(CNN) -- High school athletic director Brian Bordainick felt like he'd been shot when he learned the crushing news about his "9th Ward Field of Dreams" project.



Coach Shyrone Carey, left, and athletic director Brian Bordainick are rebuilding a once-dominant football team.



Architects who had agreed to help the Katrina battered Carver High School in New Orleans, Louisiana, win an NFL grant to build a $2 million stadium were pulling out -- the weekend before a Monday deadline.



The firm apologized, Bordainick said, but it would not be able to provide a design proposal for the facility, which was critical to winning the $200,000 grant.



"I've never been shot, but I imagine it felt something similar to that," said Bordainick, recalling that day in December 2008.



To make matters worse, swarms of news media were gathering at the school to interview the 23-year-old boy wonder -- the self-described "youngest high school athletic director in Louisiana" -- who was leading an effort to bring Carver's athletic program back from near death.



"I sucked it up, did the story ... and when they left, I picked up the phone book and started calling architects in the city."  Watch update on New Orleans' schools after Katrina »



In an amazing moment of serendipity and opportunity, an entrepreneur friend of Bordainick's happened to be at a party and cornered a partner in one of the city's top architectural firms. The friend called Bordainick and -- before handing the architect the phone -- told Bordainick: "You've got 30 seconds to give your best elevator spiel you've ever given."



The architect was Steve Dumez, design director for Eskew+Dumez+Ripple, who agreed to help, despite Bordainick's preposterous plea. Watch Bordainick tell his story



"The one-day turnaround came as a bit of a shock," Dumez said. "What was crazy about it was trying to pull together an entire design proposal -- and that's just something that doesn't happen in 24 hours." Usually such design proposals require as long as a month to complete.



"How could you not get sucked into such an amazing story?" asked Dumez's partner, Mark Ripple, a 30-year veteran New Orleans architect. "There really isn't a good outlet in the area where kids can develop skills and self-esteem and all the things that come with a healthy recreation program."



The next day, the firm organized a small army of construction companies, civil engineers and architects who offered their support. "We got the satellite images and the renderings done in 8 hours," Bordainick said.



The proposal worked. In March the school learned it had won the NFL grant.



Nike also has backed the project -- donating $100,000 and joining thousands of individuals who have offered $1.5 million in pledges, cash and services so far.



All this during one of the nation's worst-ever economies. Bordainick credits much of the fundraising success to a network of e-mailers who started with a Web site created by a Web-developer-turned-Carver teacher.



He crafted an e-mail touting his "passion for building character through sports," and "creating something from nothing" while working with "people crazy enough to believe that they have the power to create change."



"I made it a goal to just e-mail a couple hundred people a day," he said. "I was teaching and calling people during my lunch break, and trying to get other people to make calls during their lunch break, and e-mailing people and doing all these things to get the word out about what we're doing and what we're trying to accomplish."



The proposed stadium -- which would host football, track, soccer and lacrosse -- is just one facet of Carver's struggle to regain its former self four years after the ravages of Katrina. A perennial football powerhouse, the team re-formed after Bordainick arrived at Carter in 2007, his first year in the Teach for America program.
What high school was hit hard by Katrina? Who leads fundraising campaign?
Carver Brian Bordainick
question: What high school was hit hard by Katrina?, answer: Carver | question: Who leads fundraising campaign?, answer: Brian Bordainick