Smaha Patching Up Cougars

Mark Smaha’s worried.

He’s worried about Mike Sage’s shoulder and Ryan Raymond’s bruised nerve and LeJuan Gibbons’ injured knee and the list goes on.

Washington State’s director of athletic medicine can’t help but worry. These 125 football players are his kids. He’s the one who fixing their pain and suffering.

And this year, that’s been a chore. The Cougars have opened up a Pandora’s box of injuries with thousands of little pieces, each one more confusing than the last.

“One thing that was different about this camp is that we have hit more,” said coach Mike Price. “That has resulted in a lot of bruises, a lot of sore necks, aches and pains.”

“When you have a young team like we have, you have to have more reps, more contact, more and more of everything, and that includes longer practices,” added Smaha, who has been with the Cougars for 225 consecutive games. ” … It’s going to catch up with you.”

It started to during Saturday’s scrimmage.

“At that point I had to go up to Mike (Price) and say ‘Time out,”’ Smaha said. “They (the players) came in in great shape, and we’ve been out here 5 and 6 hours a day. These guys are tired, and if we don’t back off, we’re not going to have our legs come Saturday.”

Price took Smaha’s advice.

Now all Smaha’s got to do is make this jigsaw puzzle of a team look like the picture of health by Saturday’s opener against Illinois.

Amazingly, he’s just got a couple of pieces left to fit.

Only Gibbons, a junior cornerback who had arthroscopic surgery for a torn knee cartilage, Raymond, a backup guard who has a bruised nerve in his calf, and Tupo Tuupo, a linebacker who has a broken shoulder blade, will not see action.

Many of the rest will have some of the $50,000 in athletic/medical tape the university buys each year holding them together.

But Smaha’s worries are far from wrapped up.

An entire new batch arrived fresh on Sunday when he sat down to watch the Purdue-USC game.

It was the fourth quarter and Purdue was crumbling. They may be called the Boilermakers, but this team could not handle the heat.

“Not my guys,” he thought. “We’re not going to cramp. Not this year.”

Five of his Cougars did cramp in last year’s opener against UCLA. WSU still won, but it wasn’t a glorious afternoon for Smaha.

This Saturday, with temperatures expected to be in the high 80s and 10 to 15 degrees hotter on Martin Stadium’s turf, Smaha refuses to have a repeat performance.

“Monday after practice I told these guys, ‘I don’t know how many of you saw that game yesterday, but Purdue lost that game because they weren’t hydrated and they were tired.’ So we start tonight. The only time you don’t have a bottle with you is when you are sleeping and playing.”’

The Cougars will also be without a Cool Zone on the sideline on Saturday. The Cool Zone blows a mist along the bench allowing the players to reduce their core temperature quickly.

“We tried every outlet we could to get them but couldn’t,” said Smaha.

Illinois, on the other hand, will be bringing the apparatus for its sideline.