Mother Nature Strikes Again: Tournament Games Were On Hold

By Andy Hutchison

Newtown High School’s fall sports teams started the season with weather-related postponements in the aftermath of hurricane turned Tropical Storm Irene two months ago. Now, as the season comes to a close with playoff action getting underway, Mother Nature is again impacting the schedule. The October 29 snowstorm that knocked out power throughout town (and the state) halted conference tournament play for several days and will result in some rare championship circumstances, including a volleyball doubleheader on Saturday, and soccer semifinal games becoming “championship games” with co-champions being recognized — on a rare high school sports Sunday.

With Newtown schools closed until at least Monday, November 7, and local fields still covered with snow in the middle of the week, athletic directors and South-West Conference officials were left scrambling to squeeze tourney games into a truncated schedule prior to the start of next week’s state tournament action.

Newtown High’s girls’ soccer team, following a quarterfinal round win over Masuk on October 28, was scheduled to play in semifinals on Tuesday, November 1, and, with a win, in the championship game on Thursday, November 3. With the revised schedule in effect, the girls are now slated to play on Sunday, November 6, and two girls’ soccer semifinal winners will be recognized as co-champs. The Nighthawks will host the winner of the Joel Barlow of Redding-Pomperaug of Southbury quarterfinal game for the right to earn a share of the title. In the other semifinal-turned-championship battle, Lauralton Hall of Milford will take on New Milford.

The high school’s girls’ volleyball team, the defending conference champs, was set to begin defense of its crown in quarterfinal round action on November 1 but has had to play the waiting game. The semifinals were scheduled for November 3 with the championship on November 5 if all went as planned. Now, the Newtown spikers will begin tourney play on Friday, November 4, with a 4 pm quarterfinal round match against New Fairfield. With a win, the top-seeded Hawks will have the potential to play twice on Saturday, November 5. The volleyball semifinals are scheduled for 3 pm with the championship to follow at 8 pm — both at Bethel High School.

Newtown High’s girls’ swimming and diving team was originally scheduled to compete in the conference championships November 3 and 5, with the diving competition slated for November 3 and the swimming events to be held two days later. Under the tweaked schedule, the diving finals will now be held on Sunday, November 6, at 2 pm, at Weston High School. The swimming competitions will take place on Monday, November 7, at 4:30 pm at Masuk High in Monroe.

Teams, after missing any sort of on-field or on-the-court preparations, have been permitted to resume practice since Wednesday, November 2.

Protocol is for after school activities to be put on hold when school is canceled, but exceptions have been made twice this campaign as sports teams were permitted to practice in the preseason prior to the delayed start of school in late August and early September.

All of Newtown’s fall sports have qualified for state tournaments and those competitions are slated to begin in the second week of November (schedule and seeding information for most sports are anticipated to be announced on the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference website, www.casciac.org, on November 6, two days after the original posting date, which was pushed back because of the storm). The CIAC announced on November 1 that state tourneys will start on the originally scheduled dates with the exception of soccer playdowns which, if necessary, will be held November 7 instead of November 5. That should not directly impact Newtown’s soccer teams, which stand to have strong seedings and host first round games.

“The CIAC is sensitive to the uniqueness of this situation and the issues being faced by our member schools,” commented CIAC Associate Executive Director Paul Hoey on the CIAC website. “In the case of cross country and in soccer, volleyball and field hockey, we believe we have done everything possible to allow schools to complete their regular seasons while still holding fair and competitive tournaments. We would hope that member schools whose facilities are available will help others whose facilities may not be so that as many games as possible can be completed by Saturday.”

Check on The Bee’s sports webpage (newtownbee.com, then click Sports tab) for SWC and state tourney schedule updates, and read about all of the playoff teams in the next print edition of The Bee.