Telegraph photo by TOM KING Bishop Guertin's Nick Yeung, left, and Nashua South's Max Lopez saw a lot of each other the last two weeks thanks to this year's regionalized scheduling and tournament setup.

We’ve hit November with high school sports, which means state tournaments are winding down and football playoffs have just begun.

Did anyone think we’d get this far in the middle of a pandemic?

Of course not.

But here are a few thoughts as the schools, the teams and all of us forge ahead into the most blah month of the year:

• First, one of the neat aspects of how the NHIAA and the athletic directors put together the touraments was separating things into regions. In most sports, the teams you played in the regular season are the teams you play in the tournament until you reach the semifinal round.

Telegraph Sports Reporter Tom KIng.

That has spoiled us in this area. It’s made Stellos Stadium a busy place, because it’s lumped Nashua North, South and Bishop Guertin into a group of teams trying to play out of one region in Division I, and Milford, Hollis Brookline and Souhegan into another region in Division II.

It all means locals and rivals were playing each other in a must-win situation, and what’s better than that? For example, the Nashua South boys soccer team had to play Nashua North and Bishop Guertin twice in the regular season, then beat both teams in the tournament this past week before being scheduled to face Merrimack Saturday in the Division I regional finals/quarterfinals. It’s no coincidence that the tourney games were the closest South had with their city rivals.

• Of course there have been some disappointments. One, the Milford boys soccer team couldn’t compete due to a virus-related issue. Last weekend all Hollis Brookline-Milford athletic events scheduled were cancelled, presumably because of that problem.

But we don’t know for sure. Why? No one in an official capacity said anything at the time late last week except to say things were off. No one wants to cause a panic, so transparency is the best policy in this case. Sure, we can pretty much figure things out, but we should be told which school has the problem, specific team, etc.

• The whole Keene High School situation was ridiculous. For the fall the Blackbirds should have played in the geographical groupings that they competed in. It’s understandable Keene officials wanted their athletes to stay close to home. But word was they were willing to allow the football team to travel to Dover for a regular season finale before it was determined that they had to play Bishop Guertin in a playoff game. Nashua is considered a hot spot,so the ‘Birds couldn’t fly east, and instead good-guy BG athletic director Ryan Brown said he’d have his team go to Keene if BG fans could attend. First response was “no” then Keene apparently relented.

Yes, safety first – no ifs, ands, or buts.. But really, the ‘Birds couldn’t come on a bus, get off and play, hop back on and go home? It’s not as if they were going to stop in downtown Nashua for dinner.

And the Keene field hockey players couldn’t advance in the tournament after a home win over North – see, a Nashua team traveled there – because they wouldn’t come to Stellos and this time their quarterfinal opponent, again Bishop Guertin, wouldn’t give in.

The solution: Have the ‘Birds play in their geographical cluster in the post season – the same way the Campbell girls volleyball has in playing Divison II teams. That way no hearts get broken, right? And believe us, Keene wouldn’t have dominated that grouping just because they are normally a Division I school.

The NHIAA Football Committee did a good job getting a fairly close playoff setting for how things went in the abbreviated regular season. In Division I, the conferences are regionalized anyway, but this weekend has produced several all-local matchups: BG-North, South-Merrimack, and Hollis Brookline-Milford. This space has always liked the “play out of your conference” format, anyway. And as of this writing, a North-South quarterfinal next weekend still had a shot.

Tom King may be reached at tking@nashuatelegraph.com, or on twitter @Telegraph _TomK.

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