With campus looking ‘like a campfire,’ Redding rallies around high school football

Most teams don’t have to game plan around wildfires. But for Shasta High School, this football season has been anything but normal. Even driving 180 miles south to Elk Grove, the fires aren’t there, but the emotions linger.

The team left early Friday to give itself enough time to make the 8 p.m. kick off against the Thundering Herd, factoring in detours around the 50-mile closed stretch of Interstate 5 due to the Delta Fire northwest of Redding. A lot of the Wolves’ players and coaches had already been evacuated, and three players on the freshman team lost their homes, said varsity coach JC Hunsaker.

“It’s been a balancing act, it really has,” Hunsaker said. “You can’t just shut that stuff off when you walk onto the field.”

The Delta Fire, which started Wednesday, reportedly had burned 31,325 acres as of Friday evening.

“It’s horrible,” said senior wide receiver Jacob Navarre. “We’ve got a whole bunch of obstacles that are being thrown at us that we have to overcome.

“Football is everything right now. We‘re supporting all our firefighters. We’re working our tails off to make sure we are putting out 100 percent work. We’re trying to show the community what we are here for; we are out here fighting for our men that are out there fighting for us.”

About 1,500 personnel are working on the Delta Fire, which has caused evacuations of about 300 people and 300 structures, including 150 residences, according to the U.S. Forest Service and Cal Fire.

Similar to the devastating Carr Fire last month, the Wolves had to make changes to their schedule. On Thursday, Shasta had to move its practice into the gym because the air quality was unhealthy. On Friday, it reached hazardous levels and the school released all of its students at 10 a.m., Hunsaker said.

“It looked like a campfire around campus,” he said. “Smoke was everywhere, it was inside the classrooms.”

Some Shasta fans and parents had delays getting to the game. Chris Mazorra, whose son plays on junior varsity, said that his navigation app took him in the wrong direction with the interstate closed.

Mazorra missed the JV game and by the time he arrived, Shasta varsity trailed 18-0 at halftime. Elk Grove won 46-7.

Shasta dropped to 1-1, while Elk Grove improved to 1-2.

The Wolves are coming off a remarkable 2017 season that ended in a loss to Bishop in the CIF State Division III-A championship game.

“Football is something that our community cares about so much,” Hunsaker said. “And to be able to fall back to that and have a little bit of an oasis from all the issues we’re having is a happy place for us. We are excited to come out on Friday nights and represent our community as well as we can, and kind of get our minds off all of the stuff that’s going on that we don’t have control over.”

This story was originally published September 8, 2018 at 12:16 AM.