COVID surge alters tournament schedules

Schedules for several high school tournaments are being adjusted.

The sixth annual Saulsbury Invitational scheduled for Tuesday has been postponed due to “COVID health and safety protocols within some of the programs that were scheduled to play in the invitational,” at the Floyd Little Athletic Center, according to New Haven citywide athletic director Erik Patchkofsky.

The basketball games will all be made up at separate times and sites now during the season. Those include: Wilbur CrossBishop Hendricken (R.I.) boys, Windsor-East Hartford boys, Career-Whitney Tech boys and HamdenWilbur Cross girls.

The back end of the Saulsbury Invitational on Feb. 2 at the athletic center, Bristol Central vs. Wilbur Cross and Windsor vs. Hillhouse, is on as scheduled.

In other boys basketball league tournaments, Notre

Dame-Fairfield dropped out of the Fairfield Holiday Tournament being held at Fairfield Warde. Fairfield Ludlowe and Fairfield Prep were scheduled to play Monday night at 6, with the winner facing Warde in Tuesday’s championship game, also at 6 p.m.

Both Kolbe Cathedral and Amity have dropped out of Ridgefield’s Christmas tournament that was supposed to begin Monday night. Ridgefield will now host Newtown in the championship game Wednesday at 7 p.m.

Ridgefield will have to make up its game against Kolbe Cathedral and Amity with Newtown at a later date.

In Platt Tech’s boys tournament, Sheehan and Foran postponed Monday night’s game. The second game, Bullard-Havens at Platt Tech, was being played Monday night as scheduled. Whom those teams play will be determined once the SheehanForan game is held.

Cheshire has pulled out of Masuk’s Christmas tournament. So the winner of Bunnell vs. Bassick, scheduled for Tuesday at 4:45 p.m. in Monroe, will face host Masuk Thursday at 4:45 p.m.

In girls basketball, the Milford Holiday Festival, scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday which would have included both host Foran, Law, Branford and Barlow, has been postponed. The Milford schools will face both Branford and Barlow at later dates.

The News-Times Greater Danbury Girls Holiday Festival, scheduled for Monday and Wednesday, was postponed due to “increasing player quarantines” at both Danbury and Norwalk, according to co-chair Robert Van Houten in an email. Van Houten said the hope for the festival, which also included New Fairfield and New Milford, will be “sometime later in January or February, dates that

would work for all 4 participating schools.”

Sacred Heart Academy’s Christmas tournament was canceled after East Catholic, Lauralton Hall and Northwest Catholic all withdrew.

In boys hockey, the Mount St. Charles Holiday Face-Off, to have included Fairfield Prep and to be played this week in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, was canceled on Sunday “out of an abundance of caution

with the rising COVID positive rates and teams coming from different states.” The Jesuits will now face St. Joseph’s of Buffalo, N.Y., one of the other seven schools that had been set to play the tournament, on Wednesday morning at 10:30 at the Wonderland of Ice.

Also, the Ryan Sabbagh Holiday Wrestling Tournament, to be held at Danbury on Wednesday, has been canceled.