In the week before the Ben Davis High School football team was to play Lawrence North on Oct. 9, a couple of players got sick. One missed practice time. Another sat out the game. But that was about it.

Then came the team’s Saturday meeting, “and you could just see it,” coach Mike Kirschner said: the flu, afflicting dozens of players. Fifty missed school Tuesday, Kirschner said. Forty-five stayed home Wednesday. And, most noticeably, none of the team’s listed quarterbacks practiced before Friday’s game against Class 5A No. 1 Carmel — meaning senior tailback Phillip Dudley played under center because, as Kirschner put it, “we just had to have somebody take a snap.”

But Kirschner is not complaining. He’s just telling it how it is — for his team, and many others.

This fall, the flu is spreading fast through football teams, and — thanks in part to awareness of the H1N1 virus — it’s being taken seriously. Some schools have felt the effects a little. At others, such as Ben Davis, it has been widespread. Although it hasn’t reached the levels of states such as Ohio — where games were postponed earlier this month — the flu still could become the football playoffs’ great equalizer.

“It’s possible,” Kirschner said, “because it depends on who it hits, and when.”

Consider the Ben Davis and Carmel game last Friday. The Greyhounds had been without top running back Devin Brinson (117 yards on 19 carries against the Giants) and several others in a win over Terre Haute North. But had the outbreak affected Ben Davis then and Carmel a week later, perhaps the outcome would have changed.

Or maybe not, as Kirschner and other coaches refuse to use it as an excuse for any loss.

“It’s just like an injury,” Brownsburg coach Brett Comer said. “But you’ve got to fight through it.”

Still, Comer said, “fighting through it” means testing your backups. It doesn’t mean telling players to — as Ben Davis assistant athletic director Scott Williams said — “pad up” and “tough it out on Friday night.”

“If the kid’s showing the signs, we just want them to go home,” Williams said. “We don’t want it spreading.”

At Ben Davis, Williams said, the locker rooms are fumigated every two weeks — more frequently than in past years — and uniforms and helmets are being cleaned extensively, and often. Players also are told to shower and keep clean after games and practices, and use readily available hand sanitizer.

At Cardinal Ritter, where coach Ty Hunt last week said his team was fighting the flu, players were encouraged to “get good sleep and good healthy food (and) lots of fluids.”

IHSAA assistant commissioner Phil Gardner said, “We worry about it spreading” but don’t expect to make changes to games.

Still, the flu could affect a game’s outcome.

“(If) you’ve got depth issues with injuries,” Zionsville coach Larry McWhorter said, “and some of this comes in, I think it could make a big difference.”