Look for blue sleeves during Saturday football

Football fans watching Pacific-10 Conference matchups this Saturday will see game officials adorned in blue sleeves as part of a prostate cancer awareness campaign led by the Hutchinson Center.

The message: If you’re a man over 40, ask your doctor about annual screening for prostate cancer.

The campaign was driven by Juan Cotto, the Center’s community outreach manager and a local high school football coach. The last two football seasons, Cotto has teamed with the Washington Officials Association to use blue penalty flags in every high school football game in the state on a designated September weekend. September is Prostate Cancer Awareness Month and blue is its symbolic color, akin to pink for breast cancer awareness.

This year, Cotto got the Pac-10 to join the awareness effort—with blue forearm sleeves instead of blue penalty flags.

“Pac-10 football is a great way to get a prostate screening message to hundreds of thousands of men, and at no cost to the Center,” Cotto said.

Sports network ESPN included news about the campaign in its Pac-10 Blog.