Hurricane Irma displaced Miami Central’s football team. IMG Academy coach’s son, NFL receiver Kenny Stills, comes to the rescue.

Miles and miles away from Florida, Miami Central’s football team was preoccupied upsetting three-time defending national champion Las Vegas Bishop Gorman as the uncertainty of Hurricane Irma approached the Sunshine State.

A monumental victory turned into unforeseen adversity following the game. The Rockets couldn’t fly back right away. And the school couldn’t afford the extra cost of meals and hotels for additional nights, according to the Miami Herald.

So how and when could the team return home?

Multiple Miami Dolphins players intervened, paying for their return flights, according to the Miami Herald.

One of those players, Kenny Stills, has a connection to Bradenton, the next stop for Central’s nationally ranked football team.

Stills’ father, Ken, is the head coach of the IMG Academy White team.

The Blue team, ranked No. 2 nationally in the USA Today Super 25 expert rankings, plays host to No. 5-ranked Miami Central on Friday at 7 p.m.

“He makes me and his mom very proud,” Ken Stills said. “He’s always doing stuff like that. That’s a good feeling, because we feel like we raised him right.”

Stills said his son has a good heart and is always giving. The evidence is self-explanatory: he won the Dolphins’ community service award last year, provided uniforms for youth football players in California with plans to do the same in Bradenton, and he helped others as a college football player at Oklahoma.

“One of the boosters, a doctor, they would always ask players to go to the hospital and see people,” Ken Stills said. “I guess it was after one game, Kenny went straight to the hospital after the game and was hanging out with some fans that were sick in the hospital. ... He’s always been that way.”

The latest way for Kenny Stills to provide aid came with paying for Central’s trip back to Miami from Las Vegas.

Stills and several Dolphins teammates — defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh, safety Reshad Jones, wide receiver Jarvis Landry and linebacker Lawrence Timmons — contributed an undisclosed amount of money for Central’s return to Miami.

“Whatever we tried to instill in (our kids) about giving and caring is working,” Ken Stills said.

IMG also faced some adversity following Hurricane Irma. About 90 players in the program evacuated Bradenton as Irma approached.

Getting back took time.

“We were displaced in a different way than Miami Central,” IMG Academy head football coach Kevin Wright said. “But we were still displaced. A lot of schools, the programs in Florida were affected in one way or another.”

The game, like most in Florida, was in limbo following Irma. But as last weekend approached, Wright said they felt confident in it happening, though football was the last thing on anyone’s mind.

Now it’s game week, with two top-five nationally ranked programs set to play. The Ascenders are used to playing a tough schedule, which included a lopsided victory over the Rockets’ district rival, Miami Carol City, in a preseason game.

“We played two teams already that were ranked in the top 10,” Wright said. “Miami Central is a different challenge just because of the speed, the athleticism, the physicality of the game and the total number of athletes that they have that can hurt you.”

Central, winners of the Class 6A state title five times since 2010, is a team that easily garnered Wright’s attention.

“Maybe the best football team (we’ll) play since I’ve been here,” Wright said. “Just watching them on tape, the explosiveness they have. They literally have five Division I running backs. They have good receivers and their offensive line is really athletic. And defensively, they have guys all over the field.”

This story was originally published September 20, 2017 at 6:56 PM with the headline "Hurricane Irma displaced Miami Central’s football team. IMG Academy coach’s son, NFL receiver Kenny Stills, comes to the rescue.."