Coaches’ Clinic Takes On New Meaning At Gu

The Gonzaga men’s basketball team may be at full strength now, but accidents this week have landed two of its coaches on the injured list - and left a lot of people thankful that things weren’t worse.

Head coach Dan Fitzgerald, who fractured a kneecap while jogging Monday night, was able to make the trip to Bozeman, Mont., for tonight’s game against Montana State.

Assistant Mark Few, however, stayed home to nurse injuries suffered in a car accident Sunday morning.

Few and his wife Marcy were involved in a collision in front of their home while on the way to church.

As a passenger in the car, Few was looking down to buckle his seat belt when he was sent into the windshield by the force of the collision that occurred just outside their driveway.

Roughly 100 stitches were needed to close his wounds. Marcy, meanwhile, suffered a sprained ankle and a number of bruises. Upon arriving at the hospital Sunday, Fitzgerald was told by a doctor that Few “is really lucky to be alive,” Fitzgerald said. “To take that kind of hit is just amazing.”

The unfortunate incident, though, showed the closeness of the Gonzaga “family,” Fitzgerald said.

“This is really a good place,” he said. “By the time I got to the hospital there must have been 15 people already in the waiting room.”

Fitzgerald’s accident, meanwhile, involved his somewhat mishap-prone dog, “Flame.”

Flame, who has already undergone abdominal operations to remove pine cones, rocks and a stuffed-cat toy that she indiscriminately consumed, was taken on a late-evening jogging expedition with her master.

When Flame spied a stray dog across the road, it surged and brought down Fitzgerald.

“It must have been a Montana dog,” joked Fitzgerald, who landed on a curb squarely on his kneecap.

“I get home and I’m bleeding, and (wife) Darleen tells me don’t bleed all over the carpet,” said Fitzgerald, who chose not to seek medical attention until he couldn’t make it to practice the next day.

X-rays then showed the patella to be fractured.

“(The doctor) said he was going to cast it, but I said that’s out, that’s not an option,” said Fitzgerald, who settled on a brace that extends from ankle to hip.

His limited mobility, assistant coach Dan Monson joked, surely would be appreciated by the officials of tonight’s game.

, DataTimes