CIAC ignores the possibilities

Those playing high school football in Connecticut can be forgiven if they feel like, well, let’s use the tweeted words of Danbury coach Augustine Tieri: “Our kids were misled, placated & strung along for months when it was clear that there was no intention to have a football season.”

Those involved in high school basketball, meanwhile, can look at two state tournaments canceled — two dreams of a run to the Mohegan Sun dashed — and be forgiven if they ask, “Can’t you find us nine days for a once-in-a-lifetime experience?”

COVID-19 has put the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference, the governing body of state high school sports, in some

impossible situations since last March. In some cases, as with the immediate cancellation of the last year’s winter tournaments, the CIAC showed considerable vision and strength.

Unfortunately, in some cases the CIAC did a poor job of fully navigating an impossible situation and, in others, turned possibilities into impossibilities.

And in doing so, the CIAC evidently is bent on demonstrating that not only does hope spring eternal, spring sports rule the CIAC mandate in 2020-2021.

Hey, why have a tremendous final weekend at Mohegan Sunday, when we can have an April baseball game between two winless teams rained out?

Wrestling, competitive cheer and dance are totally out of luck. They will be limited to conditioning and non-contact skill building. With no high-risk sports through the end of the March 28 winter season, the “alternative” season, the one the CIAC officially mapped out for football back on Sept. 26?

There’s no alternative. It’s not happening.

Conditioning Feb. 22. Full pads Feb. 27. Scrimmages March 6-12/ 13. A handful of games between March 19 and April 17.

Not happening.

“So disheartening,” New Canaan football coach Lou Marinelli said.

“Terribly disappointing, especially for our seniors,” Hand-Madison football coach Steve Filippone said.

The CIAC Board of Control approved a plan Thursday that also killed state tournaments in basketball, boys hockey, gymnastics and boys swimming, while allowing 12 regular-season games and the flexibility of holding a full league tournament — that ends by March 28. Smaller indoor/outdoor track meets will be considered for March.

This will satisfy those who insist the most important thing is the opportunity for any kind of participation. One of my feet is in that camp, but participation isn’t the only thing. My other foot is in with learning how to win and lose when everything is on the line and in fostering unforgettable memories.

Like the ones that basketball players will not have for two years in a row at the single greatest event the CIAC runs.

“Overall, I’m happy we get to play and have a full league tournament,” Notre Dame-West Haven basketball coach Jason Shea said. “I’m disappointed about states, but I want to stay positive and focus our efforts on what we have in front of us.”

In many ways, that’s what it has come down to … exhausted people happy for any chance to play. So exhausted, they won’t consider all the possibilities.

CIAC executive director Glenn Lungarini said if a state tournament was played, the CIAC would be up against a hard deadline and that the leagues are best positioned to maximize games, make necessary scheduling changes in case of quarantines.

“We don’t want state tournaments to be a limiting factor in kids being able to play games,” Lungarini said.

At the same time, he was talking about how much more data and overall knowledge the CIAC has. So the state’s governing body must understand by now that the positivity rates change weekly, so why make a final call on something important two months away?

If anything, we’ve learned about adjustments and remaining pliable. Yes, some teams might test positive. If half a division bracket does, obviously you call the tournament off. Heck, that could happen during the regular season. But if five schools are out, what is wrong with pushing on and giving the athletes the ultimate experience? Nothing.

Nine days, that’s all you’re looking at in basketball. Fewer if you decided to have smaller brackets. And as you go along, fewer and fewer kids are involved.

In the spring, pitchers and catchers regularly start working out before basketball is completed. More than one football player has missed the start of the basketball season, playing in the state finals.

And, good grief, the CIAC treats even the notion of a kid playing two sports at the same time like it’s cruel and unusual punishment. It’s a once-in-lifetime situation. Actually, plenty of kids play high school and out-ofschool sports simultaneously.

“The recommendation with our state medical people in terms of dual-rostering has always been a concern with overuse injury,” Lungarini said.

We’re not promoting a football game followed by a wrestling match in the same day.

We’re looking at giving a kid a chance to play shortstop a few games if he is finishing up basketball. The coaches and the school training staffs are mature enough to handle it. And if they can’t, good grief, let the winter state tournaments finish and give the kid a chance to jump into the spring when it’s over.

The CIAC is treating these separate seasons like it’s the Berlin Wall.

When the CIAC called off fall 11 vs. 11 football on Sept. 16, the state positivity rate for COVID stood at 1.2 percent. After a single day high of 10.7 percent on Tuesday, the rate stood at 6.2 percent Wednesday before dropping to 4.4 percent Thursday (the lowest since November).

Medical experts correctly predicted it would get worse in the cold weather months and this had led some folks to insist that the quicker football get started the better. In retrospect, congratulations, Bronco Nagurski, you were proven correct. However, this talk was also before the start of the school year and no one could fully predict what the first few weeks of classes would bring.

Some folks have incorrectly pinned me as an anti-football guy. If you want to label me as Pigskin Antifa, go ahead and have your jollies. The truth is through the summer I did feel tackle football was too high a risk to play. As the weeks went on, as other states began to play, as more data was coming in, I changed my stance to, hey, let’s delay this to the final days of September. See where we stand with schools in session. Maybe a handful of games in October and early November would be safer than trying to wedge football into the late winter/early spring.

That argument was rendered moot by the CIAC on Sept. 16.

On Oct. 1, the positivity rate stood at 1.8. On Oct. 30, it was 2.5 percent.

On Nov. 17, when the CIAC announced the delay of the winter season until Jan. 19, with games starting Feb. 1, the rate was 5.16 percent.

In retrospect, we probably should have figured out that football wasn’t going to happen. Forget a wedge season. With the CIAC repeatedly saying since last August it wanted to get as close to a full spring season without interruption — since it was canceled last year — finding an alternative football season was like pushing a size 10 foot into a size 8 cleat.

Lungarini said 38 percent of football players also play a spring sport, while 31 percent of the wrestlers do. There are conflicts, especially for smaller schools. Yes, we know.

The CIAC has had discussions and made decisions about concussions and recovery times before What is new, Lungarini said, is the CIAC has received updated recommendations and guidance from the National Federation of State High Schools Associations.

“One of the main limiting factors (in the NFHS guidance) was if you play spring football you reduced the number of games you play the following fall because of the exposure of concussions and contacts within the calendar year,” Lungarini said. “We anticipate being able to have a fall season next year. That was a significant consideration for the board today.

“When you have the leading expert on interscholastic and youth sports, and their sport medicine advisory committee issued guidance to us for states considering spring football, it’s important you take that information and review its relevance.”

Lungarini said with changing dates the alternative season for football had been squeezed to two weeks. Why not ask the state’s coaches if they wanted to use that time for spring practice? After all, a lot of coaches haven’t been around their players for months.

Both Marinelli and Filippone brought this up.

“The No. 1 thing I’m glad of is hopefully they won’t take any games away from us next fall,” Marinelli said “That we’ll get our full complement of 10 games. I know the CIAC has been looking to cut games and any excuse they had they certainly would have.

“The fact that all of a sudden they just took (the alternative season) away from us without any input from the high school coaches, I thought was a sin. Football is unlike any sport. Spring football is an opportunity to teach fundamentals, especially to the younger players. We used to be thought of as progressive, but the more that leadership at the CIAC lost football coaches as consultants and everything else, they’ve gotten further and further away from that.”

Both Marinelli and Filippone felt especially bad for the seniors.

“The senior class may not be remembered as a team that won a championship,” Filippone said, “but they’ll be remembered fondly when we talk about teams that sacrificed the most.”

And then Filippone had a question.

“Why does it seem to be out of (the CIAC’s) lane to actually make a decision and then figure out how to live up to that decision? We couldn’t play football outside in the fall when COVID was at 1.2, but now we can play basketball indoors when it’s 10 percent? Help me understand.”