While smokey skies could possibly force Saturday’s season-opening football game between Montana Tech and Eastern Oregon to be moved out of town, the school is still planning on playing at Alumni Coliseum.
Montana Tech athletic director Joe McClafferty said Wednesday that the school is looking at alternative sites if smoke conditions worsen before Saturday’s scheduled 6 p.m. game at Alumni Coliseum.
The most logical site would be Bobcat Stadium in Bozeman, McClafferty said. Smoke conditions are not is bad in Bozeman as they are in Butte, where the Montana Department of Environmental Quality declared the air “unhealty” Wednesday.
“If we can’t see the East Ridge and heath officials tell us we can’t play, we’ll have to move the game,” McClafferty said.
Only a faint outline of the East Ridge could be seen through the smoke on the Montana Tech campus Wednesday.
The Orediggers scrimmaged last Thursday in conditions nearly as bad as Wednesday. Tuesday night’s practice didn’t have a hint of smoke in the air, other than the site of the Nineteen Mile Fire burning in the distance.
Though the Nineteen Mile Fire is burning southeast of Butte, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration map shows the smoke in the Butte skies is coming from numerous fires in Idaho.
