CATO - For a time, Tim LaRose had lost his two favorite things about high school: technology classes and sports. The emergency solution to the Cato-Meridian school board's budget crisis last spring was to eliminate these and virtually all other "extras."

"Those are what keep me in school," said the fourth-year varsity lineman, the most experienced member of the school's football team.

LaRose, who wants to play football or wrestle in college, and study to become an automotive or mechanical engineer, has definitely lost out on the tech classes.

But as for the part of high school he could never replace, his senior season of football, LaRose got to keep it. The fall sports season was saved through fund-raising spearheaded by the Cato-Meridian Sports Boosters, which have kept LaRose, all of his teammates, and hundreds of other people around and nearby the community busy throughout the summer.

A single aspirin applied to what promises to be one long headache? Maybe. But the Cato-Meridian football team, which last year snapped a 28-game losing streak in its first game and went on to a winning season (5-3), plans to make the very best of it.

"I was really bumming that we weren't going to have it, that we wouldn't be able to see how good we can actually be," said LaRose. "I'm really happy the community pulled through, and now we're going to be able to see how our team's going to be able to perform this year."

Local football fans, many of whom were accustomed to the stellar Blue Devil football teams of a decade ago, began coming back to games last season, C.J. Hannon's second as the team's head coach. Now people are coming to the CIMARF field complex to watch the team's practices.

It's the closest the Blue Devils, whose normal playing field at the high school is being reconstructed, will get to the comforts of a home game. They open up their all-road season tonight at Canastota.

"At this point, having no home field is really more of a challenge (than the budget issues)," said Hannon, a social studies teacher at the high school. "But the kids are still here, working hard. They still love football.

"Even when we didn't really know whether we were going to have a team or not, the kids were here three nights a week, lifting weights. It really would have been heartbreaking for the kids to have lost it."

Perhaps Hannon's most ardent gym rat, senior Nick Polmanteer, was looking forward to becoming the Blue Devils' featured running back this season. But he learned he might not get the chance when a TV station interrupted the basketball game he was watching with the bad news.

"All I was thinking about was if I didn't play, I wouldn't have nothing to do," said Polmanteer. "I really didn't believe that it could cost that much. We had all the equipment. It just blew my mind.

"It taught me not to take anything for granted, and bad things can happen, so I've got to work to make it happen."

Staff writer Andrew Walter can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 258 or citizensports@lee.net