Tonight's Bear River-Colfax High School football game has been postponed after nearly half the Bear River 30-man varsity roster has been stricken with the flu. The traditional playoff teams will make up the Pioneer Valley League contest on Monday in Lake of the Pines at 7:30 p.m..
Bear River athletic director Duwaine Ganskie said Friday that both schools decided rescheduing was the safe, logical thing to do, especially with the national fear of the swine flu. To that end, the Placer volleyball team recently had to postpone matches when the bulk of its roster was ill. None of the Bear River players has the swine flu - that anyone knows of yet - but the risk is too great, Ganskie said.
"If you let them, football guys will tough it out and play, and in that sport, they play nose-to-nose and you're really running a risk," Ganskie said. "We're trying to contain it."
Still, Colfax coach Tony Martello, a throwback coach, said he was disappointed with the news. He wanted to play tonight. His team found out during a campus rally of the postponement, which was met by a collective groan.
"We're OK here but at Bear River they're really fighting the flu," Martello said. "I'm a little emotional on it. I'm a football guy who thinks you deal with the elements, the adversity. Kids get sick, get hurt - and it's football. What hurts us is the suddenness of it and the ripple effect."
It's severe enough to urge a postponement, Ganskie said.
"I can understand what Martello is going through because he's got a team ready to go, but we have to look at this objectively," Ganskie said. "Maybe we're overcautious but not if we look at how some schools across the country have been shut down while dealing with swine flu."
Bear River co-coach Terry Logue said he's never seen anything like this is his 30 years of coaching.
"I thought that I'd seen it all until this," Logue said. "We have no quarterbacks, no running backs. They're all sick. It really hit us yesterday. In the morning we had nine guys out, and by 1 o'clock, we had more, 14 of our 30 guys out."
Added Ganskie, "I give a lot of kudos to Colfax. They listened to our concerns and playing Monday gives us a chance to recover."
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