As California copes with devastating wildfires, high school teams try to play on

A firefighter is silhouetted by a burning home along Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, Calif. (Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty)

November 14 at 1:45 PM

The fire is three hours away, but out the window at Healdsburg High School, it’s gray and dark. The air is hazy and thick, like someone pulled a cloth over your face.

People walk around outside wearing surgical ventilator masks. School was closed Tuesday.

It’s playoff season for fall sports, and the Healdsburg cross-country team has runners ready to compete for North Bay League titles, and, if they achieve qualifying times, for state titles. But the Air Quality Index, a federal measurement of air pollution, has been too high for a week to allow any kind of practice, let alone for an endurance sport.

The team’s coach, Kate Guthrie, called a fitness club in town to ask if her athletes could work out there to stay in shape. She promised her runners would show up at off-peak hours. The gym only has six treadmills. The manager said the team could take them all.

[49ers give Paradise High football team a moment of distraction from fire’s devastation]

“I explained hopefully we wouldn’t have to use it for very long,” Guthrie said.

The 15 partially contained wildfires burning up the Golden State have caused tragedy, destruction and loss of life, but they’ve also thrown off-kilter the mundane traditions of day-to-day life, like high school sports. The California Interscholastic Federation, the governing body for high school athletics, on Tuesday pushed back a slew of state championships, hoping the fires peter out soon or the smoke at least blows over. In the meantime, countless teams in every sport are struggling to cope with the impact of nearby blazes, and with the treacherous air quality created by the smoke and ash, state officials said this week.

“It’s hard because everyone is impacted,” CIF spokeswoman Rebecca Brutlag said. “Either the community is under threat or the smoke is getting involved and people can’t get outside.”

The Camp Fire in central Northern California still burned 130,000 acres and was only 35 percent contained on Wednesday morning. It ravaged the town of Paradise. The local high school football team, expected to make a deep playoff run, forfeited its postseason schedule after, according to one player’s estimate, 90 percent of the team lost their homes. The 49ers hosted coaches, players and cheerleaders from the school Monday night. The Woolsey Fire, 480 miles south, burned more than 96,000 acres and was only 47 percent contained.

Even indoor sports have had games and practices canceled because of the air quality. Volleyball matches in the San Francisco Bay area have been postponed because gymnasiums cannot filter the smoke out of the air.

At Archbishop Mitty High in San Jose, some 200 miles from the Camp Fire, the national powerhouse girls' basketball team is throttling back its practices. Coach Sue Phillips said she is telling her players not to break a light jog during training. Her team is mostly focused on informal shooting drills.

“Indoors is better for air circulation, but you still have kids walking around campus day after day breathing that bad air,” she said.

Every time the wind blows smoke into Healdsburg, it brings with it memories of the Tubbs Fire that singed Sonoma County 13 months ago. Two Healdsburg teachers lost their homes. The fireline stopped at the backyard of Healdsburg Principal Bill Halliday.

Healdsburg, a village of almost 12,000 people in the middle of wine country, was mostly spared. Santa Rosa, the bigger city 15 miles south, was nearly devoured.

“We happened to be in a safe bubble while everything around us burned,” said Guthrie, the cross-country coach.

At the beginning of this week, the smoke seemed just as thick and the sky just as dark. The fire is 150 miles away. But that could just mean everyone in Healdsburg is getting used to it, Guthrie said.

“It’s hard to know,” she added, “when the end is in sight.”

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