By Michael Letendre

Just as the scholastic football campaign looked to be taking off this fall, the pandemic grounded the sport for what was only supposed to be a short period of time.

But after a delay and clarification of the dangers of playing sports using COVID metrics, ‘medium risk’ sports were given the green light while ‘high risk’ sports, meaning football, was halted, and bounced from the fall slate in its usual 11v11 format.

The National Federation of State High School Associations, the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference, and the Connecticut Department of Health all recommended that football not be played in the fall.

And even as the CIAC tried to figure out a way to downgrade football’s risk level through ‘COVID mitigating strategies,’ the end result was the same.

The 11v11 set-up was too high risk and not-playable – even as several other states around Connecticut commenced their scholastic football campaigns.

And even when our governor and the DPH put the decision to play ball in the hands of the CIAC, the group did not sign off on 11v11 tackle football.

But even when the DPH recommended that 11v11 football be postponed in the fall, all hope was not lost.

On September 29, the CIAC released plans for the ‘2021 Second Semester Alternative Season’ to commence at the conclusion of the winter campaign.

It was designed for sports like football or any program that didn’t get to complete 40-percent of its games to play its season.

Conditioning would have commenced February 22-26 with the first day of pads on February 27.

Two scrimmage dates were devised over the first two weekends of March with the first official game taking place on March 19.

The season would have ended on April 17, but at least those players had a chance at playing 11v11 football.

Before that time, low to moderate risk school sponsored football activities were permitted between the student athletes and coaches though November 21.

But that alternative season, like the prime rib you mistakenly tried to eat at the Ponderosa Steakhouse back in the day (shoe leather express), was quickly thrown out.

And with the winter season delayed, the CIAC did not want to impact a season straight spring season and did-away with football and any other sport that could have commenced during that time frame.

Never giving up hope

The program at Bristol Eastern, armed with a boatload of seniors and a schedule that certainly wasn’t as brutal as previous years, were eventually hoping to get back on the field after the completion of the winter campaign.

Obviously, that never happened.

“I was just hopeful that my kids would have an opportunity to play as long as it was deemed safe by all the parties that be,” said Eastern coach Anthony Julius. “I was just hopeful for them, especially for the seniors who worked four years to get to this point.” 

The Lancers were stacked with a unit of nearly 24 seniors, including a couple game-changing transfers, and was looking for its senior class that worked extremely hard over that past three years to finally get to spend some time at the pay window.

In the end, the season never came to pass and those seniors at Eastern never got the chance to shine on the 11v11 level.

“To not have an 11v11 season as a senior, my heart breaks for them,” said Julius. “But unfortunately, it just wasn’t meant to be and that’s really all you could take from it.”

Eastern was very successful in that 7-on-7 mini season, beating the likes of Farmington and Bristol Central – squads that the Lancers weren’t entirely successful against over the past few seasons – and desperately wanted to take that momentum from the fall into the alternative season for another slate of pigskin showdowns.

Sadly, that special senior class was unable to take the bow it most certainly deserved this year due to the pandemic.

“I feel bad for them,” said Julius. “We were hopeful that they were going to get the opportunity and play but unfortunately, they didn’t.”