BATON ROUGE – Athletes and coaches helped students move into residence halls at LSU Wednesday.

According to a statement from LSU athletics, athletes from 11 different sports teams helped haul refrigerators, microwaves and other dorm furniture for the upcoming fall semester.

“You want their first experience to not be so hectic as what it was when you were first moving into college,” men’s tennis head coach Jeff Brown said.

Hectic is a perfect word to describe move in day amid historic flooding across south Louisiana.

“It’s been really great to help out all of the freshmen move in today and just to be a bright spot amidst all of the tragedy that’s been happening in Louisiana,” LSU football fullback J.D. Moore said.

Tuesday, LSU football head coach Les Miles promised that his team would be available to assist freshmen move in for the fourth consecutive year.

Miles compared this week’s historic flooding to Hurricane Katrina. He said that just like in Katrina, LSU is the safest place students could be.

LSU Athletics said student athletes are also helping efforts in the community. The LSU volleyball team assisted a shelter set up at Celtic Studios Wednesday. After helping move-in day, the LSU baseball team traveled to Livingston Parish to assist in flood relief efforts.

LSU announced Wednesday night that the university will resume operations and begin the fall semester on August 22.

The university will share more instructions to students who are unable to start classes due to the flooding. The university partially reopened to employees this week. 

In response to the flooding, LSU has extended the deadline for fee bills to Aug. 24.