Telegraph Sports Reporter Tom KIng.

‘Tis the season, so let’s take a few tids and bits off the shelves for your Christmas shopping or browsing:

First, we criticized them a couple of weeks ago, but we should give credit where credit is due to the Nashua Board of Education for approving Nashua athletic director Lisa Gingras’ plan for winter sports.

It still should have been done a few weeks ago, but that’s history. Now the North and South winter athletes for hockey, boys and girls basketball, and wrestling can look forward to a season. Indoor track obviously is a facility casualty as colleges aren’t allowing track use (Dartmouth, Plymouth State and UNH). Hopefully something can be done for swimming and gymnastics for at least a couple of meets?

Either way, Nashua right now will have winter sports. The disaster that was last spring has to be avoided, and it looks like it will be.

• What are your thoughts on professional soccer in southern New Hampshire? Hudson venture capitalist Jeremy Zelanes reportedly wants to build a 7,000 seat stadium in Londonderry, has a site picked out, etc. with the idea of having a professional soccer team play in New Hampshire.

Of course, he’s looking for investors for the $50-60 million project, and has an elaborate plan for stores, restaurants, a training facility, etc. around the stadium.

It will be interesting. This is a far cry from the level of soccer we’ve been used to, once with the Phantoms and then the Nashua Eagles, who are hoping to return next season. The league this team would be in is the United Soccer League.

Is it far-fetched? Perhaps not, but a lot has to come together. We’re still waiting for that big baseball facility on the seacoast that former Futures Collegiate Baseball League franchise owner Dave Hoyt (Seacoast Mavericks) was all set to build in Dover.

It’s all dollars. You have the money, you can get things done. And the guess here is Zelanes has much of the dinero needed – or can get it.

Stay tuned.

• What’s the future of the Lowell Spinners? We should know soon. As of this mid-week writing, the latest reports – one in-depth one from masslive.com – have the Spinners going full season High Class A, likely still as a Red Sox affiliate. That certainly beats MLB’s thinking of turning Lowell into a college wooden bat league franchise in a league it was going to create. We have two leagues in the region, we don’t need another.

Thanks to MLB’s contraction of the minor leagues from 160 franchise to 120, the New York-Penn League is history. Now it looks like the Spinners, Brooklyn Cyclones and Hudson Valley Renegades could be some of the franchises joining the Mid-Atlantic League.

The Wilmington Blue Rocks, Aberdeen IronBirds and Jersey Shore BlueClaws ar e the other teams mentioned to form a six-team league with Lowell. Can this happen? Looks like a solution, but it will be critical for the Spinners to stay a Sox affiliate.

• Sad to see the disaster former Patriots defensive coordinator Matt Patricia became as the Detroit Lions head coach. Still remember Patricia being all smiles on the final day of media availability before the Super Bowl in Minneapolis. He knew he was headed to Detroit. Yours truly asked him about Malcolm Butler, and then talked with Butler. And then, of course, the controversy with the game.

But we’re not all bad luck here. The Patriots assistant we talked to at the Super Bowl in Atlanta on the last day of availability that week? Miami head coach Brian Flores, who is 7-4. Whew.

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

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