Newtown’s Jack Street looks to regain momentum
Four hours and 20 months away from the greatest moment in Connecticut high school sports history, Jack Street is immersed in the next step of his football journey.
While high school players from around the state gathered Monday for their first conditioning drills, Street already has been practicing in advance of Milford Academy’s opener against Delaware Valley University junior varsity on Aug. 27. After graduating from Newtown High in June, Street has decided to do a post-graduate year at the school founded in 1916 as Yale Prep and since located in New Berlin, N.Y.
“After everything got shut down by COVID,” Street said, “this was my best option to try to keep playing at the next level.”
Milford Academy has produced a gaggle of NFL players over the years, and going back a century there was Albie Booth, Yale’s immortal Little Boy Blue. Everyone doesn’t make the NFL, of course, and Street’s mission is to find the correct college fit.
“I definitely want to get my name out there more,” Street said. “Missing my senior season really hurt me. So actually having a full season of film is going to be huge.”
From Stonington to New Fairfield, everything felt new Monday. The jaws of COVID have loosened enough to allow the players on the field. It seems like forever doesn’t it since quarterback Jack Street, in the lifting fog at Trumbull High called “Post Corner.” Forever since Darien showed a single high safety and Newtown flipflopped receivers. Since Riley Ward ran a double move to the sideline instead of the middle of the field.
Forever, since Street — a fourth grader inside Sandy Hook Elementary the morning those horrible shots rang out — put the ball up in the final play of the 2019 Class
LL championship game. Ward pulled the ball in for the 36-yard touchdown pass made for a Hollywood script.
Final score: Newtown 13, Darien 7. Outcome: Newtown, 13-0, state champions.
“When people ask me about it, I always say the same thing,” Street said. “Best day of my life. Literally, the best day and night of my life. There’s nothing that compares to it.
“I think everyone saw it on film. Our team running down the field, celebrating. My brother was at the game. I got to hug him. All the students in the student section. It was electric, absolutely electric.”
They went to the home of one of the offensive linemen that night. The team, kids from the school. They whooped it pretty good.
The video clips of the pass hit the internet. The nation began to absorb the victory had come on the seventh anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting that left 26 dead, including 20 of Street’s schoolmates. An enormity of emotions filled all of us.
The team headed to NBC studios in Stamford and was featured at halftime of Sunday Night Football. Mike Tirico interviewed Street, and the next day he and coach Bobby Pattison appeared on the Dan Patrick Show from Milford.
“It was a wild wide,” Street said. “It just hit me. It went by so fast.”
Street returned to school Tuesday and the school continued to buzz. He played rec basketball with his football teammates. Preferring to work out and train, he didn’t play spring varsity sports either.
“The championship game happens, everyone is pumped up,” Street said. “We have posters all over the school.
“COVID hits and everything went silent.” Including recruiting. “Everything shut down and I was kind of off the grid,” Street said. “That’s why this extra year is going to help me a lot.”
Newtown finished the 2020 second semester online. Fall semester, Newtown went hybrid. The first letter of the students’ last name determined when they went into school. Street went in on Thursday and Friday. By the spring, masks on, classes resumed.
The feeling of defeat after the CIAC finally canceled the football season, Street said, lingered.
“It was the biggest blow for senior football players ever,” Street said. “The back-andforth last summer sucked. It destroyed us. It destroyed us as a team. We were practicing every day and trying to go with it have the best fun we could have.”
Newtown decided not to participate in an independent league. The school did participate in 7-on-7 play.
“We treated it like a Friday night football game,” Street said. “We had meetings before. Lights were on. Refs. Full four quarters. But it definitely was not what everyone wanted.
“They really tried to make it as much as a game environment as possible. Specialists out first, the whole routine. Make it feel normal. But, boom, by halftime teams already had scored seven touchdowns. It was weird.”
The team went 6-0. Afterward, the guys would go out do something, keep the chemistry, keep their heads up.
“There were so many seniors in my class that didn’t get the opportunity because our 2019 team had so many senior starters,” Street said. “Basically, all these kids, it was their year to go do something. They got screwed.”
How many lost their senior season? “Twenty-eight,” Street said.
Wow.
“Yeah, 28,” Street said.
Think about this. The last real varsity play in Street’s career was Dec. 14, 2019. The miracle pass.
“As senior football players, obviously we have hung out a bunch of times since then,” Street said. “If the conversation comes up, people get annoyed. So we’re like, ‘Yeah, let’s not talk about it.’ It sucked for so many kids. It was their year and they never got to put on the pads.”
Graduation ordinarily is held at Western Connecticut, but because of COVID it was held outside at Newtown’s football stadium.
“That was cool for us, it actually was better,” Street said. “Our valedictorian spoke about it, our principal talked about how it sucked for so many of us, but the last time we were on the field it was a great moment.”
At graduation, when a football player got his name called, all the players stood up and cheered. That’s the way it is.
And the football that he threw and Riley Ward caught?
“It’s in (Pattison’s) office,” Street said. “Down in the basement of the high school, where our locker room is. It’s in a case. I think all the seniors signed it.”
The 10th, the 25th, the 50th, somewhere along the lines there will be celebration of the greatest moment in state high school history.
“Absolutely, absolutely,” Street said. ‘What made that team so special was our juniors and seniors were one in the same. We didn’t look at each other as different. The bond was special.”
Jack Street once told me when the shooting started that morning when he was in the fourth grade it was the most scared he’d been in his life. The tragedy can never be erased, yet Newtown rebuilt and seven years later was able to bond and smile. And now, 20 months after that, after COVID has taken more than 8,000 of us in Connecticut, we bond again and push on.