After months of waiting, hours of discussion and days of deliberations, all of the turmoil of the past six months seemed to just melt away Friday afternoon as local high school athletes were able to return to the fields and the courts to begin tryouts and practices for fall sports.
St. Mary’s, Bishop Fenwick and St. John’s Prep are the first schools to take the field in the Fall Sports I season, which will run until Nov. 20.
St. Mary’s and Fenwick are fielding teams in boys and girls soccer, field hockey, golf, and cross country, while St. John’s Prep will have soccer, cross country, and golf. St. Mary’s and Fenwick teams took the fields and courts starting Friday; St. John’s Prep is opening things up on Saturday morning.
St. Mary’s and St. John’s Prep will also have approved football practices, which are allowed because despite football not being played until the Fall Sports II season in late February, the MIAA waived a rule prohibiting out-of-season coaching for the 2020-2021 academic year.
St. Mary’s instituted a school rule of its own, announcing that any out-of-season sport is limited to three hours per week of out-of-season coaching. In contrast, Fenwick has decided to set a school policy of continuing to prohibit out-of-season coaching for all sports, including football. For the Prep, which is operating in a hybrid learning model to start the school year, football players will be allowed to practice two days a week in a combination of on-field drills and weight room work.
“It’s been 190 days since our last high school sporting event, which was a girls basketball practice on March 12,” said St. Mary’s Athletic Director Jeff Newhall, who also serves as the girls basketball coach. “To get to this point, I think everyone involved at any level deserves a lot of credit. Just to have coaches coming in and picking up things like soccer balls and nets and cones and all sorts of things like that, it’s a great day for high school sports.”
“There was a lot of buzz around the school today, and that was a great feeling,” said Fenwick Athletic Director Dave Woods. “Just to see everyone in the building for school and now getting ready for sports, it’s an exciting time at Bishop Fenwick for sure.”
Tryouts and practices will run for the next 10 days for soccer, field hockey, volleyball and cross country. Golf tryouts and practices will run for the next seven days. The first competition in the area will be a Bishop Fenwick golf match against Austin Prep at Hillview Golf Course next Friday, Sept. 25.
“This is an exciting time for all of us, especially after missing the spring season,” said St. John’s Prep Athletic Director Jameson Pelkey. “Everyone — the athletic department, the coaches, the parents — we’re all happy to be able to provide our student-athletes with the opportunity to get out on the field to practice and compete.”
Out on the fields, coaches could hardly contain their excitement.
“It’s been a long process, but we’re just so excited to get back out on the field,” said St. Mary’s girls soccer coach Jim Foley. “We’re just very thankful to the MIAA for coming up with a way for us to play and to St. Mary’s for giving us the opportunity. We’ve all been waiting for this.”
“We’re excited to start this journey together as a team in this strange season,” said St. Mary’s boys soccer coach Mike D’Agostino. “We have a pretty new squad with five seniors and a lot of younger players stepping up, so it’ll be interesting to see how things shake out.”
“There were times this summer where we didn’t know if we’d even be able to have a season, so this is an exciting day,” said St. Mary’s volleyball coach Mike McDuffee. “We have a lot of interest (in the team) this year, especially among our younger students, so it’s great. We’ve seen a lot of improvement over the summer even though there haven’t been a lot of camps, and everyone is just coming in with a really good attitude.”
There is still plenty of work to do, from making sure the fall sports remain safe, to figuring out how to play more at-risk sports such as ice hockey, basketball and football in the coming months, and the athletic directors all know that this is just the beginning of the road.
“As someone who is working on this at a bunch of levels, I can assure you that the work has been ongoing and we’ve been working hard at it,” said Newhall, who is also a member of the MIAA’s Tournament Management Committee. “Unless something catastrophic happens, I think that as long as we all continue to remain safe and diligent, then we’ll be able to continue doing things right in the fall and winter.”
“Those winter sports are definitely right around the corner and we’re going to have to deal with them sooner or later,” said Woods. “But at the same time, our main focus right now has to be on making sure that we’re operating our fall sports safely.”
“Our big thing here is that we can only control what we can control and we have to take things one day at a time,” said Pelkey. “As long as we can continue to stay safe, wear our masks and socially distance, I think we’ll be able to continue moving in a positive direction.”
Mike Alongi can be reached at [email protected].