H.S. winter sports are put on hold
Local athletes and coaches forced to play the waiting game
Paulla Solar has spent the final weeks of the past 26 Novembers getting her Stonington High School girls' basketball team conditioned and prepared to play.
The Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference announced Tuesday that winter sports teams could not start practicing for their season until Jan. 19 due to the rising number of COVID-19 cases. Asked what she was going to do with herself until then, Solar laughed.
"I'm not sure," she said. "I have a few grandchildren now who I've been hanging out with. That's kind of fun. It's definitely different not being in the gym. I definitely miss the players and I miss the camaraderie of the other coaches. ... It's going to be a long winter.
"Your heart breaks for any kid who might possibly lose what the kids lost last spring. Obviously, if kids are getting exposed, you don't want anyone bringing it home to siblings and so forth. So I think the decision to put it on hold at this point, listening to the medical experts, is the right thing to do."
Solar had even considered taking a year off from coaching.
"It was a decision I was really going backand-forth with because I didn't want to bring anything back home," Solar said. "It would've been probably one of the most difficult decisions I've had to make. I had already talked to my assistant coaches about it. Sometimes, you have to think what's best overall."
Longtime New London boys' basketball coach Craig Parker got to see firsthand how indoor sports are played during a pandemic because his daughter, Caylee, played volleyball for New London this fall while his wife,
Missy, coached the team.
Fans weren't allowed inside the gym to watch matches, so Craig Parker volunteered to be the scorekeeper.
"To be honest with you, once I learned how to manipulate and work the scorekeeper apparatus, I enjoyed it," Parker said.
"It's pretty easy as long as you know how to add and can push the plus button. The hardest thing initially was resetting the clock during timeouts. Once I learned that, it was good."
Saw it up close
Parker got to watch all of the new safety protocols in play, such as face masks, keeping the chairs spaced out on the sidelines, and sanitizing the seats and equipment.
"Since this pandemic has reared its ugly head a long time ago, and having my wife and my daughter participating in athletics at New London and seeing all the uncertainty on a daily basis with sports and things going on, ( the delay) definitely doesn't come as any great surprise," Parker said. "We just have to go with the flow. It's a day-to-day scenario.
"I'm just hoping the kids can get in some games this season whether it's eight games, 12, 16, whatever the case may be."
Wrestling with problems
The winter sport with the most questions surrounding it happens to be one that is among the most popular sports in eastern Connecticut — wrestling. The sport has more contact between athletes than any other and requires great cardio.
"We don't know what kind of mandates there are going to be," Griswold wrestling coach Dana Cooke said. "It's tough to wear a mask when you're wrestling. ... Can you put your hands on one another at practice? If you can't put your hands on another person, that's going to be tough.
“Guys who have wrestled before can go through the moves, shadow box, but that's still just so tough. Wrestling is all about feel, not so much the way it's taught to you by the coach, follow these steps. Until you do it over and over and over again, it's not natural. You just need to flow through the moves. If you're not getting that at practice or get the right amount of resistance, then it's just not the same.
"There's going to be a little more mental preparation than in the past. I'll shut off the lights (in the wrestling room) and just have everyone lay down and think about the way the match will go, run through the moves in your head. ... Getting everything straight in their heads will hopefully get their bodies to move the right way."