Tornado Tuesday Sacks Region Football Schedule

Lowell coach Casey McKim was having a leadership award luncheon on Tuesday at Buffalo Wild Wings in Crown Point. Seven student athletes and two coaches were devouring 160 wings.
Then, in an instant, the restaurant went dark as Mother Nature devoured most of Northwest Indiana with 100  mile per hour winds that destroyed almost everything in its path.
“It was bad,” McKim said. “We couldn’t believe what we were seeing outside the windows.”
The Red Devils had practice on Wednesday, even though the school did not have power. Over 90 percent of Lake County was without power with many areas still dark on Thursday afternoon.
Friday night is the annual official scrimmage for Indiana football and it is believed the only one that will be held is the Merrillville at Lowell scrimmage.
“We have a few kids who haven’t been able to make it because they were helping family recover from the storm,” McKim said. “But most of our 73 kids have been able to make it. Even if the school doesn’t have power on Friday night we believe we can get the scrimmage in. I think we’re good to go.”
Andrean coach Chris Skinner was inside the school on Tuesday for a teachers meeting when the alarms started going off. Remember, Andrean was destroyed by a tornado in early June and the defending Class 2A state championship football team was unable to use its field for most of the summer.
So strong winds have hit the 59ers very hard this summer, like the rest of the Region.
“I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’” Skinner said of the Tuesday alarms. “We have a lot of kids from all over (Northwest Indiana) and a lot of them still don’t have power. We’ve been through this before so I think our guys will be strong.”
Andrean was scheduled to scrimmage at Lake Central on Friday night, but the campus in St. John still didn’t have power, Skinner said. He said if there is no power there will not be a scrimmage played.
Griffith coach Phil Mason was driving to his school on Thursday afternoon and said there were three new helicopters flying overhead. He said the devastation in the Panthers hometown is extreme.
Consequently, the scrimmage against Hobart scheduled for Friday night has been cancelled.
“Our town is shut down,” Mason said. “It’s bad. Real bad. There are trees all over the place. But I’m old school. We’re going to practice (Thursday afternoon).”
Mason said South Bend Adams called and asked if the Panthers wanted to drive east for a scrimmage, but the fourth-year coach didn’t think it was necessary. 
His senior-loaded team went to Manchester College over the summer and scrimmaged several times a day. So the old-school Indiana scrimmage doesn’t mean what it once did.
“I wish we’d get rid of it,” Mason said. “With what we’re allowed to do in the summer now I really don’t see why we still do the scrimmages.”
Hobart coach Eric Schreiber Jr. was also in a teacher’s meeting on Tuesday. He said in an instant every cell phone in the room started blaring loud alarms. A talented Brickies football team was put on pause for the rest of the week.
“I live five minutes from the school,” Schreiber Jr. said. “It took me over an hour to get home. There were trees everywhere, roads blocked and detours. It looked like a war zone. It was devastation.
“It was like this huge tornado hit all of Northwest Indiana.”
Luckily, he said only minimal damage was done to the kids’ homes on his team. There is still no power in Hobart on Thursday afternoon, he said, but he’s hoping to get the team back on the field on Friday and Saturday night.
He said the scrimmage is a great time to get younger, inexperienced on the field to get their feet wet, so to speak.
“It’s good to get out there and hit another team,” he said. “So we’ll have to make some adjustments before next Friday.”

Steve Hanlon
Heartland Sports Network