One team practiced this week with three offensive linemen. The plan for the East squad was to use two former running backs to fill out the blocking positions.
Some days, each team practiced with fewer than 20 players.
By the time of the game Saturday, the East (22) and the West (27) squads featured a total of 49 players in uniform. The Freedom Bowl Classic would be played.
Still, the participation numbers have been dwindling in recent years. The Freedom Bowl, which started in the summer of 2003, raises funds for Shriners Hospitals for Children and is a local showcase for recent graduates of Southwest Washington high schools.
John Bryant, chairman of the game, had another number, too: 80,000. As in $80,000. That is how much this game has raised for charity. He does not want to see this event go away, and, in fact, he said he is not worried about the game’s future.
“I’ve talked to a lot of people who want to help,” Bryant said. “We’ll figure out a way to do it.”
Bryant said he and other organizers will be more proactive in the future, getting to the schools early in order to spread the news of the Freedom Bowl. The game can be promoted as a way to celebrate a high school career while putting on an exhibition for charity.
Rick Steele, the East coach this season, has been a part of the coaching staff for this game a half-dozen times.
“I remember when each side had 40 players,” he said. “Most of those years, we were playing kids on just one side of the ball.”
In 2015, though, most of the players were asked to play offense and defense.
Steele said it will take a commitment from a number of people: More coaches in the area need to volunteer, so there can be a rotation of sorts. Athletic directors and coaches can do a better job of promoting the game at individual schools. The Shriners, too, can start an aggressive campaign.
The players themselves also have to want to compete. Bryant said he wants to emphasize the reason for the game. Each year, the Freedom Bowl players visit the Portland Shriners Hospital.
A few years ago, Bryant said, one of the players was so impressed with the facility, with the children in the hospital, that the player changed his major in college in order to find a way to get in the medical field.
“When the kids go to the hospital on Wednesday, they realize what they are playing the game for,” Bryant said. “It’s not for themselves. It’s for the kids (at the hospital).”
It made an impact on David Bishop, a Fort Vancouver graduate, and Will Warne, a Mountain View graduate, earlier this week.
“To see them fighting that way, through what they have to go through every day, but they have a smile on their face,” Bishop said.
“That was the biggest highlight of the week. We were like celebrities,” Warne said of the visit. “But we get our energy from them.”
Bryant and the rest of the Freedom Bowl Classic organizers believe these stories, this game, will continue into 2016 and beyond.
