Athletic kicks off home slate with fans

HARTFORD — Many of the regulars, clad in green t-shirts came with drums to beat, flags to wave but most of all a soccer game to witness. It took some doing and required plenty of patience from all involved, but the Hartford Athletic were back playing in front of fans for the 2020 home opener at Dillon Stadium against Loudoun United FC.

Kevin Politz, who was born in New Haven and lived for the first four or five years living in Cheshire before his family moved to New Jersey brought the fans who were in attendance to their feet with a goal set up by Gabriel Torres in the fourth minute to lead Hartford to the 3-1 win.

Harry Swartz made it 2-0 late in the first half and then Tyreke Johnson pushed the lead to 3-0 in the 55th minute.

Elvis Amoh scored on a penalty kick for Loudoun County in the 58th minute.

Those who worked tirelessly to make sure that there would be professional soccer in Hartford for the second summer in a row couldn’t have asked for a better way to kick off the home portion of the Hartford Athletic schedule.

“Obviously it is very different in a challenging pandemic year but unlike just getting a home game ready, thinking about the revenues and thinking about can the team win, it became such a collaborative effort of what can we do to band together, to be safe and bring some joy and entertainment back to people,” Hartford Athletic CEO Jim Burda said. “I think what is really different is the amount of people that it took to collaborate and march ahead in the same direction.”

There were some sacrifices to be made. Dillon Stadium will be limited to no more than 25 percent capacity but considering that sporting events are being played with no fans and at neutral sites, it was a small price to pay to try to bring some normalcy to the fans who grew accustomed to coming out to the Athletic’s games in the debut 2019 season.

“My sons and I are all soccer

fans so any time we get a chance to watch a game outside, we come,” said Joe Romei of Enfield. “It is a nice, small venue, a nice new team so it is nice, I like it better than Rentschler.”

Burda admitted that eight weeks ago that the prospects of playing any games at Dillon Stadium seemed little more than wishful thinking.

“I think this would be a different interview if this

was eight weeks ago,” Burda said. “I think it was only six weeks ago that we started to see as a league that, ‘hey, I think we can do this.’ Seven or eight weeks ago we weren’t even sure if we would return to games without fans so it has been a pretty quick turnaround for sure

“We really started with the USL [Championship] league, they do presidents meetings three times a week just analyzing from week to week if there can be games returning and all the safety protocols. Once it

looked like the league was going to be in position for some of the states and teams to move ahead, it was really what happened here in conjunction with [Hartford] Mayor Luke Bronin and the Governor [Ned Lamont]. I think the fact that everyone was in sync and everybody was doing so well put us in position to do this today.”

Burda said although there is a restriction on the number of fans, when it came to hiring game-day staff, it was a larger crew than normal making certain

that spectators followed the signs to keep people safe in a world where social-distancing policies are becoming second nature.

“Without a doubt, in some cases we tripled or even quadrupled staff whether it was security or cleaning staff,” Burda said. “This is really more making sure we have the people who can be there to help out the fans.”