Telegraph photo by TOM KING Bishop Guertin's Meghan Stack (51) and the rest of her Cardinal teammates will be set to begin practices/tryouts today. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

NASHUA – They were preparing to play Bedford High School in the Division I girls basketball semifinals when the plug was pulled on the winter tournaments due to the pandemic.

Today, though, the Bishop Guertin Cardinals are set, like many other winter sports teams around the area, to take the court for tryouts/practice.

“Don’t remind me,” Cards coach Brad Kreick said with a chuckle about last year’s abrupt ending that saw BG and Goffstown, the two highest remaining seeds, declared co-champions. “I think (the players) couldn’t be more excited to get going. It’s been a long eight-nine months for those kids.”

The rising COVID numbers have everyone going day to day – and sometimes month to month. The Nashua High School North-Souhegan co-op hockey team won’t take the ice until Tuesday, but the Saber-Titans will only have North players at the first practice for new coach Bill Kotsifas.

That’s because Souhegan has put athletics on pause due to the rising numbers, likely until mid-January. North-Souhegan’s first three games – Jan. 16 vs. Merrimack, the 23rd vs. Nashua South-Pelham, and Jan. 30 at Bow were cancelled. The team’s first game right now is slated for Monday, Feb. 1 vs. Merrimack at Manchester’s West Side Arena.

The team will practice just a couple days a week before the holiday Division I pause (Dec. 24-Jan. 3).

“We decided to kind of reduce things,” Kotsifas said. “We’ll go Tuesday and Friday this week, have a couple of Zoom meetings with everyone, including the Souhegan kids.

“We’ll have four practices until the break and then come back Jan. 3 (likely Monday Jan. 4). We hope the Amherst kids can come back then but right now they’re not supposed to come back unil Jan. 16. … You never know, they could change their mind. It’s too bad.”

So Kotsifas will look forward to Tuesday, when he gets to work with about 14 North skaters for the first time.

“So much looking forward to it,” he said. “I’ve been dying for it since the summer (when he was hired).”

Same for new Nashua South-Pelham coach Jordan Sarracco, who is looking forward to today after being named the Kings new coach within the last couple of weeks.

“I’m excited and looking forward to it,” Sarracco said. “I know the kids are too. … I know it means a lot to the players just to be able to get back into sports. It’s a huge day.”

There will be health assessments, temperature checks, etc., just as was done in the fall. The Nashua South girls basketball Facebook Page detailed how players are to wait in their car to be waved into the building, one by one, with the doors locking at a certain time. The protocols are understandably strict.

That’s the difference between indoors and outdoors. The Guertin girls had a mini-summer league after the tennis courts at the school were converted into outdoor basketball courts. That helped a team of several underclassmen not only get used to each other but to the protocols as well.

“It was extremely valuable,” Kreick said. “We have such a young group. But they also got used to all the rules, wearing masks, and even sitting on the bench six to eight feet apart.”

There are strict maximums for participation. For example, at Alvirne, the Broncos boys basketball program has four separate “practice pods”, max of 12-13 students,about an hour each, that will take things up to 10:30 tonight.

“We are so looking forward to it,” Broncos coach Marty Edwards said. “We are champing at the bit to get going here.”

All Division I basketball and hockey teams have agreed to wear masks during competition, and that likely means practices as well. Games for most won’t begin until Jan. 15.

As Kreick said, “I think everybody is willing to accommodate whatever the recommendations and protocols are. Whatever we have to do to be able to play.”

Hockey players will basically have to show up at Conway dressed in their pads, etc., only needing to put on their skates before they take the ice.

Kotsifas summed it with a simple fact.

“The fun part is being out there,” he said. “The not fun part is the virus. When we get on the ice, we forget about the virus, so it’s fun.”

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