The winters sports season of 2019-20 is officially underway.

Today starts the first full week of the season as all the sports will have begun in near full swing.

With that said, here’s some tids and bits for the great indoors:

It’s great to see the Conway Arena Holiday Hockey Tournament back after a year’s hiatus. It’s always difficult to organize, etc., but it’s a sign the hockey community paid attention and rallied to get it back. It also made sense, as three local teams – Nashua North-Souhegan, South-Pelham, and Merrimack – were traveling to Keene to play when they all felt they could be playing locally.

A compromise was reached with a smaller tourney, still three days, but only six teams and only a title game on the third day so Conway wouldn’t have to give up so much ice time.

“It’s great we don’t have to get up a 7 a.m.and drive to Keene,” South-Pelham coach Shawn Connors said.

— Congrats to Pembroke-Campbell hockey coach Marc Noel, who is coaching in his 25th high school season. Noel, who actually works at a high tech firm in Nashua, began his career with six seasons at Goffstown, which was just starting its program. Noel, like Bishop Guertin’s Gary Bishop (29th year at BG) he’s seen it all, and also wants to continue seeing it. When asked what h’e seen change the most over the years in the sport at the New Hampshire high school level, he said, “I think the players have gotten smaller.” And you know what, he’s probably right.

— There’s a new addition to the Colligadome scoreboard at Bishop Guertin – point listings, just like they have at some colleges. Saturday was its maiden voyage, but Guertin girls hoop coach Brad Kreick admits it could be a distraction. In fact, there were some scoreboard discrepancies that had to be corrected after the game via the official scorebook.

“I think it’s cool, it looks kind of cool,” Kreick said. “The thing we want to make sure never happens is the kids shouldn’t be paying attention to it. The thing we told them after the game is the last thing we care about as a staff is who scores the points. We really don’t care. We care about other things a lot. But whether someone has two or 20, really doesn’t matter one bit. But to the extent they’re looking at the scoreboard wondering how many points they or their teammate has, that’s not a good thing.”

—- Just about every year a few local high school players, especially one or two at Bishop Guertin, decide their best hockey direction should be to play juniors. This year it’s Aidan Wilkie, who would have been a senior defenseman for the Cards and was a captain last year as a junior. The loss hurts but the Cards always have the players to make up for it. You just wonder, though, if these kids at some point wish they had stayed with their school team.

—- Lost in a lot of the winter sports activity is the fantastic job Chad Zibolis has done with Nashua North wrestling. The program was dying on the vine a couple of years ago before Zibolis took it over last year. He’s changing the culture, getting a lot of his football players – he’s the North offensive coordinator – to come out, as well as athletes from other sports. You could go to a North match a couple of years ago and maybe they had enough to compete at four or five weight classes. Those around the program were afraid it wasn’t going to survive.

It will still take some more time, but Zibolis has changed all of that and made it a relevant sport at North again. Good job.

—- Kelli Braley will begin her 10th season coaching the Souhegan Sabers girls hockey team, believe it or not. But as far as she knows, in a 16 team league, she is suddenly the only female head coach going into this season. Amazing.

“A lot of it has to do with the culture, there’s been a lot of coaching turnover the last couple of years,” Braley said.

Well, we do know this, out of the 11 teams that made the tournament last year, she was the only female head coach. This year there are no new teams, either in girls hockey, which continues to be dominated by Hanover. “It’s maintaining,” Braley said.

—- Still on Souhegan, just an FYI – the Sabers will not be playing home games at Saint Anselm’s Sullivan Arena this year. Goffstown and Bedford use the rink for their home ice, but preparations for the Democratic Presidential Debate set for Feb. 7, according to Braley,will take a chunk of time, as much as three weeks of ice time, out. So the Sabers will split games between Tri-Town Arena in Hooksett and Conway Arena in Nashua. Tonight’s opener vs. Concord will be at Tri-Town at 8:20 and the Sabers’ first Conway Arena game is Monday, Dec. 23 at 1 p.m vs. Berlin.

—- Welcome back to the world of high school head coaching, John Fisher. He’s back for his second tour of duty as the Cardinals boys hoop coach, and remember he also ran the Alvirne program for a while. He had been an assistant under former BG coach Matt Regan and was a logical choice to take over when Regan surprisingly stepped down in the fall.

“I’m ecstatic,” Fisher said the other day. “It’s an amazing opportunity, a great bunch of kids. I loved coaching with Matt Regan, he’s a great guy, a great coach. But I’m just ecstatic to have the opportunity.”

Fisher took 12 years off help raise and coach his kids, and now he’s got the chance to go back to the future.

“Thankfully they kept me around,” he said.

Heck, who wouldn’t want to keep a great coach and mentor for young athletes like Fisher around? Great to have him back as an area head coach.

Meanwhile, we know the winter season has begun. Snow tonight into tomorrow.

Tom King may be reached at 594-1251, or@Telegraph_TomK.tking@nashuatelegraph.com

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