Pacific Northwest Football Official’s Association Honor Shorewood and Cleveland High Schools for Sportsmanship
Posted: June 19th, 2009

For the past several years (since 2003) officials in the Pacific Northwest Football Official’s Association (PNFOA) have given out a sportsmanship award to a Seattle/Puget Sound school and individual player  Read more

By JEFF POHJOLA
KIRO Radio (link below courtesy of www.mynorthwest.com)
Listen to Jeff's report

If you're heading to a high school football game Friday night, you'll notice something a little different.

Thrown by the officials to indicate a penalty, the flags have been a staple of the game since its inception, but Friday night they're going to be blue.

"I was trying to come up with a way last year to promote some of the cancer research that we're doing at Fred Hutch and I met with the Seattle Seahawks and Kevin Griffin, they're great community relations manager there, and we were kicking around some ideas. He said 'What if the referees to use blue flags to kind of highlight prostate cancer," said Juan Cotto, head coach at Highline High School in Burien and works at the Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center.

Photo by Dale Garvey Photography

Cotto says the flags are in memory of Terry Ennis, the legendary football coach at Arch Bishop Murphy, who died of prostate cancer. "He had great wisdom and really was a supporter of developing young people."

One of the organizers, referee Jason Capps, says the idea has really taken off. "All over the state this weekend will be blue flags."

Each official is donating to the cause.

"How do you pay for 1,200 flags that are $6 a piece? All the officials in the association agreed to pay for them themselves," said Capps.

Even though the program is only in its second year, Cotto says it has already saved lives.

"We heard from men who went out and got their first prostate examinations, but more importantly, I heard from a lot of wives who finally said 'Hey, my husband went out and got a prostate cancer exam because they saw the blue flags in the games," said Cotto.

High School football officials throughout the state of Washington will raise the profile of Prostate Cancer Awareness Month by replacing traditional yellow penalty flags with blue flags during varsity games played on September 17-19, 2009.

September is National Prostate Cancer Awareness Month. According to the Prostate Cancer Foundation, prostate cancer is the most common non-skin cancer in America, affecting one in six men.  One new case occurs every 2.5 minutes and a man dies from prostate cancer every 19 minutes. It is estimated that there are more than two million American men currently living with prostate cancer.

Screening for prostate cancer can be performed in a physician’s office using two tests: the PSA (prostate-specific antigen) blood test and the digital rectal exam (DRE). The American Cancer Society recommends that both the PSA and DRE should be offered annually, beginning at age 50.

Men at high risk, such as African American men and men with a strong family history of one or more first-degree relatives diagnosed at an early age, should begin testing at age 45. [View Flyer (321k PDF)]