First COVID-19, now smoke. How Idaho football teams are preparing to play with restrictions.
Call them curveballs. Call them hurdles. Call them blindside hits.
Call them whatever you like. But 2020 keeps delivering them.
Just as the Boise School District cleared its football teams to start playing games this week, smoke from wildfires around the West poured into the Treasure Valley, providing yet another threat to high school football.
The air quality deteriorated so much that Boise canceled all outdoor games Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, leaving it to hope for an improvement by Friday.
Neither Boise nor the West Ada School District will allow its teams to play outdoor games with the air quality index in the red (151-200). And the forecast doesn’t look promising with another red day projected.
So can anyone play Friday? Like everything else in 2020, stay tuned. And welcome to a new set of numbers to frantically check.
“Is the bubonic plague next?” Timberline coach Ian Smart said. “Who knows? Do ravenous geese come out? It could be anything.
“So right now we’re seeing a lot of what kind of people we’re going to be, and I think our sport gives a lot of ability to test that.”
This year has already provided a litany of tests for high school football players, coaches and families.
Positive COVID-19 tests shut down summer workouts for Boise schools, testing their resolve. High levels of community spread didn’t allow for full team practices until Sept. 8, testing their patience. And then the Southern Idaho Conference changed its schedules and divisions last week, testing their flexibility.
Now hazardous air quality tests their preparation for season openers this week, which include Borah at Timberline and Boise at Skyview. Capital has a bye in the five-team East Division.
Boise School District teams could only work out in groups of only 10 players or fewer before Sept. 8, forcing football teams to get creative and fan out across the city. Borah coach Jason Burton said he spread players out across 11 different fields, including six patches of grass on campus as well as a church next door, Grace Jordan Elementary, South Junior High, West Junior High and Frank Church High.
Teams spent two days in shoulder pads before they could don full pads, allowing just Thursday, Friday and Saturday for full contact last week.
“The amount of hitting we’ve done is nothing compared to our (Boise State) camp, and then our summer camp, two-a-days, fall camp,” Borah senior receiver/linebacker Owen Imman said. “I mean, physically, we haven’t done anything.”
Instead, coaches focused on the mental side of the game and simplified their playbooks. No one has their full offense or defense installed before the season opener. That’s doubly true with a pandemic and poor air quality limiting practice time.
With a young team full of new players, Burton said he won’t truly know who can make plays until Friday. But he said if his players know their job and where to line up, that’s more than half the battle.
“As long as you know your alignment and assignment, OK, we’ve got two-thirds of it,” Burton said. “Now you’ve just got to go make the play. We’ll figure that out on Friday against Timberline.”
Borah turned its players loose for a couple of live hitting periods Saturday, and Timberline hosted an intrasquad scrimmage the same day, allowing both teams some sense of where they stood.
But then the smoke rolled in. The Boise School District allowed its teams to practice Monday, then pulled them off the field midway through Tuesday’s practices. Timberline took its team pictures, then just finished its stretching routine before administrators informed the team the air quality index was too high and forced the group inside.
Timberline split into groups Wednesday, sending half into classrooms and half into the gym to review concepts already installed. Meanwhile, Borah hosted an outdoor walkthrough where no one could exert themselves.
“Literally the only thing that we would do is a kicker could run up to the ball and kick it,” Burton said. “That’s the only thing that we would allow to happen.”
That’s created even more of a yo-yo existence for players, who spend the day in online classes not knowing if they can practice that day — let alone if they’ll get to play Friday.
“There’s a lot of adversity,” Timberline senior defensive end Dylan Pike said. “My mentality is just keep fighting. Nothing is going our way. … We just need to be ready for when we have a chance.”
News of that chance will come Friday afternoon. Boise and West Ada plan to look at the latest air quality measurements and make a call at around 2 or 2:30 p.m.
But don’t expect this to be a one-time complication. Given the widespread fires along the West Coast, smoke will continue pouring downwind into Idaho, providing yet another complication in 2020.
“What a journey this has all been,” Boise School District Athletic Director Jon Ruzicka said. “To get this far and endure all of this to now be dealing with smoke, (it’s) heartbreaking.”
Burton and Smart both admitted they’ve had their bleak moments, wondering whether they’ll ever get to play and how to run an entire program with a mountain of new logistics to combat a virus — and now poor air quality.
But both said they were thankful for the opportunity to play, an opportunity that seemed impossible a month ago. And if it doesn’t come this week, they’ll wait for another opportunity next week and the week after that.
“It just feels like all of 2020,” Smart said. “This whole journey feels like it’s never ending.
“For us, it’s just convincing these guys you just take every day one at a time. The more we worry about whatever outside is going to try to stop you, that’s just energy that we’re blowing on stuff that doesn’t matter.
“So we’re praying that there’s a slight breeze. … But we just prepare as if we get to go. And when we get that chance, it’s going to be fun to see them cut it loose.”
This story was originally published September 17, 2020 at 2:00 PM.
