Winter the Golden Age for locals

It doesn’t get much better than this. ‘This’ is the winter sports season in the Greater Middletown area and boys and girls, just look around. The Middletown High boys and girls basketball teams are terrific, the Xavier hockey and wrestling teams are outstanding and the Middletown High boys swim team and the wrestling team are also very good.

The Mercy basketball team is blue-chip, the cooperative ice hockey team of which Middletown High is a part along with Wethersfield, Rocky Hill and Plainville, is an outstanding Division III team and Middletown and Mercy have legit indoor track stars — and we haven’t even left the city.

The Cromwell girls and East Hampton boys and girls hoopsters are wonderful and the

Coginchaug boys and girls are both solid teams.

It is a Golden Age. Tourney doings

The girls state tournament opens this week. CCC runner-up Middletown High and SCC champion Mercy open up quests for the Class LL title Tuesday. Middletown is home with Manchester at 6:30 p.m. and Mercy is home with Amity at 6 p.m. If both win, they play Friday at home.

If both win those, then guess what? They play each other in the quarterfinals at Middletown High. Wouldn’t that be fun?

WCNXradio.com will carry this week’s Mercy games.

Of course, if the MHS girls do win two and the Middletown boys win their state tourney opener, both games are slated by the CIAC to be at Middletown High on March 9.

Obviously the CIAC must — operative word, must — allow one of the games to be moved to March 10. No way Middletown or any other school could be forced to lose a home game it has earned. That would be unacceptable.

That’s a no-brainer, so if it happens, one of the game will have to be moved a day. There’s plenty of wiggle room as the Class L boys quarterfinals and the girls LL semifinals are March 13 and the girls semifinal would be at a neutral site.

Of course, teams have to win games before that happens.

Reigning Class M and Shoreline champion Cromwell opens up by hosting Granby Memorial Tuesday and Coginchaug hits the road to St. Bernard the same day. East Hampton is home with Litchfield in Class S tonight.

In the CCC boys championships playoffs, Middletown, which did not play especially well but staged a stirring comeback to beat Bloomfield Saturday, will play in the CCC semifinals Tuesday.

The boys state tourney begins next week and Class L Middletown will be home for its first three games — providing they win, of course — and Xavier will hit the road in Class LL. Xavier — almost

Xavier lost in the opening round of the Southern Connecticut Conference playoffs, 81-79, to Hamden. The Falcons matched up very well with the Green Dragons and lost two of three, but all three games could have gone either way. Xavier lost the first in double overtime, won the second game by a basket and lost the third by a basket.

Mitch Nappi had 35 points in the loss Thursday and sophomore Jackson Benigni had 28. The Falcons trailed by 11 at the half, 47-36, but came roaring back in the third quarter to cut the lead to two. But a 22-22 fourth quarter gave Hamden the win.

One of the bad things about league playoff series is that if a team loses early, it has to sit around for a week or more before the state tournament begins. While a plus is it gives time for injuries to heal, most coaches hate sitting around for that length of time. Hockey, swimming

Middletown High’s swim team, 12-3 after its 101-79 win over the Bristol co-op Tuesday, will be favored in the CCCSouth swimming championships this week. The diving competition takes place this Thursday at 4 p.m. at Bulkeley High in Hartford and the swimming championships begin Saturday at noon at Bulkeley.

Xavier’s hockey team (13-51) is ranked No. 3 in Division I and the Middletown High co-op is 15-3 and ranked No. 2 in Division III. The hockey tourney doesn’t begin until March 6. Here and there Middletown had a disappointing performance in the Class L indoor track Open Championships ... hurdler Laurenzo Thompkins, favored to win the 55 meter hurdles, false started and was disqualified ... his time was the best ... the 4x200 relay team also didn’t perform as well as expected ... on to the spring season.

I thought the basketball officiating I’ve seen lately has been very good ... I thought the job the guys in stripes who did at the Middletown vs. Rocky Hill boys game, the Xavier vs. Hillhouse game, the Middletown girls vs. Enfield CCC title game and the Middletown vs. Hall boys CCC playoff game were very good.

The key? ... they let the kids play ... there is nothing worse than when officials call everything in sight, destroying the flow of the game and turning it into a free throw shooting contest ... last year’s Class LL title game between Weaver and Hillhouse was ruined by officials who were in over their heads and started blowing their whistles on the ride to Mohegan Sun, which resulted in 105 free throws ... the CIAC has to assign officials to Class L and LL games who are used to officiating games at that level ... the folks who did the last few games I saw meet that criteria.

Here’s a tease ... watch for the announcement this week of the Connecticut Sports Writers’ Alliance Connecticut Male Athlete of the Year ... the presentation will be made at the Gold Key dinner on April 30.

The locals get it right: At every Xavier and Middletown High home basketball game, there are school personnel stationed near the student section ... at Xavier, there are always administrators strategically located right near where the kids sit ... it’s called prevention.

At Middletown High, same thing ... at the Middletown vs. Enfield girls game at Glastonbury High, both the MHS athletic director and the Dean of Students were directly in front of the standing student section ... it’s what you do.

On the other hand, there was not a single Enfield adult anywhere near the Enfield student section ... there was no one to control the kids who ran onto the court at game’s end, got in line to shake hands with the Enfield players — I have never seen that disruption of post-game decorum before — and they rushed the court during the picture-taking session.

Maybe Enfield could take a lesson from Xavier and Middletown on how to control kids.

On a more positive note, it was great to talk with Enfield coach Jay Gaucher again ... I interviewed him back when he was the Enfield football coach when Enfield played Middletown in the defunct Northwest Conference ... a good guy.

Enfield center Mary Baskerville, only a junior, is the best girls post player I’ve seen this season ... and in Brielle Wilborn of MHS and Meghan DeVille of Mercy, I’ve seen some pretty good ones.

Watch out for Hartford Public in the boys Class L tourney ... the Owls beat East Hartford and lost by just a basket, 64-62, to East Catholic in the opening round of the CCC playoffs.

Middletown High alum Jack Doherty had a big performance at the Colonial Athletic Association championship swim meet over the weekend ... the freshman was second in the 50 freestyle with a time of 20.16 seconds, the fifth best time in William and Mary history ... then he topped that with a 19.51 split for his 50 yards of his team’s winning 200 freestyle relay ... that time was a half second better than anyone in the field.

The Yankees’ Aaron Judge hit one over the moon in the Yankee spring training opener ... is it too much to expect the Yankee kiddie corps to win? ... spring training ... dream time.