Swine flu wipes outTigers

The H1N1 virus, aka swine flu, took a heavy toll on Morgan City High School in general last week and on the football team specifically for Friday’s season opener.

As many as 200 students missed school at one point with swine flu infections or symptoms during the week.

“That was a nightmare,” said Mark Millet, Tigers head football coach. “We were spraying down lockers and everything else with disinfectants. I had to cancel practice Tuesday and Wednesday because nobody was here.”

Thirty-five infected football players, including 16 starters, stayed home from the Tigers’ 54-0 lost to Walker High School on Friday night.

“We piecemealed a team with kids who shouldn’t have even been on the field,’ Millet said.

According to the coach, of his 26 players that made the trip, 17 were still infected.

Millet said he tried canceling the game; however, he claimed the Louisiana High School Athletic Association (LSHAA) ordered the game be played unless the St. Mary Parish school system closed Morgan City High due to a swine flu outbreak.

While custodians, administrators and teachers took extra precautions to limit exposure to the virus, the school did not close despite the abundance of sick students.

“The LSHAA’s position is that signed contracts have to be honored unless the school district shuts the school down,” said Kenneth Delcambre, LSHAA president and South Terrebonne High principal.

“The game could have been postponed until Monday at the latest if both schools had agreed,” he added. “After that, the game would have had to be forfeited, which teams don’t want to do.”

However, the LHSAA rulebook states that football teams cannot play two games in the same week.

Millet insisted that postponement or cancellation wasn’t an option either because Walker High would never had agreed.

Also, Morgan City High would have had to pay a $2,000 forfeit fine.

“You have to pay the gate of the team that you play if you forfeit,” Millet said.

Exposing otherwise healthy students to those infected with the swine flu was a concern to the LSHAA, Delcambre said.

However, the organization felt it is not in a position to dictate when an outbreak is severe enough to warrant cancelling games.

“We’re going to have that problem left and right this year. We know that. We’ve had the same problem in the past,” Delcambre said. “The question is when do you cancel games? With five guys out? 10 guys? 15 guys? You can’t place it on the LHSAA to make that decision.”

Millet said the LHSAA’s policy does not make sense and puts more kids at risk for acquiring the swine flu.

“Not only did we bring guys who still had the virus, they had to participate and put themselves at risk,” he explained. “If I didn’t bring them, we would have had to play with only about 10 guys.”

LHSAA commissioner Kenny Henderson also did not want schools to exploit the swine flu to their advantage, according to Delcambre.

“Assume this flu lasts into the baseball season and a team ace pitcher is scheduled to start but has the swine flu,” he asked. “Do you cancel a game because of that?”

South Terrebonne cancelled a junior varsity game with Assumption High two weeks ago because half of the Mustangs’ team was out with the H1N1 virus, Delcambre noted.

But unlike varsity football games, there are no binding written contracts to enforce. LSHAA policy even applies to hurricanes.

Delcambre said it has been evoked with South Terrebonne a few times in the last several years.

“We had a makeup game one year with E.D. White,” he recalled. “Most of my coaches had evacuated and we tried to get them back to play on a Monday night. But we couldn’t field enough players and that ended up being a canceled game. That was a mutual agreement between E.D. White and South Terrebonne.”

Morgan City’s loss to Walker snapped the Wildcats’ 29-game losing streak, the longest in Louisiana.

Millet started third-string sophomore Brodie Anslem at quarterback and simplified the play calls to try and avoid putting his many new players in a position where they might get injured.

The Tigers gained 82 yards for the game – all rushing.

“We only threw it two or three times because I’m not going to put my kids in that situation,” Millet said. “We just tried to get by.”