Football Team To Forfeit Playoff Game Due To Injuries

On Monday, Winona Cotter athletic director and football coach Pat Bowlin announced that the Ramblers were going to forfeit the Section One, Class AA quarterfinal at Caledonia.

Huh?

“It’s not hard practices,’ Bowlin said. “We just wanted to keep the kids involved.’

Bowlin, who completed his 12th season as Cotter football coach, was forced to forfeit because of injuries.

“We had six injuries, and that left us with only 10 healthy experienced varsity players,’ he said. “We could have played, but with (junior varsity) players that we felt were not ready to compete at the varsity level. No way we wanted to do that.’

The decision wasn’t easy.

“We talked to the players on Saturday, and half of them said, sure, go ahead, and the other half was more realistic.

“I went back and forth about it all weekend and finally came to the conclusion that it wasn’t going to be safe if we went out there. We were down to two seniors (seven are on the roster) and I really feel for them. They led our team positively throughout the year.’

The fact that the forfeited game was going to be against powerful, unbeaten and top-seed Caledonia made absolutely no difference, he said.

“Forfeiting is totally contradictory to everything we teach at Cotter,” Bowlin said. “When we got down to 10 players, I just couldn’t convince myself that it was right to play.”

Cotter finished with a 2-6 record.

“With our numbers, it was a positive season,’ said Bowlin. “We were in most games and showed improvement. Sometimes, as a coach you can’t wait for the season to end, but I can’t say that about this team. They were a fun group to coach.”

The regular season was completed last Wednesday, and the Ramblers practiced on both Thursday and Friday.

“I was hoping some of the injured players would show signs of improvement, but that wasn’t the case,’ said Bowlin.

Three Cotter players suffered concussions, and quarterback Joe Miller sustained a hand injury in the regular-season finale against Goodhue. All four were starters.

Cotter started the season with 37 players (grades 9 to 12). Bowlin said he lost a few players to injuries the first couple of weeks, and then made it “safely’ through the sixth week. Then more injuries.

There were seven seniors, eight juniors and 15 sophomores on the roster.

“We’re going to have 23 upper classmen when we start next August,’ said Bowlin, “and that compares to 13 this year. We also have nine freshmen out.’

Cotter has about 300 students, but 94 of them, according to Bowlin, are international students, and only four of those went out for football.

Bowlin emphasized that this is not the end of the program.

“The forfeit, if you will, was a perfect storm,’ he said. “If some of these injuries happened in the fourth or fifth week, maybe we could have made it through. But everything came together at the same time, and that was unfortunate.”

Cotter reached the Class AA state semifinals as recently as 2006.

Caledonia will host Chatfield (5-4) at 7 p.m. Saturday in the section semifinal.