Raiders savor the chance to play

TORRINGTON — In a battering year for all of us, some high school teams have already suffered more whiplash than most.

Football had its entire fall season wiped out, but other Torrington High School teams weren’t far behind when a coronavirus case produced a school and sports shut-down for a week and a half until last Thursday’s statewide opening day.

“We’re only in our sixth day back,” said Raiders boys soccer coach Mike Fritch after a 3-1 win over St. Paul Catholic on Thursday evening following a 5-1 wipeout at Watertown on Tuesday. “Normally, we’d be in our second scrimmage now,” Fritch said.

With a youngish team heavy on juniors, seniors would always bear extra responsibility for guiding the team. Throw in a worldwide pandemic and its specific landing at Torrington

High School and the call for maturity turns into an alarm.

“Soccer is everything to us,” Alex Pavlidis said, “so it feels good to just to get out to play.”

“After playing three years and finally getting to our senior year, it’s sad this happened, but as captains we can’t let that show,” co-captain Jahnmario Seville said. “We had two practices, then straight to a game. We just have to push through it and do our best.”

“Every day’s a gift,” said Noah Cardozo, the other captain. “We have to keep our heads up and can’t take anything for granted. There’s a lot of learning involved.”

Thursday’s game played out much like the seniors’ comments.

Seville, the fastest player on the field, took a pass from Pavlidis 25 minutes into the game and wove through the Falcons defense for the first score.

St. Paul senior Daniel Bond kicked a goal back in for the tie from a scrum in front of the Torrington net

six minutes before the half.

“We were flat, then came alive in the second half,” Fritch said.

Junior star Brayden Nietch scored close to the Falcons goal 12 minutes into the half, then popped another one off a free kick from Cardoza two minutes later.

For the entire half, the

Raiders played like a team that loved being out there — like a team that knew from experience this game could be its last.

Peter Wallace / For Hearst Connecticut Media For the entire second half of Thursday’s win over St. Paul Catholic, Torrington seemed to remember the joy of playing soccer.