Football Teams Hurting Big Time Coaches Have No Explanation For Increasing Number Of Injuries

Injuries, injuries, injuries.

Everywhere a high school football coach looks there’s injuries.

We’re not just talking about a handful of dings, bangs and bruises, either. Broken bones and loose ligaments seem to be most popular, especially in the past week.

The coaches can’t explain the rash of major injuries.

“I haven’t seen anything like this in my 22 years of coaching, especially to so many top players,” Lewiston coach Nick Menegas said.

He will bring a short-handed team to Lake City on Friday.

Of the most critical injuries, Menegas has lost receiver Tyler Simons (broken collarbone) and tight end/defensive back Josh Wolf (broken leg) for the season.

All-league offensive lineman Shane Andrews (broken hand) and all-league defensive lineman Grant Wright (severely sprained ankle), who replaced Laki Ah Hi at middle linebacker this year, are both questionable this week. Wright leads Lewiston with more than 100 tackle points.

Andrews, a 270-pound tackle, broke a hand in two places when he fell on it during a practice last week.

“It happened right in front of me,” Menegas said. “I felt his hand and it was like feeling a bag of marbles.”

Space prohibits listing all Panhandle teams’ injuries here. All teams, it seems, have lost a key player or two. Here’s a sampling: Post Falls lost senior running back Scott Chamberlain at least for a week and perhaps the season. While being tackled at Chewelah last week, Chamberlain’s knee was twisted “a way joints aren’t supposed to be twisted,” Trojans coach Jeff Choate said.

Choate will experiment by moving quarterback Adam Fehling to tailback. Ben Sharon will play quarterback.

Lakeland starting defensive end Jared Mudge (broken leg) went down in the Hawks’ second game. And they’ll be without starting halfback Harrison Bertsch (strained knee ligament) at least a week.

Moscow senior tight end/linebacker Josh Yarno is out for the season. He had surgery last week on a detached tendon in the ring finger. After suffering the injury against Lake City, he played the next game against Bonners Ferry before having surgery.

The Bears’ all-league running back, Russ Cosgrove, broke a hand against Coeur d’Alene.

Bears coach Eric Bjorkman expects Cosgrove to be able to return and play with a cast in two weeks.

“Very seldom do we get a lot of broken bones,” Bjorkman said.

No team, though, has had it worse than Bonners Ferry. Coach Ted Reynolds has lost 14 starters, 13 of whom were two-way players.

Reynolds lost six for the season in a 30-0 season-opening loss to Sandpoint. Just think what might have happened if Sandpoint’s starters had played his starters for more than a half.

The Badgers lost two against Chewelah, three against Moscow and three more last week against West Valley. Bonners didn’t lose anyone in its win against Newport.

“I haven’t had the same offensive line for two games in a row,” Reynolds noted.

The coaches haven’t been exempt from the injury bug either.

Sandpoint coach Satini Puailoa was demonstrating technique to his defensive linemen last week when he took a shoulder pad above his right eye. It took nine stitches to close a cut.

By Friday, three days after the incident, Puailoa was sporting a shiner. It apparently was worth it, though, as the Bulldogs opened Inland Empire League play with a 33-21 win over Lake City.

, DataTimes