The Bristol Eastern boys soccer team was warming up Thursday afternoon awaiting the opponent for their first contest of the delayed sports season, Farmington High School. Farmington was late for a 3:45 start, and the reason was discovered at just about the time the game was scheduled to begin.

Just before Farmington’s bus was ready to leave the parking lot to travel to Bristol, Farmington’s head coach was informed that one of his players had tested positive for Covid 19. Calls were made, and Eastern was informed that the game was off. Hopefully, this is not an omen of what this fall’s schedule will be all about.

Now the story gets even more depressing. Last week, Farmington had a scrimmage with none other than Bristol Central. So not only does Farmington have to quarantine for the next 2 weeks, but Bristol Central does also. Central, who has everyone healthy up to this point, will miss their first several games of the season. And guess who was next on BC’s schedule? If you said Bristol Eastern, you would be correct. So both local high schools miss out on the first two games of an already abbreviated campaign.

Is anyone at fault? Of course not. This is just the new “normal” that our student-athletes and their coaches are facing this year. Any day, any time, a season can be thrown into chaos. Let’s hope that this was just a one-time occurence, and things will proceed smoothly from here. But it was a stark reminder of how fragile everything is.