Photo Courtesy of Sigourney-Keota Football Social Media

A group of Sigourney-Keota football players met this weekend, but instead of helmets and pads, they donned work gloves and boots. The Cobras donated their time to help the Keota community with the recovery process following Friday’s tornado outbreak in Keokuk and Washington counties. A group of more than 40 volunteers huddled at the Holy Trinity Catholic Church Hall in Keota Sunday morning to form their game plan before making their way into rural areas near town to help with cleanup. Before work began, several Cobra players including junior Ashton Thomas and sophomore Jax Weber talked about the closeness of the Keota community and why it was important that they get involved. Thomas said, “A lot of people we know were effected. Being a small community like this, everyone comes together to help each other. Everyone hopes that if something like that happened to them, everyone would help them. We all want to come together and help everyone we can. It feels great seeing everyone together. It shows how tight-knit everyone is. It shows support and help for those who have lost a lot of things because it’s sad to see when people lose everything that they’ve worked for.”

Weber added, “It’s great because these people take their time to come watch us play and they donate to the football program so that we can buy knew things. We need to give back to them a little bit.”

After the group left Keota they traveled to several area farmsteads and walked fields cleaning up debris, before enjoying a team meal together after work was finished.

On Friday, a pair of tornadoes impacted areas of Keokuk and Washington Counties, with one classified as high as EF-4 according to the National Weather Service.