Telegraph file photo by TOM KING Carson Papp and the rest of his Merrimack teammates won't p;lay Nashua North as scheduled today at Stellos Stadium due to coronavirus concerns, not necessarily related to soccer but just as a precaution.

Merrimack High School athletic director Mike Soucy had one thing he was confident about when the plans for high school sports this fall were being made with his fellow Division I athletic directors.

“If any one of us thought we were going to get through the fall season without some (COVID) issues,” he said, “we’d have been fooling ourselves.”

True to his thoughts, Soucy now has an issue at Merrimack, as the school has had what he termed “a handful of cases”, causing the boys and girls cross country teams to have to be shut down for the required two-week quarantine.

In addition, all the athletic events Tuesday and today between Merrimack and Nashua North have been cancelled and, according to Soucy, won’t be rescheduled due to a shortage of compatible open dates.

Merrimack is the second area school to have a varsity team have its activities shut down. The Bishop Guertin varsity field hockey team was scheduled to end its shutdown later this week. Other Guertin athletic events have gone on as scheduled.

But for the Titans and Tomahawks, scrapped were Tuesday’s scheduled cross country meets , plus field hockey (varsity and JV), and varsity and JV girls volleyball.

Today, there won’t be varsity and JV boys and girls soccer games between the two, either. The North girls were slated to play at Merrimack and the boys at Stellos Stadium.

The question is, what about the rest of the week, including Friday night’s scheduled Nashua North-Merrimack football game at Stellos?

“It’s really too early,” Soucy said, adding he and Nashua athletic director Lisa Gingras will confer again early Thursday. “I think everything will have to be determined and everyone will follow the protocols and we’ll see.

“We’ll just do the things you have to go through. I’m still hoping we’re going to be able to move forward. We just couldn’t take a chance these two days and have any of the teams compete.”

Gingras said in an email that while Merrimack goes through its contact tracing and efforts to see the extent of any virus related issues, etc., not playing yesterday and today was out of an “overabundance of caution.”

“Until that investigation and all contact tracing has been completed,” she said, “we feel it is prudent to not play games (Tuesday and today).”

The two schools were set to play in everything except varsity football not once, but twice. North is slated to host the Tomahawks in varsity and JV field hockey Thursday at Stellos, and there is a North-Merrimack freshman football game set for Thursday at Merrimack as well.

Besides varsity football on Friday, the varsity and JV boys and girls soccer teams are set to play each other on Saturday, boys at Merrimack and girls in Nashua. There is also a JV football game at Merrimack. Again, the hope is that these games the second half of the week can be played, with a decision expected early Thursday.

Merrimack is doing a hybrid model this fall for classes. And with volleyball games, as they are indoors, all participants must wear masks while playing – including visiting teams.

“We can control things here,” Soucy said, “but the big concern is what happens when the athletes are away from us and the teams, not under our control.”

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