Last week the high school football season in Southwest Florida was put to a halt because of Hurricane Milton. The Florida High School Athletic Association announced on Monday that all week eight matchups would be pushed to November and that they were extending the regular season.
There initially was a big question mark for football teams after classes, practices, and games were cancelled for a full week.
"We had several kids that were evacuated just to stay safe." said Bonita Springs head football coach Kyle Shafer. "We had a couple of our coaches that were out of town as well. It's just been a lot of last-minute planning and trying to get everything going."
Teams were trying to reschedule their week eight games, but coordinating all of them into their already full schedules wasn't simple.
"Originally we're going to make up Friday night's missed game with Naples tonight and then just play Clewiston on Friday night for a regular game," said South Fort Myers head football coach Matt Holderfield.
Three games were set to be played on Monday, October 14: Aubrey Rogers vs Lely, Barron Collier vs Bonita Springs, and Naples vs South Fort Myers. Several teams were trying to squeeze games in this week on top of their week nine matchups, reschedule future games, and even cancel. Instead, the FHSAA announced that there would be a designated week for makeups added to the end of the regular season.
"The safety of the kids has to be number one," said Shafer. "That little practice going into a game on top of certain teams potentially having to play two games in seven days, three games in ten days, it's just a lot."
"We used to do the Friday, Monday, Friday in and we did one two years ago with Ian, and it's terrible to play three games in eight days," said Fort Myers head football coach Sam Sirianni. "A [colleague that coached for years] told me that it ruined his season. I think everybody stepped back and at the end of the day, safety first. Now we don't have a rush to get games in. It gives everybody the ability to try to flexibly get all their games."
Here's how the rest of the high school football schedule will play out here in Southwest Florida. We've got weeks nine, ten and eleven left in the regular season. Playoffs were initially supposed to start the week of November 8th with round one, round two, regional finals and state semifinals, followed by a bye week, and ending with the state finals. The FHSAA has now eliminated that bye week, moved those first four weeks of the playoffs down a week and the new open week in November is now where the week eight games can be made up from November 4th through November 7th.
"That gives us enough time to kind of get ready," said Holderfield. "It would have been tough on us having in essence one day preparation."
So this week goes back to regularly scheduled practices and building on the momentum they had before the season was put on pause.
"It's almost like we were just going into a new season," said Sirianni. "You hadn't seen the kids in so long. Had to gauge their fitness level and get them back into football again."
"We're going to come out here in practice putting in 110% and get ready for the next game," said South Fort Myers senior Tadarien Green.