball program remains a heartwarming chapter of the post-Katrina era. It proves that when disaster strips everything away, compassion can bring it all back.
"As you can imagine, it was crazy times," said Walter, UNO's baseball coach from 2005-09. "I'll never be able to thank the folks at New Mexico State enough for what they did for our program."
An unlikely partnership
Hurricane Katrina drowned New Orleans and left residents scattering as governments responded poorly.
It also paralyzed UNO (Now LSU New Orleans). The flooding after city levees broke meant UNO's campus was essentially an island, and the university closed for the fall semester. UNO's sports teams that couldn't find a way out shut down until it was safe to resume play, while others had to find somewhere to go quickly.
UNO's athletics director at the time, Jim Miller, gave every head coach full autonomy on what they wanted to do for the fall, and the best situation Walter could find was at UCF. But the Privateers would be living in a hotel, and there were no clear transportation plans to reach UCF's campus for classes, so he kept looking.
Walter was going through his contacts and calling anyone who would listen until he got to Ward. There was just one problem: they didn't like each other. Ward said he and Walter had issues stemming from Walter accusing an Aggies player of stealing signs against UNO the previous season, which is why Ward was surprised when Walter called.
"I'm in the shower, and my wife answers my phone and says, 'Hey, Tom Walter's on the phone.' And my response to her was, 'Why the hell's he called me? He hates me,'" Ward said, before laughter caused a brief pause in the interview.
But Ward answered. What Walter told him, combined with the devastation Ward was seeing on television, moved him past the problems they had. UNO needed a home, and Ward was eager to provide it. It took only a couple of hours for then-NM State AD McKinley Boston and then-NM State President Michael V. Martin to approve.
"I call Rocky Ward, and I tell him what we're trying to do, and he's like, 'I'll call you back,'" Walter said. "And he calls me back and goes, 'When can you get here?' And I was like, 'What are you talking about?'"
NM State had an on-campus dorm that was about to close for renovations, meaning no students were in it. But NM State was willing to reopen it for the Privateers and make it free for them to live in. There would also be free tuition and unlimited spots in classes for however many UNO players needed them. The only thing UNO would have to pay for was books and a meal plan, which would be $38,000 in total for everyone.
There was no debate to be had. The Privateers were going to Las Cruces.
"I called Rocky back, and I was like, 'We're gonna be there on Saturday.' This was on a Monday," Walter said. "It was really cool."
"The power of the human spirit"
UNO now had refuge. The Privateers just had to set up shop.
Eight players transferred away before the move, but UNO still took 30 players to Las Cruces. Some of them flew with the team, others took commercial flights paid for by UNO and those who had evacuated to the Baton Rouge area took a private flight offered by a friend of Walter's.
The Privateers rendezvoused in El Paso, TX, at 1 p.m. on a Saturday and bused to Las Cruces, where they met with then-NM State athletics academic coordinator Stacey Willmott. She had every player's class schedule ready by the time they got there, allowing for as seamless a transition as possible for the following Monday.
"It was a little bit of dumb luck that I had brought the class schedules with me when we evacuated," Walter said. "I sent our class schedules, what they were projected to take at our place. By the time we got there on Saturday, she had everybody in classes that they were supposed to take at all places."
Willmott's efforts took a village, and she worked with UNO athletics academic coordinator Kathy Keane, NM State Provost William Flores and NM State's deans to accommodate the Privateers. They looked at the players' UNO class schedules to find similar ones at NM State, making sure the credits would count upon the team's retur...
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