High School Winter Sports Tournaments Canceled Amid COVID-19 Fear

​Let’s start with a personal story from 1999.

As a senior in high school, I was quarterbacking an undefeated football team in the state semifinals. We had a lead late in the fourth quarter until I threw an interception, which was returned for a touchdown.

​Devastating. 

On the ensuing drive, with time quickly fading, we faced a fourth and long. Twins Left-375 Airline was the call, which was a designed roll out to the left with our X-receiver running an out pattern at the sticks and our Z running an out and up.
With our season on the brink, I heaved a pass down the seam to our slot, Nick Buzby. Buzby, who was the original Larry Fitzgerald, hauled in the pass right before getting blasted by the free safety. Two plays later, we were in the end zone celebrating an eventual trip to the state championship game.

Exhilaration.

Within a 10-minute span, I had experienced the lowest of lows and the highest of highs of my football career. Four years and countless hours of preparation had boiled down to those ten minutes and those are ten minutes that I will never forget.

Unfortunately hundreds of Connecticut’s high school student-athletes, particularly the seniors, were robbed of a chance to experience both the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat when the CIAC made the difficult decision to cancel the remainder of the winter sport’s tournaments last Tuesday.

The CIAC (Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference), which oversees high school sports in our state, released this statement regarding the sudden end of the boys and girls basketball tournaments, ice hockey tournament, as well as the state and open championships in boys swimming and diving.

Due to continuing concerns regarding the spread of COVID-19 (coronavirus) CIAC has made the difficult decision to cancel the remainder of its winter championship tournaments.

[The decision was made in light of discussions with numerous agencies and considering the circumstances of our member schools, our championship venues, and weighing the health and safety of our student-athletes, parents, and fans given the uncertainty that surrounds the spread of this virus.]

Many other options were on the table, including games/meets in empty gyms with no spectators or postponing the events until a later date.
In the end the final decision was made to cancel the remaining games.

Glenn Lungarini, Executive Director of CAS (Connecticut Association of Schools) and the CIAC, said this about the cancellations.

“After much consideration and consultation, the CIAC has made the difficult decision to cancel all remaining CIAC winter tournament games. The CIAC understands and appreciates the disappointment that student athletes, parents, coaches, and administrators may feel as a result of this decision. However, we must always place the health and safety of our student athletes first.

Due to continuing concerns about the spread on COVID-19, the responses from multiple school districts and third-party venues have varied greatly. Some districts have informed us that they can no longer participate in our tournament. Others have informed us that they can continue to participate without any fans in attendance. Still others have communicated that they can participate with less than 100 people in attendance. Additionally, we have been noticed by several of our third-party and neutral site venues that they can no longer host our events. Given the great variety of information that out districts are receiving from our local departments of health and from the declining resources to hold neutral site games, we feel that it is important that the CIAC give directions to our schools regarding the logistics of athletics.

The CIAC, again with always placing the interests of our students first, feels at this time the best use of our membership’s time is to focus on the educational needs of our students. There are a lot of unknows that still exist about COVID-19 within Connecticut. This has just begun here so we don’t know how far this will spread, but when we considered the best action that we can take to address the needs of our schools, we feel that we should give them the opportunity at this point to focus on the educational needs of our students. We understand at this time that schools have used the late-opening schedules to meet or discus distance learning as well as other options in the event that schools need to close and that’s where those attentions should be. At the CIAC we pride ourselves of being an education-based athletic experience for kids. We do the best we can to provide our kids with those exceptional experiences and it’s difficult to say to seniors and to others that they won’t have the opportunity to finish these tournaments, but we do believe it is what is in the best interest of all of our membership and the schools in Connecticut to have that directive from us.”

A lot transpired since Lungarini’s original statement, including an online petition started by Jake Walker, a Fairfield Prep graduated a former goaltender for the Jesuit hockey team, asking the CIAC to reverse the decision and play the games without spectators. As of Monday, the petition had received over 111,000 signatures.

Several student-athletes and coaches also protested outside the CIAC office in Cheshire last Wednesday morning, with chants of “Let us play” and “Talk it out” if an effort to get the CIAC and Lungarini to reconsider the decision.

It was ultimately a moot point as public schools and state universities in Connecticut decided to take a hiatus in order to help ‘flatten the curve’ of the potentially deadly virus.

Sports on a national level soon began to postpone and cancel, including the National Basketball Association which halted the season until further notice after Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for the Coronavirus.

This led to the National Hockey League following suit and Major League Baseball doing the same. March Madness was also eliminated.   
The entire coverage surrounding COVID-19 is both disturbing and confusing, with details emerging daily.

For high school sports, this is our new reality and the spring sport season has already been delayed and in serious jeopardy of suffering the same fate as winter sports.

We’re facing a major crisis and tough decisions must be made, but the hurt our local athletes have felt is very real.

Taking competition away from any athlete is a big deal and---as much as some people want to dismiss them---sports do matter.

As for the conclusion of my story back in the fall of ‘99. We advanced to the state title game and got crushed 49-0 to a team that had previously lost in the regular season to the team we beat in the semifinals.

It was a heartbreaking end to my high school football career, but not nearly as heartbreaking as the ‘what if’ that will forever haunt the local athletes that never had a chance to complete their journeys.  

Here is a list of the local teams and senior athletes that were impacted as a result of the cancellations.

Cromwell Boys Basketball: Patrick Stafstrom, Tyler Baldwin, Tyler Martin, Nick Polizonis 

Middletown Boys Basketball: Tyron Scharborough, Kenneth Fountain, Jonathan Nkonoki, Donte Pope 

Newington Boys Basketball: Patrick Brennan, Razik Amadou, Donovan Price, Raheim Lowery, Jordan Dukes 

Wethersfield Boys Basketball:  James Luiz, Jack Romagnoli, Andrew Desrochers, Owen Barnett, Connor Pace 

Cromwell Girls Basketball: Sadie Budzik, Vanessa Stolstajner

Newington Girls Basketball: Sabrina Soler, Ashanti Frazier,

Wethersfield Girls Basketball: Isabella Samse, Alice Kelly, Grace Conneely, Nicole Gwynn

WMPR Hockey: Jack Healy, Trevor Piecewicz, Connor Rancourt, Jeremy Walker, Patrick Creel, Patrick Alter, Curtis Clemens III    

Rocky Hill/Cromwell Swim & Dive: Thien-Bao Bui, Yuanlong Dai, Adam Dionne, Joseph Fletcher, Adam Franzen, Nicholas Plakunov, Michael Ptak, Brandon Scacca, Jay Scacca, Jacob Martin

Newington Swim & Dive: Luke Fote, Andriy Grynyk, Nicholas Jirku, Matthew Montano Jack Prestage Salvatore Scata, Eric Tran, Sean Vasi 

Middletown Swim & Dive: Elijah Cedillo, Joe Chiappetta, Kamila Ciebelski, Rose Cunningham, Michael Flynn, Kyle Heidorn, Seth Latronica, Jack Lentini, Cole Lombardo, Matthew Lombardo, Dylan Morris, Aditya Sathe 

Wethersfield Swim & Dive: Ryan Berasi, Michael Dunn, Samuel Garcia, Daniel Jimenez