Rafal Kolankowski was determined to forge ahead, the chaos engulfing his neighborhood — his life — be damned.
Soccer tryouts loomed Monday night, the first of three days of tryouts, and the Plum High School boys coach wasn’t about to let the kids down.
“Unfortunately, I have to make cuts,” said Kolankowski as he stood in his front yard on Brookside Drive facing the crews assessing the damage from the fatal house explosion in Rustic Ridge, two days earlier. “We have 45 or 46 kids trying out. I can keep 38 or 39.”
Kolankowski lives at the corner of Rustic Ridge and Brookside drives. Three of his immediate neighbors — people in the houses directly to his left and across the street — died in the blast Saturday that left much of this section of the neighborhood in ruins.
His own house is unlivable. All but a couple of windows are boarded up with plywood. His front porch has become a storage area for bottled water for first responders, utility crews and borough workers.
He’s staying at a hotel for now.
Kolankowski was at home when the house at 141 Rustic Ridge, just a few plots up the street, exploded. The force of the blast threw him and his wife off their seats and nearly into the kitchen, he said.
“I thought someone threw a grenade,” he said. “I stepped out. My ears were ringing.
“The house (up the street) was gone.”
He described it all as devastating.
“It’s an emotional roller coaster,” Kolankowski said.
And then there is the matter of tryouts. And then practices. And then the season.
Nothing stops. And so Kolankowski says he must keep pushing forward.
Asked whether he will lean more heavily on his assistant coaches during the tryouts, Kolankowski offered only this: “I’ll be there physically. I’ll be there.”
