“People are devastated mentally, emotionally, financially,” said Denny Wright, 70, a physical education teacher at Grand Isle School and coach of the girls’ and boys’ cross-country teams and the boys’ basketball team. “I know the island is coming along. But what coming along means, I don’t know.”

He and his wife, Peggy, have driven more than 4,000 nomadic miles since the hurricane struck on Aug. 29, staying with friends and family in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee. In late October, their clothes hanging from a rack in the back of their S.U.V., they returned to Grand Isle to check on their home. It sustained roof damage during the hurricane, leaving moldy cabinets hanging from the walls. Contractors had since gutted the place and installed new drywall.

Peggy Wright, 67, stood on the porch, surveyed her skeletal house and catastrophic damage to others nearby and worried that many people would not be able to afford to return, given the cost of insurance and rebuilding. Tears rolled down her face.

“Ooh, my heart,” she said.

For 48 years, Denny Wright has been a coach, mostly of basketball at the college and high school level, “always calling a timeout somewhere.” Even on his honeymoon in 1976, he insisted that Peggy accompany him to watch Pete Maravich play for the New Orleans Jazz. As an assistant at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, La., he helped coach the Hall of Fame guard Joe Dumars, who won N.B.A. titles with Detroit’s Bad Boys in 1989 and 1990.

Asked if the hurricane would send him into retirement, Wright said: “I can’t make that decision right now. There’s too much unknown.”

For now, he will follow the admonishment he gives to all his athletes: “Finish.” Complete the task.

He sat in the shade of his carport and, using his laptop and a hot spot, taught a physical education class to eighth graders. With the state cross-country championships approaching, he told Jaide McCullough, 13, and another of his evacuated runners: “Y’all need to pick up the pace. We need to make sure we’re pushing ourselves.”

Logan Camardelle, 18, a senior who finished 10th in the state meet as a sophomore in 2019, is living with his sisters in Austin, Texas, and San Antonio while taking classes virtually at Grand Isle School. He runs outside with his brother-in-law and sometimes jumps on a treadmill for a few miles. Fluid buildup in his knees forced him to stop training for a brief period, but Camardelle said he will return for the upcoming championship.

“When I got 10th, I felt so good and I could imagine getting a better place, top five,” he said.

He is a cousin of Grand Isle’s longtime mayor, David Camardelle, 65, who frequently says that he will remain in Grand Isle as long as there is enough sand to plant an American flag. Logan yearns to return home, for the beauty and tranquillity of the island, for the discipline of cross-country running and basketball, but he knows that storms will keep coming. A friend of his father’s lived in a $210,000 home on the beach for only two months before it was wrecked by the hurricane.

“I don’t know how many people’s houses can withstand something like that again,” Logan Camardelle said.

Mayor Camardelle speaks of Grand Isle being “the first line of defense” for New Orleans. He has urgently called for more large rocks to be placed just offshore in the Gulf of Mexico to serve as breakwaters and to preserve Grand Isle’s beach. And he has called for clay, not merely sand, to fill the fabric tubes that serve as the spine of the island’s 13-foot dune and levee system. The structure, known locally as the burrito levee, ruptured in places during the hurricane, leaving five feet of sand along sections of Highway 1, the only road in and out of town.

At a recent meeting of the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, its chairman, Chip Kline, said the federal government needed more creative ideas to shelter Grand Isle. During Hurricane Ida, the sand levee melted in spots like sugar in coffee. Many scientists have expressed support for programs to assist people in relocating from Louisiana’s vulnerable coast, where federal resources for recovery and rebuilding could drain away as storm damage becomes more widespread.

“It’s not a question of if Grand Isle at some point becomes completely unlivable; it’s a question of when,” said Torbjorn Tornqvist, a coastal geoscientist at Tulane University. “That applies to a lot of places in Louisiana. Ultimately, that applies to New Orleans as well.”

Bobby Jackson, 15, a sophomore cross-country runner and basketball player at Grand Isle School, was training five days a week before the storm. He evacuated with his grandparents to Robertsdale, Ala., and planned to compete in the state meet even though he had lost enthusiasm to train for it.

“I’m used to training with all my teammates,” he said. “They push me. I don’t have that here.”

His grandparents’ home, where he lived, lost its roof during the hurricane and most of the interior was ruined, he said. The fiberglass backboard on his basketball goal was shattered. He is not certain that his grandparents will return to Grand Isle. They are aging and, he said: “It’s hard to go back to something like that. Depressing. It’s going to take forever to rebuild.”

His father, a fisherman, has remained in Grand Isle. Jackson said he will join him if his grandparents don’t return once school reopens. He hopes to play basketball.

“I refuse to go anywhere else but the island,” Jackson said. “To me, it’s perfect.”

The Reswebers feel the same unwavering attraction. As Londyn ran several miles through town in late October, she passed a reopened restaurant whose marquee was a spray-painted door scavenged from the storm. Green street signs were scoured white by wind and sand. Narrow streets felt like tunnels of devastation.

She would try her hardest to improve on her fifth-place finish at last year’s cross-country championship, Resweber said.

“If I don’t, I’ve been through a lot,” she said. “It’s OK.”