A Wildfire-Ravaged Panhandle Town Rallies Around High School Football

“I’m very excited for football season,” said Jessa Bell, a senior cheerleader at Canadian High School. “We’ve been doing a lot to get ready.”Bell’s sentiment is shared by many CHS Wildcats fans from the Texas Panhandle town, with the team playing its first game Thursday in Elk City. In fact, the enthusiasm for high school football in Canadian this year likely exceeds that at many other Texas schools—only in Canadian, it has almost nothing to do with returning starters or a chance to make the playoffs.The Bells were among the more than fifty families in and around Canadian who lost their homes to the Smokehouse Creek wildfire six months ago. The fire, considered the largest in Texas history, raged over slightly more than one million…

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