When football and religion collide

For many years - decades, by some accounts - high schools in the Northwest suburbs have scheduled football games to avoid conflicting with Jewish holidays.

Scores of schools, from Elk Grove Village to Wauconda, played their games on a nontraditional Thursday night.

Elsewhere, though, it's a different story. No fewer than 19 DuPage County schools are competing tonight, on Rosh Hashana, the start of the Jewish High Holy Days. In the Fox Valley, only two games were slated for Thursday night, and the remainder are being played this evening.

Why the disparity?

Some say scheduling around the Jewish holidays started in the late 1980s in Buffalo Grove, a community with a significant Jewish population, and eventually spread throughout the area and into Lake County.

Elsewhere, the answers are more elusive. But it appears there are smaller and newer concentrations of Jews in DuPage and Kane counties. And, there, they have not asked for accommodations for their holidays.

"We could do a better job of alerting the school district about our needs," concedes Rabbi Marc D. Rudolph of Congregation Beth Shalom in Naperville. "It's up to us to reach out to school superintendents and let them know when the holidays are and make a formal request that they inform principals and teachers."

Beth Shalom serves roughly 300 families from in and around DuPage County, many with students and athletes in the schools. Also, the Jewish community in DuPage County first started gaining foothold only about 20 years ago, which results in a smaller effect on planned activities.

But there are signs that some schools are more attuned to the needs of the Jewish community. Neuqua Valley High School Principal Bob McBride rescheduled homecoming activities to allow Jewish students to attend last week. However, the football team will play a regular season game tonight.

"Life will go on," he said. "The games will be played. But there's a big difference between a homecoming game and dance and missing that and missing just any old football game. There's a big difference."

McBride confirmed that having a low percentage of Jews and other minority groups does affect the school's decisions.

"It certainly has to do with population and demographics and how many students are impacted by decisions to hold events on a Jewish or Muslim holiday," he said. "We can't move all of our events to accommodate for Jewish and Muslim holidays, but we try to avoid major religious events with our major events, if we can find a time."

But in Buffalo Grove, where the Jewish population has been sizable for decades, the district long ago moved to incorporate the holidays into the school calendar. And moving Thursday's game away from Rosh Hashana was scheduled last year.

"We're very cognizant because of the number of (Jewish) students and families we have," said Northwest Suburban High School District 214 President Bill Dussling. "The tradition has been going on here for a significant period of time."

Glenbard West High School found itself in the middle of a flap that led Oak Park-River Forest officials to apologize on its Web site "for the disappointment it caused" by scheduling a game on Rosh Hashana.

Rod Molek, a Glenbard High School District 87 assistant superintendent, said even though Glenbard West parents weren't the ones complaining, the school offered to play on Thursday. The same accommodations would be attempted if West parents stepped forward.

"We are sensitive to that," he said. "If families said they couldn't compete, we'd try to reschedule. If it were not possible, we'd have to move on without the player."

Other schools have rescheduled games previously set for Rosh Hashana, such as Grayslake North. There, Athletic Director Tina Woolard said a rule in the Fox Valley Conference encourages teams to work together to find a date that does not conflict for either team.

"We are doing what we need to do to accommodate all of our students," she said. Woolard said the reaction was not to a specific request from a player or parent but that the school made the request because it wanted to avoid any possible conflicts.

League athletic directors tend to be pretty flexible, she said.

"I wouldn't even consider this a conflict," Woolard said of Rosh Hashana. "I can't imagine if someone were to say to me, 'We can't move the game.' It would cause issues for our student-athletes. I don't think that's fair."