By Michael Letendre
With the news of the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference finally allowing the winter sports season to begin practicing officially, a long awaited door opened for several athletes – eager to get back on the courts for the first time since mid-November.
But with one door opening, you knew another one would be closing alongside it.
On Thursday, in news that did not come as a total shock, the CIAC officially cancelled any chance of an additional spring season that would have allowed football and other ‘high risk’ sports to commence.
In what would have been termed an alternative spring season, CIAC executive director Glenn Lungarini said “with the caveat of no high risk sports through the end of the winter season, that means no high risk sports through the end of March.”
That statement effectively ended any chance of football or wrestling through the remainder of the 2020-21 calendar year.
Since the 2019-20 spring campaign was eliminated last season, the CIAC did not want to gut the spring sports that might have seen fewer athletes play baseball, run track, or hit the golf courses if football, wrestling and the like were to remain on the scholastic calendar.
Simply put, the CIAC refused to impact spring sports for a second consecutive year.
In a stunning revelation, a small number of athletes missed their sport of choice for all three of the spring, fall, and winter seasons over the last year.
That meant if your son played baseball, competed in football and grappled on the mats in wrestling, that athlete ended up going 0-for-3 because of those cancellations.
It’s a hard concept to take, especially over the fact that about 70-percent the states in America ended up playing football this fall with several more to start competition in the late winter and spring.
It wouldn’t have been a long season if Connecticut kept football in the works, containing a schedule of five to six games plus some sort of postseason play.
But football was just not in the cards in this state.
The winter campaign starts in early to-mid February, finishing on March 28 with spring practices commencing soon after.
That push back doomed football, not allowing enough time for conditioning, six games, and a postseason experience for the programs.
“Because we have not had the ability to play sports across the state until January 19, that significantly reduces the time frame in which we could hold that alternative season,” said Lungarini.
The original plan was to have the winter season end in mid-March with a potential wedge of time available between the winter and spring sports campaigns for football and the like to proceed.
Football could have stared practice at the end of February with games to begin over the first full week of March – ending in mid-April will the spring season ready to commence soon after.
However, due to the spring season cancellation in 2019-20, the CIAC’s Board of Control wanted a full spring slate of games which eliminated football by design.
In the end, it’s disappointing lesson in which Connecticut scholastic institutions played a full slate of fall activities – sans football – due to it being a ‘high risk’ sport.
But other towns put together teams for full 11-on-11 competition which went off without a hitch in independent football leagues.
Some programs played upwards of four games before the state closed down any ‘high risk’ sports activity through the end of March.
Many schools played a 7-on-7 football option which was better than nothing but did not allow the entire squad to participate.
The CIAC also had to consider the ruling from the National Federation of High School Athletic Associations that said if spring football commenced, the following fall season would be shortened due to their concussion and contact policy.
There was never a complete cancellation of scholastic football by the CIAC, even when the entity closed down 11-on-11 football in September, and maintained the sport could be played at another time.
But in the end, an entire senior class in Bristol is extremely disappointed as the football campaign was squashed due to the dangers of COVID-19 and a narrow time factor for participation in the sport.
