New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Time to spring ahead?
Moving fall sports to next year might be the best plan
New Canaan’s Lou Marinelli, who has coached more football games, won more state titles, delivered more one-liners than anyone in these parts, considered the possibilities in these impossible times.
“Instead of Thanksgiving, New Canaan and Darien on Memorial Day,” Marinelli said. “A new tradition.”
There is no better rivalry in Connecticut than the Turkey Bowl game. Thousands of fans from both towns show up. The gate receipts are significant. Invariably, much is on the line. Amid the annual furor over Thanksgiving games’ impact on CIAC playoff scheduling, it is held up as Exhibit A for continuing the tradition.
But this is 2020. This isn’t 2010 or 1975 or, in the case of Norwich Free Academy vs. New London, even 1875. This is the year traditional games, traditional seasons, traditional everything, has been bottled, capped and labeled “TBOPC.” To be opened postcoronavirus.
High school football next spring?
“At this point,” CIAC executive director Glenn Lungarini said, “anything is possible.”
On Saturday, Marinelli and
Tom Brockett of Ansonia held some optimism that a football season could be played in the autumn. Roy Roberts of Manchester held considerably less optimism.
“Perfect scenario, none of us want the season moved,” said Sheehan’s John Ferrazzi, who has been on two text discussion threads with football coaches. “We also all want a season. Getting our kids back to a sense of normalcy, a structured environment and back to something they love is important. Whenever that has to happen for it to happen is the most important. So I’d support a move to the spring.
“It was horrible how kids couldn’t finish their winter season and then missed their whole spring season. There also was no time to plan. There certainly is time to plan now.”
Nothing is for sure. Nothing. There are four phases to Gov. Ned Lamont’s re-opening the state, and we certainly must keep an eye on how re-openings affect any COVID-19 spikes. While there will be nothing definitive about the start of the fall season, Lungarini said the CIAC either late this week or next week will publish guidelines and considerations moving forward.
“In a perfect world, everything will be good by Aug. 17 (for the start of football practices),” Lungarini said. “If we need to shift things around, we will.”
The CIAC will use the National Federation of State High School Associations for guid
ance. The NFHS has listed football, wrestling and lacrosse as the sports with the highest risk of transmitting COVID-19; cross country, swimming, golf and individual running and throwing events in track and field as the lowest risk. All the rest are moderate risk, although baseball, softball, tennis, volleyball, gymnastics could be considered lower risk with proper cleaning of equipment and use of masks.
According to the CIAC, 8,900 students play various levels of high school football in Connecticut. Most of any sport. It’s fair to say football has the highest fan interest and produces gates that can financially fuel an athletic department.
Ansonia is football tradition and nobody is any bigger traditionalist than Brockett. Twice he said “God forbid” if there was no fall football. He didn’t even allow himself the idea of a full year’s cancellation.
“If there’s still true social distancing, football becomes very hard to play,” Brockett said. “I don’t know how you get into a huddle, how you gangtackle.
“You have seniors, high school football goes by so fast and I’d hate to see a kid even miss out on one season. Anything we can do to still give the kids a chance to play would be a positive. We’d make the best of it.”
So what’s the best of it? Man, that’s a loaded question.
Roberts and Al Carbone, commissioner of the Southern Connecticut Conference, have some tentative proposals.
As an assistant principal, coach and dad, Roberts has seen the hurt from the loss of winter and spring sports. His daughter Makayla, who’ll play at Post, lost her senior year of softball.
“We understand it was a last-minute thing, boom, here we were in the middle of a catastrophic pandemic,” Roberts said. “I think everyone understands this now.
“There are different layers now and time to plan. It’s not just about football. It’s about giving kids hope.
Anecdotally, I’d say 90 percent of the kids who go on to play college sports (at all levels) are recruited their senior year. It’s about an opportunity of life you’re providing these kids, one that could be life-changing.
“Everyone in Connecticut can pretty much guess there’s no way we’re going to open schools in a normal capacity in the fall. That means something different probably for every school district and almost probably means there’ll be no fall activities.”
Roberts’ Proposal 1 — he stresses this is only tentative — involves holding 2020 fall sports from March 4 to late May and traditional spring 2021 sports from mid-May to early July. If concessions are to be made, fall sports would make them since spring sports already lost a season. There are some insurance coverage issues playing once school is out, but he says they are financially manageable.
“Instead of 10 games, maybe we play seven or eight football games,” Roberts said. “Maybe you only play in your division or conference. Playoffs after that, or maybe we don’t have playoffs. Maybe it’s a conference championship.”
His second proposal is to move all 2020 fall sports to spring 2021. Under current CIAC rules, a student would have to make a decision between, say, football and outdoor track next spring. Soccer and lacrosse. In Fairfield County, especially, there are outstanding football/lacrosse players. (Calling Darien.) And the smaller the school, the bigger the chance of multisport athletes. The Cafaro twins, for example, at Ansonia are football and baseball standouts.
“This is a one-year thing,” Roberts said, “to give an opportunity for everybody. And if it’s still not safe in the spring, everything goes.”
“We don’t know what the new normal is,” Carbone said. “The virus is going to tell us what we get to do. I see it as a test year. But never let a good crisis go to waste, like Winston Churchill said.”
If there are no fall sports,
I’d urge the CIAC to consider allowing athletes to play two sports next spring. It wouldn’t be clean-cut. Logistical matters would need to be addressed. But hey, back in the old days they allowed it in various places. Jim Brown, four-sport star on Long Island. Bo Hickey at New Canaan played baseball and ran sprints. It’s not the end of the world.
“I like kids playing as many sports as possible,” Marinelli said. “High school is over in a blink of an eye and it’s on to college and the real world. I hate the idea of making kids, especially seniors, choose between two sports they love.”
Taking temperatures at the start of school day is fine, but how would possible COVID-19 tests be administered and how often for football teams crunched into locker rooms and buses, sweating and pounding each other on the field? If a player tests positive and the team is quarantined, does it forfeit games if they can’t be rescheduled? Remember, you’re talking about 8,900 kids. That scares me about the fall and why the spring makes more sense. At least as of June 1. The CIAC will have a final decision by Aug. 1. If no opened schools, no games.
Carbone said he thinks moving all fall sports to the spring has only a slim chance of being adopted. He is big on Roberts’ first scenario and said he has discussed forms of it with the CIAC. Essentially, January and February for winter sports, fall in March and April, spring in May and June.
“Moving all sports to spring, I think you’ll get so many people against it,” Carbone said. “There are so many obstacles made for kids playing multiple sports. And how do you balance track, football, lacrosse on your fields logistically? And football coaches who coach spring sports?
“There is a legitimate argument to move baseball, softball, golf to the fall. I’ve said to our people we are throwing out our fall schedules, because I truly believe we will not have a full schedule. That we have to redo our schedule based on regionalism.”
Carbone said he is looking essentially at pods of four and five nearby schools to avoid long bus rides and making more adaptable scheduling possible. If there’s a positive test for COVID-19, it would make it much easier to postpone for a few weeks. If nearby teams have to play twice, Carbone said, they have to play twice.
“A lot of policy things that looked like they are set in stone have to get looked at and reconsidered,” Ferrazzi said. “Everybody has to be willing to bend for at least a year.”
Marinelli, who has coached high school football for 40 years, knows he is more at risk than others for COVID-19. He’s willing to bend.
“I’ll be the boy in the bubble on the sidelines if it means the kids can play,” he said.