A deadly hurricane is the latest disruption for young athletes who already have endured a pandemic

Pisgah High School in western North Carolina reopened its football stadium last year after Tropical Storm Fred tore through in 2021.

Now it has to be rebuilt again after being demolished by Hurricane Helene.

Amid the lives lost and the catastrophic damage, high schools in dozens of communities in southern Appalachia are shut down and with that the prep sports that binds so many towns together. It’s the latest disruption for young athletes who’ve already endured a pandemic.

The Pigeon River rose to record levels after Helene plowed through, taking out parts of Interstate 40 along with bridges, homes and other infrastructure in the region. In Canton, North Carolina, the high school’s football, baseball and softball fields, covered in several feet of water, were “a total loss,” Pisgah athletic director Heidi Morgan said.

In an adjacent county, six dozen people have died. Morgan is keeping that in perspective as she ponders the monumental task ahead at her school.

“You cannot replace a life,” she said. “Material things, you can replace.”

The loss of Pisgah’s athletic facilities is personal for Morgan. She played softball there in high school and became its athletic director in 2019. She’s also the current softball coach.

“I’m sad for our kids. They’ve just been through so much,” Morgan said. “In high school, you have to have a sense of normalcy. Our seniors, they’ve played at Pisgah Memorial Stadium eight times in four years due to COVID and then the flood in ’21. It’s just heartbreaking.”

It’s also summoned a resiliency that Morgan processed during the first stadium overhaul that she hopes will help get her school through even tougher times.

“We’ll get our hands dirty again and we’ll rebuild and be back stronger than ever,” Morgan said. “We will come back.”

About a half hour to the east, the Swannanoa River swallowed up the outdoor athletic fields at Asheville Christian Academy. In Hampton, Tennessee, Hampton High School’s football stadium was destroyed by flooding from the Doe River.

Schools remain closed in many states as work continues on roads and other infrastructure. Some schools have become temporary Red Cross shelters. Others are accommodating utility crews. High school games have been called off for a second straight week, with many having no idea if or when practices or games might resume. Local police officers used for game security have other, more important things to do.

South Carolina was hit the hardest by power outages from the hurricane, posing one of the many challenges for young athletes.

“It does take a little bit of focus off the game and season because you have to worry about a lot of stuff that’s going on at home,” said Abraham Hoffman, a running back and wide receiver at American Leadership Academy, a charter school in Lexington, South Carolina. “It definitely causes a distraction.”

The school lost power for five days and the football team only recently returned to practice with its game postponed this week. But there isn't time for self pity, considering what’s going on in every direction.

“We kind of just have to push through it,” Hoffman said. "You can’t sit back and let it affect you. Even though we went through it, it was tough, the hurricane and stuff, There are places that had it worse.”

American Leadership coach Robin Bacon spoke with two head coaches from other areas who said "'this looks like an atomic bomb hit in some of these areas.' It’s just so bad.

“We take for granted having a hot meal," he said. "We take for granted having electricity. We take for granted that we can take a shower. And I’m talking to some of my football players and they’re like, ‘coach, we don’t have air conditioning.’"

The South Carolina Athletic Coaches Association is seeking a two-week postponement in football games on behalf of schools in the hard-hit western part of the state, where students "face extreme challenges that go beyond athletics," association executive director Scott Earley wrote.

In the letter to the South Carolina High School League, the state’s governing body for high school sports that is scheduled to meet next week, Earley said many athletes “are unable to attend practice due to lack of transportation, closed schools and impassible roads. Others are prioritizing family responsibilities as they cope with significant losses.”

In Georgia, a group overseeing high school athletics announced this week it would extend the football regular season by one week.

In Boone, North Carolina, some of Brian Newmark's cross country teammates at Watauga High School have damage to their homes or downed trees or destroyed bridges blocking roads. The team was still trying to figure out whether it can compete in a meet on Saturday in Charlotte, 100 miles away.

Until then, they're prioritizing helping others. Newmark, a sophomore, handed out bottled water to needy residents for four hours at the school Thursday. The day before, the team cleared tree limbs, mud and other debris along a popular walking trail.

That sense of giving back makes Newmark proud about his generation, often seen as being too attached to electronics. Newmark said there is some truth to those complaints, but he and his classmates are doing their part to turn that reputation on its side.

“We’re working together to help each other,” Newmark said.

AP Sports Writers Teresa M. Walker, Aaron Beard and Pete Iacobelli and Associated Press writer Kimberlee Kruesi contributed.

AP's coverage of the hurricane: https://apnews.com/hub/hurricane-helene

Bricks lie scattered from the destruction and flooding of Tropical Storm Helene at an outdoor seating area in downtown Boone, N.C., on Monday, Sept. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Makiya Seminera)

Debris left in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene fills the street Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024, in Marshall, N.C. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

Dominick Gucciardo walks to his home in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024, in Pensacola, N.C. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

Debris is seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Monday, Sept. 30, 2024, in Asheville, N.C. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

This photo provided by Kelly Benware shows flooding around the football field at Asheville Christian Academy in Swannanoa, N.C., on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024. (Kelly Benware via AP)

This photo provided by Kelly Benware shows flooding around the football field at Asheville Christian Academy in Swannanoa, N.C., on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024. (Kelly Benware via AP)

In this photo provided by Mary Walker, members of the girls cross country team at Watauga High School perform cleanup duties Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024, along the Greenway Trail in Boone, N.C.. The area was hit hard by Hurricane Helene. (Mary Walker via AP)

This photo provided by Kelly Benware shows flooding around the football field at Asheville Christian Academy in Swannanoa, N.C., on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024. (Kelly Benware via AP)

This photo provided by Kelly Benware shows flooding around the football field at Asheville Christian Academy in Swannanoa, N.C., on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024. (Kelly Benware via AP)

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are rising on Friday after a surprisingly strong jobs report raised optimism about the economy but also forced a rethink about how much lower interest rates will go over the next year.

The S&P 500 was up 0.5% in afternoon trading after paring a bigger gain. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 187, or 0.5%, as of 12:55 p.m. Eastern time. The Nasdaq composite was 0.9% higher.

Banks, cruise-ship operators and other companies whose profits tend to benefit the most from a stronger economy led the way. Norwegian Cruise Line steamed 3.6% higher, JPMorgan Chase rose 2.7% and the small companies in the Russell 2000 index gained 1.4%.

Stock indexes are clawing back some of their losses from earlier in the week, caused by worries that worsening tensions in the Middle East could lead to disruptions in the global flow of oil. Crude prices ticked higher again on Friday, but the moves were more modest than earlier in the week, as the world continues its wait to see how Israel will respond to Iran’s missile attack from Tuesday.

In the meantime, the strength of the U.S. economy reclaimed its spot as the top mover of markets.

Treasury yields jumped in the bond market after the U.S. government said employers added 254,000 more jobs to their payrolls last month than they cut. That was an acceleration from August’s hiring pace of 159,000 and blew past economists’ forecasts.

It was a “grand slam” of a report, according to Lindsay Rosner, head of multi-sector investing within Goldman Sachs Asset Management. She said policy makers at the Federal Reserve, who have been trying to pull off the difficult feat of keeping the economy humming while getting inflation under control, “must be smiling.”

Friday’s report capped a week of mostly encouraging data on the job market. Such strength helps allay one of Wall Street’s top questions: whether the job market will continue to hold up after the Federal Reserve earlier kept interest rates at a two-decade high.

Before Friday’s jobs report, data had been showing the general trend was a slowdown in hiring by U.S. employers. That’s not surprising given that the Fed had been trying to press the brake hard enough on the economy to stamp out high inflation.

But Friday's blowout numbers bolstered hope that the U.S. economy will indeed avoid a recession, particularly now that the Federal Reserve has made a drastic switch in policy and begun cutting interest rates to give it more juice. The Fed last month lowered its main interest rate for the first time in more than four years and indicated more cuts will arrive through next year.

Friday's jobs data was strong enough to push traders to downgrade their forecasts for how steeply the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates by at its next meeting in November. They’re now forecasting a near-zero probability that the Fed will deliver another larger-than-usual cut, according to data from CME Group. That’s down from the better-than-a-coin-flip’s chance they saw a week ago.

That in turn sent the yield on the two-year Treasury shooting up to 3.91% from 3.71% late Thursday. The 10-year yield rose to 3.97% from 3.85%.

Such increases in yields hurt stocks of home builders, real-estate owners and other companies that would have benefited the most from a continued easing in rates for mortgages and other loans.

D.R. Horton, PulteGroup and Lennar all sank at least 2% for three of the biggest losses in the S&P 500. Home Depot dropped 1.2% and was the biggest reason the Dow Jones Industrial Average was lagging other stock indexes.

Friday's jobs report was so strong that it means the Federal Reserve may ultimately not need to cut interest rates as much as investors had been thinking.

“This report tells the Fed that they still need to be careful as a strong labor market along with sticky housing/shelter data shows that it won’t be easy to engineer meaningfully lower inflation from here in the nearer term,” according to Scott Wren, senior global market strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute.

At Bank of America, economist Aditya Bhave said he expects the Federal Reserve to stop cutting when its federal funds rate reaches a range of 3% to 3.25%, or a quarter of a percentage point higher than he was earlier forecasting. The rate is currently sitting in a range of 4.75% to 5%.

Also Friday, some 45,000 dockworkers at East and Gulf coast ports are returning to work after their union reached a deal to suspend its three-day strike until Jan. 15 to provide time to negotiate a new contract. That helped calm worries that a lengthy strike could have pushed up on inflation and dragged on the economy.

In the oil market, the price for a barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, rose 1.4% to $78.72 per barrel and is up more than 10% for the week. A barrel of benchmark U.S. crude rose 1.7% to $74.98, up from roughly $68 at the start of the week.

In stock markets abroad, indexes rose across much of Europe following the strong jobs report from the world’s largest economy.

In Asia, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng jumped 2.8% in its latest sharp swerve. It soared a bit more than 10% this week on excitement about a flurry of recent announcements from Beijing to prop up the world’s second-largest economy.

AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed.

FILE - Signs mark the intersection of Broadway and Wall Street in the Financial District on Oct. 2, 2024, in New York. Trinity Church is in the background. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)

FILE - The entrance to the New York Stock Exchange at Wall and New Streets is shown on Oct. 2, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)

FILE - People pass the New York Stock Exchange on Oct. 1, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)

Currency traders work near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won, right, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the KEB Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Oct. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

A currency trader watches monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at the foreign exchange dealing room of the KEB Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Oct. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

Currency traders watch monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) at the foreign exchange dealing room of the KEB Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Oct. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)