This one’s for the athletes
Saluting all the athletes in Connecticut who saw their dreams altered or even denied in pandemic
This was when the pandemic first hit us in March. This was when we were, at once, frightened, frustrated and overwhelmed. When words like COVID-19 and coronavirus were new, yet powerful enough to change our way of life overnight.
Geno Auriemma, UConn’s Hall of Fame coach and in many ways the conscience of our state, had spent 24 hours trying to rationalize it all, the disease, the effect on our daily lives, the crashing halt to all sports. He let his words spill.
“Sports is a huge part of the American fabric,” Auriemma said. “It has been for 100 years and then some. Sports is what we use in every local community to bring people together. The local high school teams. Sports is what separates people from worrying about color or religion and race. Sports is the one thing that makes people come together and rally around: My team vs. your team.
“And now the one thing that sports does, bringing people together in one place to share that experience — the sharing of the experience — is what causes people to get sick and some people to eventually die from this disease. All the great things sports brings are a negative at this point in time, which is totally, incredibly mindboggling.”
I looked back to words I had written a few months earlier when Jack Street threw the miracle pass in a lifting fog to give Newtown High School a state football title on the anniversary of the unspeakable tragedy at Sandy Hook. How the games can never replace the tragedy, nor can they fill the void of personal grief and great loss. Yet the games are a healing place where we can return to normalcy first for a few hours and eventually for the rest of our lives …
And I saw how even those words were put on indefinite hold by a pandemic that threatened us all. Even as we learned ways to understand the disease, to understand social distancing and masks and eventually an arrival of a vaccine, how we still were separated about how we should re-open our businesses, re-open our sports.
The arguments were real. And so was the heartbreak of thousands of young state athletes who could not chase their dreams in 2020. Young athletes who had trained so hard, sacrificed so much, did everything in their power to give themselves a chance to compete.
Some did in limited fashion. Some did without fans. Some never got that chance.
They are all our Hearst Connecticut Sports Persons of the Year.
For if we learned one thing in 2020, this Year of COVID, there is something worse than the agony of defeat. It is not to play at all.
So this is for all the basketball players denied a Run to the Sun and a chance at a state title at Mohegan Sun.
This is for all the hockey players who did not get to skate at Ingalls. There will be no tales from the Whale this year.
This is for all the athletes who did not get a chance to bond in anticipation, in victory and defeat on bus rides.
This is for Hand and national player of the year Scott Testori who along with his senior teammates did not get the chance for the program to win an unprecedented fifth straight state title in boys soccer.
This is for Paige Bueckers and the UConn freshmen who did not get to hear the roars of a Gampel Pavilion crowd when they were introduced at their first game.
This is for the football players who rallied peacefully at the state Capitol in September for the right to play this fall.
This is for the volleyball players who showed us you could persevere and play in masks.
This is for the Westhill baseball team who donated 60 gloves and raised money to purchase 60 more
to donate to the Stamford Boys & Girls club.
This is for the Nonnewaug students who packed the boxes of worn uniforms and raised money for new equipment to send to South Africa.
This is for Staples boys soccer player Bruno Guiduli, who has been scoring goals to raise money and awareness for TOPSoccer, a nonprofit focusing on children with intellectual and physical disabilities.
This is for Trumbull’s Lance Walsh, who lost the chance in the 2020 Class LL basketball state tournament and holds onto hopes for a final chance in 2021. Through World Court Peace, Walsh has collected hundreds of pairs of sneakers for inner-city youths and helped paint outdoor courts.
This is for the New Canaan girls hockey players, who followed the example of their coach’s father and started a fundraiser for the New Canaan Food Pantry.
This is for Danbury quarterback Patrick Rosetti, the CIAC Michael H. Savage Spirit of Sport winner, who suffers from a severe speech impediment but never allowed it to get in the way of his dreams.
This is for the GameTimeCT Player of the Year Emma Appleman, who got a chance to play volleyball her senior year at Guiford, and her mom, Erin, who didn’t get that chance to coach her team at Yale.
This is for Bryana Cielo, who lost so much of her Sacred Heart swimming career because of epilepsy yet did have that last chance to compete.
This is for Eliah Pierre-Louis and the fervent hope as he grows up won’t feel the urge to hide when he sees a police car coming.
This is for Matt Knowling, GameTimeCT Player of the Year, who didn’t get his chance to make a senior run for a state basketball title at East Catholic or play his freshman year at Yale.
This is for the members of the Yale men’s lacrosse team, which had another run at a national championship cut short.
This is for Armon Hyslop and Jabez Cubiz from Wilbur Cross and all the city kids who don’t have all the same opportunities as others around the state.
This is for Tyler Basti, Notre DameWest Haven running back headed to Sacred Heart, and a family that has found the great joys of adoption.
This is for the East Catholic girls basketball players, who didn’t have the opportunity to host their annual toy drive game, so instead wrote more than 100 Christmas cards to patients and their families at the Connecticut Children’s
Medical Center.
This is for Pomperaug’s Kate Wiser, Conard’s Gavin Sherry and Wolcott’s Nicholas Bendtsen, who dominated state and regional competition but did not get to see where they would have ranked nationally in cross country.
This is for Trumbull’s Elizabeth Foley and Calyn Carbone, who have been friends since first grade and inspired each other to fight to overcome ACL injuries.
This is for all of the cross country runners who did not get to experience Wickham Park and all its colorful splendors on a cool autumn day.
This is for the athletes who social-distanced, wore their masks and followed all other COVID-19 protocols in hopes of being able to compete a few more times.
This is for the NESCAC, NE10, GNAC, Little East and all the conferences who did not get to play spring, fall and winter sports.
This is for the Yale football players missing The Game against Harvard, the first time since 1944.
This is for the Yale heavyweight crew, which did not get the chance to participate in the nation’s oldest intercollegiate sporting event, dating back to 1852. This was the first year Harvard and Yale did not grace the Thames since 1945.
This is for the Hartford basketball players, within one win of the school’s first NCAA Tournament berth, who did not get the chance to play that America East title game.
This is for Yale basketball players, who won another Ivy League title and an NCAA berth that never happened.
This for the winter athletes who peacefully protested the cancellation of winter tournaments at CIAC offices.
This is for Hand’s Sara Wohlgemuth, looking for her third trip to the Class L semifinals, only to be denied one game short of her dream. The GameTimeCT State Player of the Year committed to Southern New Hampshire, yet when there was a change in academics at the school, she enrolled at Florida Southern.
This is for Greenwich’s Jackson Fretty, who had his Princeton golf season cut short, and Alex Gu, who lost his senior Darien season. Both were among the lowest scorers in the CSGA State Amateur qualifier June 2, the first statewide golf competition since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Fretty and Gu, a freshman at Dartmouth, lost their fall seasons when the Ivy League canceled.
This is for North Haven’s Bob DeMayo, unable to coach his team for the first time in 62 baseball seasons, and his captain Matt DeRosa, out after knee surgery, missing the chance to be a senior leader for the program.
This is for McMahon/Norwalk and the
Housatonic co-op, hockey underdogs for years, who were set to play for a spot in the Division III semifinals and a trip to Ingalls Rink.
This is for Weston’s boys lacrosse team, runners-up in 2019 but a team that may have had the talent to win Class M in 2020 after a few top players won a football title.
This is for the members of the New Fairfield and St. Joseph boys lacrosse teams, who both would have been going for their third straight state titles.
This is for the New Fairfield girls lacrosse team, which would have attempted to win its fourth straight state title. And the Masuk softball team, denied an opportunity to play for its third straight.
This is for the New Canaan girls golf team, which would have gone for its fourth straight state title. The Greenwich boys golf team, which would have gone for a third straight. And the Weston girls tennis team shooting for its fifth straight state title.
This is for the Staples girls tennis team, which would have gone for its third straight state title. Staples’ boys tennis team, which would have gone for its fifth straight. And Staples’ boys volleyball team, which would have gone for its third straight.
This is for the Litchfield boys tennis team, which would have gone for its third straight state title. And the Newington boys volleyball team shooting for its fourth straight.
This is for the Bloomfield girls track and field team, which did not get the chance to win its 13th straight state title. And the Hall and Hillhouse boys track and field teams, which did not get the chance to win a third straight.
This is for Jason Cotton and the Sacred Heart hockey team, denied a chance to make the NCAA Tournament for the first time in a memorable season.
This is for the college athletes who can’t go out and enjoy their college experience and have spent most of their time in a dorm room.
This is for the winter sports athletes who sit, wait and wonder whether their seasons will be played in 2021.
This is for UConn’s Akok Akok, who knew the horrors of a torn Achilles.
This is for the UConn football team that opted not to play this season and watched as all except three FBS schools tried putting together some semblance of a season.
This is for all the seniors who didn’t get to play football on Thanksgiving this year. And their families.
And for all those players who never got onto the field at all.
This is for the cheerleaders, the dance teams, the color guards and the marching bands, who also shine bright under the fall Friday night lights.
This is for Brookfield quarterback Jed Rajcula, who missed his junior year with an injury and didn’t get to show college coaches what he could do.
This for Bloomfield’s Daron Bryden, who didn’t get his chance to leave his name in the state high school football record books.
This is for the St. Joseph football team, which didn’t get a chance to go for their fourth straight football title.
This for Newtown’s Jack Street, who didn’t get to give us an encore after his game-winning TD pass.
This is for Coventry’s Matt Cook, who didn’t get to dominate opponents on the mound one more season.
This is for dynamic A. J. Barber and the Greenwich football team, which would have had a strong shot at winning their second state title in three years.
This is for New Canaan wrestler Tyler Sung, who went on an emotional championship run one month after the death of his mother, Carol, in January.
This is for Brien McMahon football coach Jeff Quieroga, who established the Meals for McMahon program to help feed school families during the pandemic.
This is for Norwalk senior football player Christmy Edward, who honored the Bears’ Class of 2020 by designing artwork for a digital billboard overlooking I-95.
This is for all the seniors, athletes or not, who did not get to walk across the stage during a graduation ceremony.
This is for Christian Vital, robbed of a chance to play in the postseason for the only time in his career. He became the first four-year UConn men’s player never to play in a postseason tournament (NCAA or NIT) since 1987.
This is for all the college recruits, including Rich Kelly, Ryan Murphy and Tyrese Martin, who didn’t get to take normal recruiting visits to campuses, instead taking ‘virtual visits.”
This is for all the big-time players from small towns, like Litchfield’s Timmy Donovan.
This is for the Trinity Catholic students, who were never able to play a final, final game.
This is for friends getting to play baseball together one last time.
This is for all the underdogs.
This is for Dylan Curran, the light of Staples High School.
And this is for all student-athletes who had so much taken away, yet still found ways to give back to their communities. There are so many others with inspiring, wonderful stories we were unable to share.