It was a whirlwind trip they’ll never forget.

Sixteen USC football players traveled more than 6,000 miles in less than five days to build four houses and deliver 2,500 pounds of supplies to hundreds of Haitians still recovering from the earthquake that devastated their country almost 2½ years ago.

Led by quarterback Matt Barkley and joined by his family, the band of Trojans sweated in the sweltering sun to serve a cause so much greater than a silly football game. Their reward came in the smiles on the faces of the people they touched.

“We actually made a difference to them,” senior safety T.J. McDonald said after the group returned to Los Angeles on Wednesday night.

“We couldn’t get to everybody; of course you can’t help everybody out there. But any progress is good progress, and we made progress.”

The USC contingent left L.A. late Friday night after a handful of members of the group participated in graduation ceremonies earlier that day. The trip originally was scheduled for May 14-19 but had to be pushed up and compressed after the NCAA determined the players had to be back in time for the start of summer school.

“What didn’t get compressed was the volume of work that had to get done,” said Les Barkley, Matt’s father, who made his fourth trip to Haiti since the earthquake. “There was not one single complaint from anybody.”

“The bottom line is we were able to go,” senior center Khaled Holmes said. “It was short, but it was a very meaningful and powerful trip for everyone involved.”

GOING TO WORK

Impoverished, far-away lands are familiar turf for the Newport Beach-based Barkleys, who twice have traveled to Africa to aid the less fortunate. Matt Barkley wanted to squeeze in one more trip while still in college, and he wanted to bring some of his teammates along for the ride.

The group of volunteers swelled into the teens, many of whom never had been abroad, let alone witness to real-life devastation. That had Les Barkley worried.

“It’s a very tough country to go and work,” said Barkley, a reservist for Hope Force International, the non-profit disaster-relief organization that sponsored the trip.

“I had some concerns about how they were going to react, what they were going to see, how they were going to deal with the misery, the suffering, the heat and humidity – all those things that assault even the most experienced volunteers’ senses.”

So how did the Trojans handle it?

“I cannot express how proud I am of every one of these guys,” Barkley said. “We had one guy go down with heat exhaustion, and a number of guys were on the edge. They just kept working, building these houses all day, while at the same time engaging with the Haitian people. It was an amazing blessing to be able to watch these USC football players do what they did.”

The group did most of its work in the village of Sous Savanne near the town of Leogane, the epicenter of the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that struck on Jan. 12, 2010. The players worked from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. to build four small single-family homes in temperatures that rose into the mid-90s and humidity that hovered around 100 percent. They were drenched in sweat by the time they got off the bus.

“We monitored them on a regular basis,” Barkley said. “It was us telling them to stop working, not them stopping.”

For inspiration, the Trojans only needed to pick their heads up and look around. McDonald remembered the expressions of one couple for whom they were building a house.

“Every time we’d smack that hammer,” he said, “you could look over and see a smile on their face.”

UNBROKEN SPIRIT

In the evening, the players stayed in Leogane, the 16 of them sharing a pair of two-bedroom apartments. They were grateful to have air conditioning and roofs over their heads as violent thunderstorms swept through the area.

“We tried to imagine what it was like for the people living in sheets and sticks,” Holmes said. “I wouldn’t even call them tents. They were makeshift tents. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

Although Haiti is in better shape than in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, it remains, in Les Barkley’s words, “a broken country.”

The same cannot be said for the spirit of its people.

Just as Holmes and McDonald couldn’t believe the devastation they saw, they were likewise amazed by the Haitians’ hopefulness and determination.

One day as the group pulled into the village, McDonald noticed a man and his children working in the fields. Several hours later, the man came to the construction site, grabbed a bag of nails and began handing them to the USC crew.

“All he wanted to do was help,” McDonald said.

The players spent their breaks hanging out with the children who lived in the village. They were advised to not eat in front of the kids, most of whom have only one meal a day. But McDonald had an extra granola bar and gave it to a young boy.

“I’m thinking he’s going to scarf this down right away,” McDonald said. “He starts yelling, and his brothers come over. He splits it up five ways and hands it out. It shows you how important family is to these people and how unselfish they are.”

In just a few days’ time, the players learned a lot about the plucky Haitians – and about themselves. When you’re around people who lack food, running water and electricity, you appreciate what you have that much more. Your problems, whatever they might be, seem frivolous by comparison.

“It makes you question yourself,” McDonald said. “How can I ever complain? How can I ever think that I’m not blessed?

“I don’t know that I’ve faced adversity after seeing these people, these kids who are my age who don’t even know there’s another world out there.

“To be able to move on, keep pushing, stay positive as much as they can … it really humbles you.”

Contact the writer: mlev@ocregister.com