Lamont: State won’t halt private football
Even as virus cases rise, gov. leaves league play decisions up to locals
As private and independent 11-on-11 high school football leagues start play across Connecticut despite state Department of Public Health recommendations to postpone all games until the spring, Gov. Ned Lamont said Monday the state would not intervene — even as coronavirus cases rise across the state.
Lamont repeated on Monday that sports decisions are “a local priority” and said that he’s recently learned that much of the coronavirus spread on sports teams doesn’t actually happen in the games themselves.
“A lot of these sports can be managed successfully,” Lamont said. “It’s not the nature of the sport so much, but it’s all the social activities around the sport.”
The governor’s comments do not align with the official DPH recommendation, released in late September, that high-risk youth and amateur sports such as football should be postponed until the spring.
Lamont has stated in the past that all decisions made at the high school sports level would be made by the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference or, in the case of independent football leagues, by local jurisdictions.
“I do think that coaches and parents can take this seriously,” Lamont said. “And I think if they manage it well, you can keep the COVID under control in those situations.”
Still, Lamont pointed out risks and said the state has “seen a lot of infections in and around sports.” Hewarned that COVID19 cases on a private football team
could spread to schools, which may then have to shut down. But by passing the decision-making onto towns and school districts, Lamont’s administration left the door open for private leagues such as the ones that have now popped up across the state.
The state has acted to close schools, gyms, bars and other business establishments during the pandemic. High school sports, and particularly football, have been an emotional flashpoint, despite the health warnings from the state health department.
Several area high school football teams are represented in the upstart Connecticut High School Independent Football League, which was created shortly after the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic conference canceled full-contact football game play this fall at the recommendation of the DPH. Included in the league are teams from Berlin, Southington, New Britain, Ellington and Meriden’s Platt and Maloney High.
The league’s teams operate independently from their respective schools, though in many cases, teams are using equipment loaned from the local school boards and are being run by the high school team’s coach.
The league began playing on Oct. 10, when a team of Maloney players and coaches hosted Amity. On Saturday, teams from Maloney and Platt played each other at Falcon Field in Meriden in front of a crowd of 150 people. In Fairfield County, another private
league began play this weekend, with three games held on Saturday without spectators.
But even with the private leagues already playing, local health experts are wary of their safety.
“I’m in complete agreement with the state DPH,” said Charles Brown, director of the Central Connecticut Health District, which oversees Berlin, Newington, Rocky Hill and Wethersfield. “It’s not something we recommended or approved of. It was something we were informed of that they were doing. That was not something we would look to have anybody involved in at this point. Really, 11-on-11 football is a high risk. Being able to do football safely in
a time when you’re dealing with an increase in cases is a real issue.”
Brown worries that if a player on one of these teams tested positive, a wide group of students on the team and in the school would need to quarantine, and that the school would have to “take the brunt of it” and could potentially be forced to close.
Dr. David Banach, a UConn Health epidemiologist, said that the virus could also spread from a football game to the broader community, including people who are high-risk of becoming seriously ill. He said that the amount of coronavirus spread in a particular community will influence the risk level of
playing football — but playing football may also change the amount of coronavirus spread in a community.
“Both of those influence one another,” Banach said. “It is a complex interplay between the community and the football field and then that influence back on the community.”
He also pointed to the state’s official recommendations, and said private leagues should be cautious.
“It’s something that we have to be cautious with,” Banach said. “The state made specific recommendations regarding football ... and if we’re going to be looking at alternatives, I think we would have to do so with a very careful eye.”
Berlin is slated to play
its first independent game on Nov. 7. Head coach and Connecticut Speaker of the House Joe Aresimowicz said that the school’s board of education is allowing the team to use football equipment. Area teams such as Maloney, Platt and New Britain were also loaned equipment by their respective school boards.
“We’ve been extremely careful, going back to July 7 when we were [first] allowed to practice,” Aresimowicz said. “We’re going to be extremely careful moving forward. I understand DPH’s position, they want as little risk as possible. But the reality is, we’re dealing with a bunch of 15, 16 and 17-year-olds, that are going to play football whether it’s sanctioned or not. They are going to play basketball, they are going to wrestle.
“They are going to do all of the things kids that age do. The level of supervision and the level of detail we can provide to ensure we’re as careful as we can be, it would be far superior than anything they can do on their own.”
The state saw the first warning sign of a COVID19 uptick in early September. After a relatively calm late summer with a positivity rate that rarely surpassed 1%, the rate jumped above that threshold on Sept. 9 and remained there until early October. The rate then jumped again on Oct. 14 and clocked in above 2% for three of the four following days.
Shortly after beginning to report more cases, Connecticut began to also report more COVID-19 hospitalizations. The number of hospitalized patients in the state more than doubled from the end of September to mid-October. On Monday, there were 195 people in the state hospitalized with COVID-19 — before then, the state hadn’t seen a number so high in four months.
As the uptick settled more deeply into the state, coronavirus-related deaths began to increase, too. In the month of August, the state reported a total 33 coronavirus-related deaths. That number increased to 43 in the month of September. And only two-thirds of the way through October, the state has already reported 46 coronavirus-related deaths this month.