Playing it safe: FSDB football game in Maryland canceled

From: St. Augustine Record, FL
Oct. 25, 2002

By RON WALTERS
Staff Writer

A Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind weekend football game in Maryland has been canceled due to concerns about the Washington-area sniper, school officials said Thursday.

The Saturday night game was to be played against the Maryland School for the Deaf in Frederick, where on Thursday John Allen Muhammad, 41, and 17-year-old John Lee Malvo were arrested in connection to the shootings, according to The Associated Press.

FSDB President Elmer Dillingham Jr. said in a statement on the school's Web site: "We have decided not to send our football team to the Maryland School for the Deaf this weekend. While we do not want terrorism to rule our lives, we want to do what is in the best interest of our students and their families."

Dillingham added that Maryland administrators "recognize our concern and have sent their warmest regards to the staff and students (here)."

Bruce Curtis, FSDB's athletic director, told The St. Augustine Record that the two schools had talked this week about a possible cancellation.

"We had been in contact with them, our president talking with their president, since early last week," Curtis said, "and at that point they were not on an alert status that prevented any of their high school evening activities."

Still, FSDB decided to gather parent input on whether to go ahead and play the game. As of Sunday, Curtis said, only one parent had forbidden their child from traveling to Maryland.

But after a statement from the sniper received by police Tuesday stating "Your children are not safe anywhere at anytime," Curtis said FSDB decided, again after more parent input, that "it was not in our students' best interests to go."

Saturday night's game is the Maryland school's homecoming, and they have since rescheduled with a "hearing" high school in the area, Curtis said.

As far as FSDB's football team's record, "It's just a canceled game; it's not a forfeit," Curtis said.

© Copyright 2002 The St. Augustine Record and Morris Digital Works.