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For area football players, flu hitting hard

Rare early illness takes sweeping toll on many high school football programs.

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By Kyle Nagel, Staff Writer Updated 10:48 PM Tuesday, October 13, 2009

By Wednesday, Oct. 7, when 28 of his 45 varsity players were absent from school with the flu, Tippecanoe High School football coach Charlie Burgbacher knew the team’s Friday game was in jeopardy.

It was an important one, as well. Tipp was 5-1, opponent Bellefontaine was 6-0, and both are members of the Central Buckeye Conference.

“We were getting to the point where we had some positions with no players,” Burgbacher said.

The Tippecanoe-Bellefontaine matchup became the second area high school football game in three weeks to be played on a Sunday because of flu postponement. The delayed games underline the toll the early and intense flu season have taken on prep football teams, which don’t often deal with heavy sickness this early in the fall.

Coaches and administrators said the mass illness has taken a toll on players whose games require plenty of physical exertion.

“It just feels like you’re carrying a bigger load,” Tipp center Jon Bruce said of playing in pads and helmet after missing practice conditioning and feeling effects of the flu. “Everything seems like it’s going slower, the helmet is heavier. Everything is just different.”

Another difference in football is the environment of toughness, coaches said. Players once would have done anything to make practice, including shrugging off sickness, but coaches now worry about illness spreading to the rest of the team. At Fairmont High School, for instance, players with fevers are not allowed at practice, no matter how thinly elevated the temperature.

“It’s never easy to start moving events around,” said John Kronour, superintendent of Tipp City Exempted Village Schools. “But you don’t want to be that district that passes it on to another district.”

Many coaches, like Chaminade Julienne’s Andy Helms, stay in constant communication with the attendance office.

“They e-mail me up an attendance list,” said Helms, who was talking with a sick offensive lineman by cell phone and sending home his star running back with aches last week. “It’s something you always deal with, but the past two weeks have really been a big deal.”

Like at Tipp, where one of the most important games of the season was compromised with mass sickness. The Red Devils played Sunday, though, and won 24-7 at Bellefontaine.

“It was a pretty quiet ride on the way back home,” Burgbacher said. “A lot of them used the time to sleep.”

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-7389 or knagel@DaytonDailyNews.com

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