Stepping Up
How Jim Mora helped get CIAC games back to Rentschler Field
Not only did Jim Mora manage to find a pulse in the UConn football program, he got it upright and bowl eligible in his first year.
Across the college football landscape, few, if any, have done a better job. Some would call him a miracle worker. Others have called him a candidate for national coach of the year.
Mora doesn’t need much hyping these days.
Still, what shouldn’t be lost among the building accolades is that early on Mora was the catalyst for bringing half of the CIAC state football championships back to Rentschler
Field on Dec. 10. The other three games will be played at Central Connecticut.
“Coach Mora, when he first got here, was making the rounds to all the high school coaches,” said Paul Mounds, Gov. Lamont’s chief of staff. “Doing something the high school coaches were yearning for.”
“And he kept hearing the same thing: ‘We would like to be able to have our high school championship games played in our college stadiums. It would be good for the kids. He asked me at that point if there was anything he could do. I said absolutely.”
Mounds, who played football at Trinity, was a member of the search committee that led to Mora’s hiring on Nov. 11, 2021.
“I’ll be honest, Rentschler wasn’t on my radar to that point,” Mounds said. “The big thing, this is Jim Mora.”
Mounds’ first call was to Mike Freimuth, executive director of the Capital Development Region Authority. The CRDA oversees Rentschler Field.
“I asked Mike for some background on why it hasn’t been at Rentschler in a while,” Mounds said. “He basically was saying what the CIAC was saying (publicly).”
The state finals were at the Rent from 2010-2012 before leaving for Central Connecticut. It was reported at the time that finances were the primary reason for the move. That the CIAC was losing $9,000 per game and would lose only half that at Central’s Arute Field.
Glenn Lungarini, who became CIAC executive director in 2018, said last December that Rentschler is also problematic because if there is significant snow you can’t simply put plows and snowblowers on it. He also pointed to notes left behind about a complaint the media wasn’t allowed on the field during the game.
So is the Rent off the board?
“We don’t take anything off the board,” Lungarini said at that point. “We consider anyone who is interested in having us. But you have to have a plan if it snows. Are you willing to clear snow off a grass field at Rentschler? Probably not.”
Those words were part of a column last December