For all the wrong reasons, high school football in Central New York seemed to find its way into headlines beyond the sports page in this otherworldly autumn.

You had Marcellus and its JV team taking an odd side trip to a cemetery that stirred national debate. You had the fifth down in the last minute of the West Genesee-Baldwinsville classic. You have the ongoing saga at Skaneateles, questions of residence and eligibility that might never get resolved to everyone’s complete satisfaction.

Then came that one Friday night, and all the silly stories instantly took a backseat to something that no player, coach, parent or fan could even imagine.

Phoenix was playing Homer. A playoff berth was on the line. In the third quarter, a Firebirds lineman named Ridge Barden, starting for the first time in his varsity career, had a helmet-to-helmet collision with a Trojans lineman, a disturbing yet routine event in this game of violence.

Except that this wasn’t routine. Barden went down. Though conscious, his condition turned worse, even as medical professionals did everything possible to tend to him on the field, in the ambulance and at the hospital.

Hours later, Barden passed away. He was 16.

In following this game, you prepare for a lot of different circumstances, chief among them injuries. So many different times, I’ve seen the stretchers on the field when an injury had even a chance to be serious, only to find out later that the player was okay and would fully heal.

So try to imagine, if that’s possible, if you’re a Phoenix player, having seen Barden carted off. You play the rest of the contest and, when it’s done, board the bus to return home. Then, when you get back, the coach tells you that your teammate is gone.

Just the same, put yourself in Homer’s position. One minute, you are happy that you’ve won the game and advanced to the Section III playoffs, and the next minute you don’t care anything about wins or losses and you feel collectively sick and heartbroken, too.

We are in a time where there’s increased sensitivity to head injuries and concussions in football, at all levels. Studies have shown the long-term effect these collisions have on NFL players once their careers are over, and among some there are calls not to have any contact in youth football until they’re close to their teen years.

Even with all that knowledge, though, nothing prepares you for this. Parents have lost a son. Teammates have lost a friend and colleague. And no amount of words, comforting though they may be, can ease the heartache, at least in the short term.

At the least, we can celebrate Ridge Barden’s all-too-brief life, appreciate a young man who walked an hour home from practices and, to keep strong, flipped tractor tires.

Ridge did not possess a vast amount of natural talent. College coaches weren’t likely to recruit him. For him, this was just a game, something to work at and be proud of before real life and adulthood set in.

In that sense, Ridge represents tens of thousands of kids, all across this country, that go out for high school sports. For at least 95 percent of them, this will mark the pinnacle of their athletic careers, with no scholarships or professional dollars waiting at the end, just the application of life lessons learned on the playing field and pride and camaraderie that you can never buy.

That’s what makes this story even sadder. A whole lot of people, outside of this realm, will focus on the tragedy and cry out for changes, all of them with good intentions, but no appreciation of the fundamental truth behind this story.

Understand this – Ridge Barden wanted to be out there, on that line, taking the hits. No one asked him or forced him to do so. His loss should not keep any other football player from wanting to do the same, in order to meet some other person’s agenda.

The best thing all of us, in the Central New York high school sports community, can do is put our collective arms around the Barden family and all the people in Phoenix, and also help the folks in Homer, who must now wonder how they are going to recover from this and focus on the playoffs.

There, and in all the other places where they’ll gather on the gridiron in weekends to come, we can only hope and pray that the tragedy of Ridge Barden is never, ever repeated.

Phil Blackwell is Eagle Newspapers Sports Editor. He can be reached at [email protected].