Gearing up for return

Scheduling, co-ops and facilities: Officials prepare for winter season

High school athletics administrators learned Thursday that the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference’s board of control approved a winter sports season, with practices starting as soon as Tuesday, and games beginning no earlier than Feb. 8.

Now, the planning begins. From scheduling to locking down facilities, here are some of the next steps school administrators are taking:

Where will hockey, swimming compete?

In the winter season, hockey and swim teams often need third-party facilities for practices and competition, and often turn to local colleges and universities. But amid the pandemic, local colleges have closed their doors to outside groups

Xavier High in Middletown previously called Wesleyan home for boys hockey and swimming, but found out this fall it would have to look elsewhere. Headmaster Dave Eustis said the school signed a one-year contract with Champions Rink in Cromwell to play hockey, and will swim at Woodrow Wilson Middle School in Middletown.

“We had to try and find a rink that was somewhat close by to Xavier, number one, and could work within our budget,” Eustis said.

Cheshire, like Xavier, played hockey at Wesleyan, and will now play in Hamden.

Southington athletic director Steve Risser is concerned about his boys swim team, which practices and competes at the town’s YMCA. Currently, the Y is only allowed to have six swimmers in the pool at a time, Risser said, and he expects to have 30 boys on the team.

“I don’t want to scare people

away from thinking we’re not going to have it — we’re working on it,” Risser said. “We could go there temporarily with six kids a day. We’re kind of thinking of that right now.”

Risser was also hoping that the restrictions would change on or around Tuesday, the last day for the state’s pause on team sports, which went into effect Nov. 23.

Hall and Conard boys swimming are expected to start practice on Tuesday at Cornerstone Aquatics Center in West Hartford.

“We are waiting the updated sector rules to learn more specifically about the pool, what the state’s recommendations will be, but as of right now, the facility manager at Cornerstone is ready to receive our programs on Tuesday for swim practice,” West Hartford schools athletic director Jason Siegal said. “We are remaining optimistic and hopeful the [one swimmer per lane rule] will change.”

How has scheduling been impacted?

While teams can begin practices Tuesday, some schools will start later. The same goes for the Feb. 8 start date for competitions. That’s left administrators in a difficult spot as they begin to create schedules.

“The first hurdle is going to be, who will start on Tuesday?” Eustis said. “I think once you know that, you can then probably schedule a little bit easier from a startof-season perspective.”

Newington athletic director Chris Meyers said that playing in the Central Connecticut Conference — the state’s largest league — will make scheduling easier. The CIAC required basketball teams to schedule within their leagues, while hockey, gymnastics and swimming are advised to do so “when possible.” Because the CCC has 16 hockey teams across its 32 member schools, filling out a 12-game schedule won’t be too difficult.

“We have a lot of schools, and we’re actually in discussion right now,” said Meyers. “We’re very close to finalizing [our schedule]. The goal will be to make sure we’re taking into account the health and safety of our kids ... the goal will be a full schedule, and hopefully being close in our regions. For us, from a CCC perspective, we’re just waiting on final decisions from the conference. We’re going to keep all our games in-conference as best we can.”

CIAC executive director Glenn Lungarini said the decision to cancel state tournaments was largely so schools and leagues had more flexibility to schedule and reschedule games through the regular season.

“We anticipate that [scheduling] challenge being there,” said Lungarini.

“In pushing games off to no sooner than Feb. 8, you have three weeks where you can adjust your schedules, you can identify what teams can go and can’t go ... I think that was one of the major reasons why we decided not to run the state tournament. The state tournament imposes a hard stop date for regular-season games. For a lot of schools, that would impose a hard stop of their schedule.

“By eliminating the tournament, and allowing leagues to run the tournament structures based on what fits their league best, you maximize playing opportunities for kids. We’d rather have kids play 11 games and a league tournament if they can’t start on time than play six games and get eliminated in the first round of a state championship.”

Can co-op teams survive?

Newington is one of five schools in its hockey co-op team, alongside Berlin, Cromwell, Manchester and Canton. Meyers said that all five schools are prepared to participate.

There is of course the uncontrollable possibility that COVID-19 throws a wrench into those plans. But Meyers feels confident that even if an individual school were to opt out partway through the season, or forced to quarantine, the team would still be able to function if administrations felt it were safe. He said the team is made up of roughly an equal amount of players (3-5) from each school.

If one school pulled out, Meyers said, the team would still be able to press forward if administrators felt it were safe.

“Once we come together, we’re one program,” Meyers said. “It would be very similar to what we would do with any other sport. We’re going to have to decide what the impact is to the group as a whole ... we’ll deal with it on a case-by-case basis. The nice thing about our co-op is we’ve got an equal number of kids from each school. If you had a co-op where 50% of the team was from one particular school and then that school pulls out, I could see how that could create a potentially larger issue.”

For Southington’s co-op ice hockey team with Hall, Risser expected no issues. The teams would use separate locker rooms and separate benches and would only be together on the ice, with players wearing masks at all times.

Lungarini said the CIAC has only heard from two co-op hockey teams which won’t participate this season. Swimming and gymnastics sometimes have “teams of one,” where a single athlete from one school will join another program for the season, though Lungarini said there hasn’t been any issues on that front yet.