BURKE — The scoreboard at Tolstedt Field in Burke was bent, with the upper corner sort-of dog-eared like a page in a book.

It will need to be replaced. But like so many parts of this town and like Burke’s residents, it was ready to go at kickoff Friday afternoon, when the hometown Burke High School football team took the field to play Lyman in a season-opening nine-man contest. The game marked 17 days since the Aug. 6 EF-1 tornado that battered the center of the community of 600 people, damaging homes, businesses and the Burke school complex itself.

GALLERY: Lyman Raiders at Burke for football season opener

The importance of Friday’s contest was not lost on anyone at the game or in the community, said Tania Witt, who helps lead the Cougar Athletic Club, the booster club for Burke High School sports.

“High school sports in a small town are already a big deal, but this is a chance to come together,” she said. “We can celebrate that we made it and lived through it. I think there’s excitement, but considering what we went through, I think that our community needs that.”

There were some concessions to make the season opener happen in Burke, mainly that the game would take place without lights. A few of the field’s light poles -- which are located between the track and the field itself, were damaged or no longer had the lights atop the poles.

Burke’s makeshift locker room was a couple of blocks closer on Friday, as the team gathered in the community’s fire hall. And Lyman had to be a willing partner to play the game earlier in the evening, which it was, even though Burke didn’t have shower facilities to offer for the Raider players after the game.

“I think so much of the attention in town has been on other things, and getting homes and businesses back in order, that I woke up today and I thought, ‘It’s game day,’” said Carter Bull, the Cougars’ public-address announcer.

Mike Sebern, the Cougars’ coach who has worked in Burke for 29 years, said the game was a perfect example of why he loves the community.

“We kind of need this, to get back to where we are in a little bit more normal groove,” he said. “My friends and family sometimes ask me how I’ve stayed out here for 29 years, and I just say it’s this stuff. It’s the friends and the people that are so great. You can’t put a price on that.”

A ‘normal’ Friday night

On Thursday, the Cougars’ football team -- which holds 31 players in grades nine through-12 -- held a team meal, capping a two-week set of practices. Burke Superintendent Erik Person spoke to the team, telling them their role in the community’s bounceback from the storm was simple.

“We’ve been through a lot,” Person said. “And I told the kids they have one job: show up and be ready to play. That’s all anyone could ever ask for out of the kids.”

He said playing on Friday brought the community its “first slice of normal life.” Community members gathered at the southeast corner of the field 45 minutes before game to create a man-made tunnel for the players as they ran onto the field for warmups.

There's hope, according to Person, that the field’s lights will be ready to go for Burke’s next home game against Sunshine Bible Academy on Sept. 6. New poles and lights are planned to be installed.

Friday’s game included free admission for the community’s firefighters, and for the roughly 50 workers from the restoration company that has been working at the school. Bull described the workers as having become part of the community, as those who are “the driving force to put the Burke school back together.”

There’s a chance that Cougar football games will be the bulk of the sporting events in town this year. The Burke High School gym was heavily damaged by the tornado and won’t be used during volleyball season, with games moving down the road 20 miles to Bonesteel, and putting winter sports up in the air.

“The football games might be a little more special this season for that reason,” Witt said.

Unfortunately, the Witt family was at the center of the tornado’s aftermath. Tania’s husband, Bryan, owns the Burke Building Center, which was destroyed by the Aug. 6 storm. Their son, Ben, is a sophomore football player for the Cougars.

“It’s been really weird at home,” Witt said. “We all do what we have to do, and we hardly see each other because we’ve been on the move. My husband hasn’t taken an hour off since the storm, it seems. It took our business but it created a lot of business, as well.”

On the football field, the Cougars have some hopes to be a contender this year in Class 9A. They were 7-3 and reached the state quarterfinals a year ago, and return seven seniors to this year’s team. Burke looked pretty solid on Friday in a 46-8 victory over Lyman. Sebern said he honestly didn’t expect his Cougars to come out and play as well as they did considering all the outside factors involved.

But for one night, Burke’s players focused on doing their job and making their community proud.

“We know we’ve had a tough start to the season, a tough start to the school year,” said senior Jaden Frank. “We know that we could have had people feel sorry for us, but we wanted to come out and show what kind of team we are.”

Frank had his right wrist taped, with a simple message written on it: “Burke Strong.”

Generosity shines on community

Also on display at the game was the continued generosity of others toward Burke. When the teams gathered for the coin toss prior to the game -- the visiting Raiders came with a gift. Lyman’s senior football players presented Burke’s senior players with a check for $5,098.91, which came from a money/coin war fundraiser in the Lyman School District this past week, with all grade levels participating. Sebern made a point to call attention to and appreciate Lyman’s gesture in his postgame meeting with his Cougar players.

That was one of many fundraisers across the region that have been organized in the name of helping out Burke’s school. Burke’s neighboring district to the northeast — Platte-Geddes — had planned to donate the proceeds of its tailgate event prior to Friday’s home game in Platte to Burke. Schools like Stanley County had a superhero dress-up day on Thursday, and a first-day of school pancake breakfast at Wolsey-Wessington raised funds for Burke’s district.

“When your kids are in school, you are teaching your kids about things like compassion and looking out for each other, and kindness,” Witt said. “And for us to be beneficiaries of that giving is pretty special. Unfortunately, South Dakota has a lot of disasters and tragedies and people around this state always step up.”

Mike Jones and Dave Green have each served on the Burke Fire Department for 20-plus years, but they were running the first-down chains on Friday night. They were two of the dozen firefighters honored during halftime of the game. Jones said the turnout and reaction around Friday night’s game was what he expected.

“It’s a Friday night in the fall,” Jones said. “Even after the storm, everyone is going to come together around football.”

Jones said he hasn’t been surprised by the way his community has responded.

“I was born and raised in this town, and this town has been special for 43 years, for sure that I know of. Coming together for the storm is nothing new. We come together for everything. It sounds cliche, but it’s true: Burke is a very special community.”