Like most of Middle Tennessee, Nashville SC soccer forward David Accam went to sleep peacefully on the night of Monday, March 2, little care given to the growing weather menace to the west.

Why should it have worried him and his wife, Florence Dadson, eight months pregnant with the couple’s baby girl?

As late as 11:15 p.m. on Monday, the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center hadn’t even issued a tornado watch — let alone a warning — for Music City. Stormy weather ahead that night? Probably. But nothing to indicate the likelihood of 150 mph winds soon ripping apart the city, nothing to forecast tornadoes that would leave 25 dead across Tennessee.

Accam woke up at about 12:50 a.m., his cell phone alarm blasting the news of an approaching tornado. By then, however, the storm was already on the doorstep, howling as it neared Accam’s IMT Germantown apartment complex.

“It’s hard to explain the noise,” Accam said. “It’s like something is running at you full speed and loud, that’s how it felt. I didn’t even want to open my eyes.”

A Ghana native new to Nashville this season, Accam had never experienced anything like a tornado before, so he wasn’t well-versed in emergency preparation. He and his wife lived on the building’s ground level, but instinct told him that they needed to get even lower, maybe under the bed or at least on the floor. But at that point, his terrified wife was already past the point of reason. She was all but frozen with fear.

“She started panicking, and we didn’t know what to do,” Accam said. “I said, ‘OK, OK, we’ll just lay here on the bed. Whatever happens, happens.’ So we just started praying and put our heads down on the bed. There’s not much you can do. We just prayed.”

‘That feeling is unreal’

Only two nights earlier, Accam and teammates, including Daniel Rios, had played a part in Tennessee soccer history, thrilling a Nissan Stadium crowd of more than 59,000 — the largest to ever watch a game in the state — during Nashville SC’s Major League Soccer debut.

The contest may have marked a first for Music City, but for both Accam and Rios, it represented the latest of many stops on their respective soccer journeys.

Since he was first “discovered” as a youngster in Ghana, Accam had played for several English and Swedish teams, as well as three other MLS squads — Chicago, Philadelphia and Columbus. In 2016, Accam won Chicago’s most valuable player award after scoring a team-high 14 goals in 28 games. But he also found time during the season to return to Ghana, where he unveiled a brand new soccer field — the David Accam Community Pitch — that would help more youngsters follow in his path.

David Accam scored 66 goals in three seasons with the Chicago Fire. (Peter G. Aiken / USA Today)

“For me, one of the greatest feelings in my life was doing this, giving back to the community and helping young kids,” Accam told the Chicago Fire’s website at the time. “That feeling is unreal. I’ve never felt that way before.”

Rios also played for several clubs while climbing the soccer ladder, including three in his native Mexico before signing with North Carolina of the United Soccer League — one step below the MLS — in 2018.

The 25-year-old Rios, a forward, moved to Nashville in 2019, playing for Music City’s USL team and lighting up the league last year with 21 goals in 32 games. He’ll never forget the match he played last October at Nashville’s First Tennessee Park, when he scored two goals and became the first player in USL history to record consecutive 20-goal seasons. He celebrated the second score in that game by calling his teammates over to share the joy with club supporters, who in turn chanted Rios’ name repeatedly during the second half.

“It’s a gift for myself after eight months of hard work in preseason and during the season,” Rios told Nashville media of the joyous moment.

Both Accam and Rios played in Nashville SC’s inaugural MLS game this season, a 2-1 loss to Atlanta United FC on Feb. 29. Accam had a promising scoring chance blocked by an Atlanta defender early in the game, while Rios entered the contest late as the home squad pressed for a tying score.

By Monday night, the two players — both of whom lived in the same apartment complex — were already preparing for their second match and looking ahead to a promising inaugural season.

‘I went to my knees and waited’

When Rios awoke to the roaring of the storm and the shaking of his building, his mind raced back to what he’d endured less than three years ago. On Sept. 29, 2017, Rios — then playing for Club Atlético Zacatepec — was showering in the team locker room when an earthquake measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale struck. The quake would kill 370 people in and around Mexico City, injuring 6,000 and destroying more than 40 buildings. But Rios was spared.

His experience in that disaster may have helped him stay calm during the Nashville tornado, even as he walked to his window in the dead of night, looked out and saw the monster whirling in his direction.

“I tried to stay level and think,” Rios said. “You can’t (panic). You can’t block your mind. You have to react and think. So I was thinking all the time, trying to.”

His first decision: Get to a more central location in the apartment, away from the potential of a glass window explosion.

“I just ran to the living room,” Rios said. “Then when the tornado really started to get hard, I tried to close a door (to the room), but obviously I couldn’t (because of the pressure). So I went to the hall and just went to my knees and waited.”

The full brunt of the EF-3 tornado — defined by winds between 136 and 165 mph — struck seconds later, smashing through windows and wreaking chaos in Rios’ apartment. He thinks the whole experience probably only took about eight minutes, but said that when he relates the story, it seems more like a 20- or 25-minute ordeal. When the violence passed at last, Rios and friends who’d been huddled together on the floor mustered the courage to poke their heads up and look around.

One of Rios’ first acts was to text Accam, his neighbor and teammate with a simple message: “Are you okay?”

‘No reason we’re alive’

“No,” came the quick response from Accam, “we are not okay.”

He and his wife had stayed pressed to the top of their bed — eyes closed — as the twister struck, but Accam still sensed what was going on around the couple: lights flashing before the power went out, the unrelenting noise, windows breaking.

“It felt like it lasted a month,” Accam said. “It was just like five minutes or less. But it felt really long. Really long.”

Somehow still unscathed when the winds subsided, Accam made a quick inspection of his apartment using the light from his cellphone. What he saw stunned him. Almost everything had been destroyed in the other rooms. Dining room chairs and tables had been thrown around like dollhouse furniture. A door to the spare bedroom had snapped off its hinges, revealing a bed showered in broken glass.

Chaos everywhere except in the main bedroom, where Accam, Dadson and their unborn baby had ridden out the storm with little damage around them.

“(The only room that wasn’t destroyed) was where we were,” Accam said. “We were fortunate. I don’t know if I would say lucky. I think we are blessed. Maybe someone was looking out for us.

“That was the only thing that helped us survive. There is no explanation or no reason we are alive, from what I saw what was happening.”

Craziest night ever. Thank God we survive it🙏🏾 pic.twitter.com/oh4qu6htYT — king David Accam (@iamdavidaccam) March 3, 2020

Accam and his wife tried to leave the apartment but couldn’t get past a doorway blocked with debris. That’s when Accam texted Rios that he was not okay, leading Rios to return from outside in order to help his friends get out of the building.

“I didn’t really see anyone else (when walking out),” Accam said, “but I did see blood, blood in the corridor.”

Simply getting outside, however, didn’t prove to be completely safe either, as a dangerous gas leak forced all the residents to evacuate the area. Fortunately for Accam, another Nashville SC teammate, Taylor Washington, lived nearby. He called to say the couple was welcome to stay with him, then drove as close as he could to the IMT Germantown to pick up Accam and his wife.

“We stayed there for the rest of the night until morning,” Accam said. “Then we found a hotel for my wife, and I went straight to (soccer practice).”

Straight to practice?

“That’s just me — I can’t just stay and think about stuff,” Accam said. “This is my job. People are depending on me, so I have to go there and perform. So I try to push everything aside and just perform on the field.”

‘The good thing is you are alive’

Accam and Rios did their best to keep that same attitude days later when Nashville SC traveled to Portland for its second match of the season. Once again, Accam started the game, but he was subbed out after 60 minutes without making much of an impact. Rios entered the contest in the 71st minute and nearly scored, but Nashville SC fell 1-0.

“I’m almost certain the impact of the week had some sort of influence on the way (Accam) felt,” Nashville SC coach Gary Smith said. “He’s dealing with his own issues, with a wife that’s pregnant, who’s now looking for a new abode. (Rios) is in a slightly different position in terms of his relationship and family. But nevertheless, it’s still a very difficult scenario for them two lads to deal with. But they’ve done a fantastic job.”

Said Accam: “It was difficult. One part of my mind, I was thinking about my family, my wife staying in a hotel. I was thinking about her and about my situation.”

Over the last few days, Accam and Rios say things have finally started to settle down. But they are still living in a hotel, still in the process of finding more permanent housing. And they are still hoping to salvage what they can from their old apartments, though the building has been condemned due to the damage.

“You can’t really go back for all your stuff, and we still have most of it there,” Accam said. “But the good thing is that you are alive and no one is injured. That’s the best part.”

Accam said he’s been overwhelmed by the kindness of Nashville, noting friends and fans haven’t stopped asking him if he’s OK, if he needs somewhere to stay, if he needs anything at all. It’s the kind of community support that — unintentionally — might even be reflected in the team’s anthem for this season: “Never Give Up On You.”

As Accam and Rios were turning their focus back to soccer — seeking to push the structural and emotional damage of the tornado further in their past — they were forced to deal with another obstacle. MLS, following the lead of the NBA, announced Thursday morning that it has suspended its season effective immediately.

(Photo: Jason Kempin / Getty Images)