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09/21/2020 12:00 AMThe Old Saybrook-Westbrook football team received the final word that there would be no full contact, 11-on-11 football this fall, and it’s added more of a challenge to already difficult practices for the Rams. The Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) Board of Control gave it’s final call on football for the fall, but left the door open to a possible spring offering of football, or potentially 7-on-7 play this fall.
Head Coach Mike Marone and his team are in a holding pattern with the latest info. All options seem untenable to Coach Marone as any 7-on-7 competition will make it hard to find opponents, and spring football would conflict with other sports that already suffered an outright cancellation of their seasons.
“The skill kids are still out there hoping for some 7-on-7, but that’s not looking too strong. Almost all Pequot teams are not being allowed to play 7-on-7 through their superintendents from my understanding. So even if we do play, we may not have opponents,” Marone said. “As for spring, let’s say we have a vaccine, and it’s all gone. Are they going to get rid of baseball? They lost that last year. They won’t cancel any of them two years in a row for football.”
Even a 7-on7 option leaves out a significant portion of a standard football squad by eliminating linemen from the field of competition. The reasoning is that the line is where most of the close contact and potential saliva-droplet transmission would potentially happen during the course of a contest. The CIAC has alluded to possible lineman competitions to offer some consolation to those student-athletes, but even that seems far-fetched to Coach Marone.
“That linemen competition is probably not going to happen. There isn’t a team that’s been in a weight room since the middle of February,” Marone said. “You can’t compete, if you haven’t benched and squatted in seven months. It’s basically impossible.”
Coach Marone believes that the CIAC may have let too much time pass before coming to its final decision. It’s caused a significant amount turmoil without a clearly communicated plan, but Marone also understands the reasoning behind keeping kids practicing albeit in a truncated fashion.
“Pushing it off and pushing it off was a mistake, but they wanted to keep the kids outside and exercising,” Marone said. “Plus, the kids do better in school when they have their coaches and some structure surrounding that.”
As of now a large portion of the Rams’ team has bowed out with the writing on the wall. Most of linemen have realized that there is very little chance that they will have any meaningful way to compete, and it seems like a matter of time before all activity is called off. Coach Marone is leaving the door open for anyone who wants to return as long as practices are taking place, but he understands his players’ frustration.
“The skill players, they are hoping for something like 7-on-7. It would be nice to play a couple of schools in our area, but the linemen have all packed it in. They have nothing to work toward,” Marone said. “We could still work with them until the date of the championship game, which would be in December, but do the kids want to do that with no game or incentive? We can’t even work with a ball until the last half an hour. The linemen can come back anytime they want, but I would rather cancel all of this and just go in the weight room.”
Still remaining with the team are senior captains quarterback/receiver Anthony Glorioso and receiver Davonté Mitchell. Both players have been trying to rally the team to the best of their ability. Glorioso and sophomore quarterback/receiver Vincent Naccarato were primed for a battle at who would maintain the field general position, but that friendly competition has become moot.
“Between Glorioso and Naccarato, it was going to be between the two of them to battle out for quarterback,” Marone says. “They are both good option quarterbacks for sure. When one took the field at quarterback the other would be able to slot in as a receiver. It was win-win no matter what happened.”
So far, the best idea that Coach Marone has heard as a viable alternative to this football season is playing during the layoff between the winter and spring seasons.
“I think the only opportunity in my mind is the three-week break in between sports in the winter. You can treat it like an all-star game in the summertime,” Marone said. “The Pequot can make something like four teams so that every senior in the state can participate. The kids wouldn’t worry about the cold. The February and March games would be the same as some of those November games.”
Coach Marone has found the whole situation difficult, but unsurprising. Until there’s a viable way to inoculate the majority of the population, there really isn’t a safe path for most sports to be played.
“The coaches knew that this was what they wanted us to do all along. It’s not like there was a chance to play football. We went into this with eyes wide open about what was going on since July 6. They just strung it out,” said Marone. “The answer is a vaccine. You want to see sports again, then you better hope for a vaccine.”