‘To be a part of a team and work toward something’
Basketball provides hope for GHS athletes with football canceled
Greenwich seniors AJ Barber and Mason Muir are experiencing mixed emotions.
Both are better known for their success on the football field, but each also plays basketball for the Cardinals.
The Board of Control for the CIAC, the state’s governing body for high school sports, voted Thursday to clear the way for winter sports to begin practicing as early as Tuesday, and for competition to begin as early as Feb. 8. The same board voted to cancel the proposed alternative season for football this spring, four months after canceling the fall season due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Barber has been a significant part of the Cardinals’ football team since his sophomore year and Mason Muir, following in his brother Gavin’s footsteps, started making a name for himself during his junior
season.
Both were going to be counted on this past fall when the Cardinals were considered a favorite by many to win their second Class LL state championship in three seasons.
“It was pretty devastating because up to that point everyone was working hard,” said Barber, a GameTimeCT All-State First-Team football selection his junior year. “I’ve worked incredibly hard to get better and get bigger to play at the next level.”
While the chance for another title run in football was lost in the fall, along with a final chance to play the game with a group of longtime friends this spring, Barber and Muir are still grateful they have a sport to play.
“All my desires to have a football season will be fulfilled when we have a basketball season,” said Barber, who will play football at Princeton next season. “To be a part of a team and work toward something.”
To play in meaningful games. Barber, a guard, and Muir, a guard/forward, are two of the captains for the Greenwich boys basketball team.
Muir understands what the rest of his football teammates went through. So his hopes for a basketball season are still guarded.
“I’m still tentative because of what happened with the football season,” Muir said. “It’s hard to tell.”
But Muir added he’s also very appreciative for a chance to play, understanding not all are as lucky.
“I started thinking about it as an opportunity to be together as a team,” he said. “(We’re getting) opportunities that other people weren’t able to have.”
Barber and Muir aren’t the only Greenwich football players on the roster for the basketball team, which went 4-16 last year and lost in the first round of the Division I tournament. A handful of underclassman lost their football seasons as well.
“I’m so sick to my stomach every day that goes by that these kids got their high school sports taken away from them,” Greenwich first year basketball coach Todd Trimmer said. “Their high school experience is a lot of what makes these kids and develops them into what kind of men and women they will be become.”
Trimmer said he was happy that the basketball season is on for a lot of reasons, but he is especially excited for the football players on his team.
“To have that camaraderie of being a teammate again,” he said. “They are ready to get out. They are chomping at the bit.”