The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Planning sports this winter? Use a No. 2 pencil
C. J. Marottolo thought for a moment about the pandemic, about college athletics and the overarching need for flexibility. He took a deep breath and said the truest thing we heard Wednesday.
“Every game we schedule,” the Sacred Heart hockey coach said, “is in pencil.”
There is little time for the ink to dry with COVID-19. A No. 2 pencil and a trusty eraser are required companions this winter season.
“It’s a tumultuous time,” Quinnipiac coach Rand Pecknold said.
“Every day,” UConn coach Mike Cavanaugh said, “it just changes.”
Sometimes quicker than that. Three hours after we talked, UConn’s opening hockey weekend, already changed once, was changed again to UMass at Amherst on Friday night and 4 p.m. on Saturday against the No. 7 Minutemen at UConn’s Freitas Ice Forum.
Already delayed a month and a half, Connecticut’s four NCAA Division I hockey teams are 0-forscheduled openers. The Ivy League, of course, has shut down all winter sports and ECAC Hockey is down to four teams.
Rescheduling, cancellations and retooling, mean
while, remain a daily work in process with five colleges hit by COVID before the much- anticipated 11-day basketball “Bubbleville” running next Wednesday through Dec. 5 at Mohegan Sun.
“There will be games played,” said Dave Martinelli, Mohegan’s chief marketing officer. “Exactly how many, I still cannot answer that question.”
No one can.
When the CIAC announced Tuesday that all its winter high school sports were being pushed back to a Jan. 19 start, executive director Glenn Lungarini explained that 55.8 percent of the approximately 100 principals/administrators who responded to a survey would not play games if their districts move to full-distance learning
Obviously, it’s not wise to hold games and state tournaments if the majority of schools won’t play.
Yet even in the world of intercollegiate athletics, where adaptability is a buzzword, no decision is a certain success. No dates are sure. No games are a given.
Sacred Heart hockey found out it had another positive test Monday and another player’s house had to be shut down. With seven positive cases and 19 total players paused through contact tracing, Marottolo said he had 11 available players. The Pioneers’ first four games, including the Nov. 24 opener against Quinnipiac, have been postponed.
“You can’t play with 11,” Marottolo said.
One of the best Connecticut sports stories of last winter was that of the Pioneers’ stunning victories over Yale and Quinnipiac to capture the inaugural CT Ice tournament at Webster Bank Arena. The Bobcats are 13/14 nationally in the two preseason polls.
“I talked with Rand a lot over the summer, we nailed down that (Nov. 24) date and our guys were really excited about playing a top-15 team,” Marottolo said. “This would have been a great start for Connecticut, but hopefully we can nail down another date as we go along.”
One cancellation. Another cancellation. New game on!
No one has needed a bigger No. 2 pencil than Pecknold.
Quinnipiac was able to move a scheduled AIC game into the Nov. 24 spot. The Bobcats will play LIU on Nov. 27 and Clarkson on Nov. 29. Yet there are holes everywhere in Pecknold’s schedule.
“You’re thinking about who you’re going to play, where, what time,” Pecknold said. “It has been confusing to say the least. You just keep battling, trying to get games, play games on the fly like when you’re 12. You got to make it work. You got to adapt. We’re all in this.”
Not only did the six Ivy League teams drop out of the ECAC season, so did RPI and, on Tuesday, Union. That leaves Clarkson, St. Lawrence, Colgate in addition to Quinnipiac. This week? Lots of ECAC phone calls and virtual meetings.
“I don’t know how it’s going to play out, but if we have to play Clarkson, St. Lawrence and Colgate seven times apiece, that’s what we’ll do,” Pecknold said. “You think about it, the NHL plays best-of-seven playoffs and these guys all come from junior hockey where they play best-ofsevens. Look at the AHL. The Wolf Pack and Sound Tigers play 12-14 times a year, including exhibitions. It’s common in hockey, just not in college hockey.”
UConn was scheduled to open its Hockey East season with two games this weekend at Vermont. With rising COVID numbers, UVM announced Sunday it’s delaying the start of the hockey and basketball seasons until Dec. 18. Cavanaugh agreed to hold off saying anything to his team so word wouldn’t spread prematurely. That led to his own players finding out through social media. Bad news travels as fast as the virus.
This left the Huskies opening with two home games against Maine without fans Thanksgiving weekend. With the XL Center closed during the pandemic, it would be the first Hockey East game ever at Freitas Ice Forum.
“We’ve been preaching from the get-go we’re going to have to be flexible this year and be mentally tough,” Cavanaugh said. “It’s a year like no other. I was saying, facetiously a little, to my wife: When we first got into Hockey East and it was one of those years we were struggling and had like a six-game losing streak, in some ways that was easier to deal with. I knew what was wrong. Every day, this changes. This year is testing everyone’s intestinal fortitude.”
Lo and behold Wednesday afternoon, because of COVID concerns in Orono, it was announced UMassMaine is off this weekend and UMass-UConn is on. Hockey East commissioner Steve Metcalf said the Maine players are healthy and look forward to next weekend at UConn. He also said Hockey East, with flex dates built in, has a schedule “optimized for flexibility during this unique season.”
Metcalf must have a lot of No. 2 pencils.
Yale hockey had 18 positive cases in October. UConn has had its brushes. Quinnipiac had one positive test earlier in the year.
“I’d be surprised if there has been a team in the country that hasn’t been affected one way or another,” Cavanaugh said.
Marottolo, Pecknold, Cavanaugh all give their teams high marks for discipline, for avoiding big parties, for obeying protocol, for making sacrifices just for the chance to play.
“But it’s really hard to run and hide from a virus,” Cavanaugh said.
That it is.
“It’s a roller coaster emotionally,” said Marottolo, who hopes to have his team ready for a Dec. 1 opener against AIC. “Those calls to the players that there is no practice tomorrow, they’re hard calls to make. They all want to skate. That’s their passion.”
And that’s why they all feel badly for Yale and the Ivies losing the full season.
“I can’t even imagine,” Pecknold said. “It was hard last spring. We lost the playoffs. I felt awful for our seniors not to get the opportunity for closure on their careers. But at least they got 98 percent of their season. (The Ivies) lost an entire year. I feel very badly for them.”
Eleven days. 40 teams. 45 games. Baylor, Villanova, Virginia, UConn men and women. The Bubbleville concept is an exciting one and, as a forerunner for the rest of the season and NCAA Tournament, it’s important to see how it will work out. As Martinelli pointed out, once teams get into the bubble, “we feel it’s the safest environment.” Testing. Protocols.
The challenge is to get teams into the bubble and schedule them.
The UConn men return to the court Thursday. Siena, Iona, Vermont, UMass and Delaware are in various stages of COVID shutdowns. So all the games involving those teams are in the process of being rescheduled or retooled. Some teams that were not included in the original schedule may take some games. An existing team in the bubble could add a team that lost a game. Or … no one really knows.
“You plug a hole in the schedule and there’s a leak on the other side,” Martinelli said. “No one has been able to control the virus yet. Until the day of the game and people get on the court, something could happen.”
Yes, even the casinos need a No. 2 pencil.