Starting dates for the winter high school sports season were announced earlier this week even as hockey rinks across the state remain closed as part of the two-week shutdown ordered by Gov. Chris Sununu last Thursday.
New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Association Executive Director Jeff Collins said the rink shutdown did not influence the association’s planning for the winter season. However, he acknowledged that if the rink shutdown extends past the originally announced two weeks and into the start of high school winter season – the first day to practice is Dec. 14 and the first day to play is Jan. 11 – it will, obviously, have an impact.
“If the shutdown is still happening when the season starts, it’s a moot point,” Collins said.
Many winter sports – like basketball, wrestling and track – are played indoors, which poses a greater risk for spreading the coronavirus. Schools will need to establish new protocols for each sport, which could be dramatically different than the fall, when most sports were played outside.
“Hockey isn’t the only winter sport with concerns,” Collins said. “Schools are struggling with swimming arenas and where are they going to find places to swim. So, there a lot of question marks and a lot of things that still need to be worked out.”
Even if the governor opens ice arenas, some teams may still be searching for places to play. In previous seasons, the John Stark-Hopkinton boys’ ice hockey team has practiced and played its home games at the Lee Clement Ice Arena at New England College, but there is a chance NEC won’t share its arena this season, which could leave the General Hawks searching for ice time.
While the state identified more than 150 cases of youth hockey players and coaches contracting COVID-19 during the past two months, all of those cases occurred while those players and coaches were taking part in practices or games with club or private teams, and not school-sanctioned teams.
“It does seem to be a cluster of cases with hockey, but partially it’s because hockey is playing outside of the school environment right now,” Hopkinton athletic director Dan Meserve said. “One of the big pluses for school sports is that we can control where these kids are playing and practicing. So, it’s a great example of, ‘if we’re not doing this within our state and within our own schools, we don’t know where the kids are playing and what they are doing.’”
Given the relative success and safety of the fall high school season, it seems like the state’s athletic directors have done a good job creating a safe environment for sports.
While a few schools and teams have needed to cancel games or entire seasons, most teams played the majority of games on their regular-season schedules and continued, or will continue, into the postseason. The team golf championships were decided this week and the field hockey tournaments started.
The football playoffs opened with play-in games on Friday night, and tournaments for boys’ and girls’ soccer and girls’ volleyball begin next week.
“The athletic directors deserve a ton of credit for how much time and effort they put in to getting things up and running in their schools this fall,” Collins said on Tuesday at the Division III golf championships in Manchester as he waited to hand out the winning trophy to Bow High School. “The kids, by and large, have been awesome, too. It’s been hard, but it’s all been worth it when you get out here and see kids have a chance to compete for a state championship. Or, to be honest, it was great just to see a regular-season game and kids getting a chance to play their sport and go out there and compete.”
Collins believes the two-week delay before the fall season began gave schools the needed time to install and teach safety guidelines that set the foundation for a successful season.
With that in mind, Collins and the NHIAA decided to do the same for the winter season, which would normally see its first games in early December.
While schools now have experience with coronavirus safety guidelines around sports, the winter season and its multiple indoor sports – basketball, hockey, wrestling, swimming and track – will certainly come with its own challenges. Volleyball, which is also an inside sport in New Hampshire, was a success this fall, but it doesn’t have the same close contact between players as some of the indoor winter sports like basketball, hockey and wrestling.
Stricter guidelines may be needed to keep winter sports safe, like wearing masks at all times, for example.
The Hopkinton and Hillsboro-Deering school districts required this for fall sports and while it was a challenge, the players were willing to do it.
“Definitely in the beginning it was a big adjustment running with the masks on during conditioning and games and stuff like that,” said Hopkinton’s Kate Bouchard, who is one of the captains of the varsity field hockey team. “But everyone knew it was necessary if we wanted to have a season, so everyone decided, ‘You know what, if we have to wear a mask that’s okay as long as we get to play.’”
Not only have the Hopkinton and Hillsboro-Deering student-athletes had to wear masks during games, the schools have asked their opponents to also wear masks.
During Monday’s field hockey playoff game in Hopkinton against Mascenic, only four of the visiting players consistently wore their masks during the game while the other seven players on the field had them pulled down around their necks. Bouchard and fellow Hopkinton field hockey captain Madeliene Maughan both said that was unusual and that during the regular season when the Hawks were playing local schools Merrimack Valley, Pembroke, Bow and John Stark the majority of the opposing players wore their masks.
“That was more abnormal,” Maughan said after the game against Mascenic, a 5-0 win for Hopkinton. “For the rest of the season the referees would even ask the other team, like, ‘Okay, Hopkinton asked, so would you please pull up your mask.’ I heard it a little bit today, but it’s hard.”