No football, no problem as Nashua teams fill the void
No football? No problem.
Yes, this is the first weekend without an NFL football game to watch, and many of you may be suffering from withdrawals.
But the local high school winter sports teams have no issue with that whatsoever.
We can fill the void today with the first Nashua High School North-South boys basketball clash at 2 p.m. at Titans Gym. Now, given the attendance limitations due to the pandemic, it won’t have that loud North-South feeling, but hey, it’s a game worth seeing one way or another, live streamed and broadcast over Nashua ETV for those who can’t attend.
Saturday, the Nashua High School South-Pelham Kings finally got to open their 2021 hockey season at Conway Arena. Even though they fell 6-0 to the Bishop Brady Green Giants and were disappointed, there was definitely a silver lining.
They played.
“We’ve all been looking forward to this day,” first-year Kings coach Jordan Sarracco said. “Kind of wondering if we were going to get a chance to play our first game or not with everything that is going on.
“We’re all happy to be here, happy to get our first game under our belt and get the season going. We can only build from here.”
Yes, these days, it’s not just about what happens in the game, but that the game took place itself.
“God bless ’em,” Brady coach Josh Vega said of the Kings, who waited patiently for seven weeks while his Green Giants had already played five games. “Everyone is trying to make the best of everything that’s going on right now. I tip my cap to their coach. Everyone is trying to do the best they can right now, I’m grateful we’re able to play hockey. I just hope everyone pays attention (to the protocols) and listens.”
That’s the thing, you just go from day to day, game to game. Just ask the Nashua South girls basketball team, which was supposed to host North today at 4 in the girls version of the city rivalry but are entering their second week of pandemic pause and will see the Titans, hopefully, on Saturday, Feb. 13 instead.
Meanwhile, today’s Panthers-Titans boys clash should be intense. Both teams split games with Windham and Alvirne, respectively, last week as we saw the effect of the back-to-back meetings between schools.
Unfortunately for Nashua hockey, it’s not the same. Their deal is that to play, they play basically just once a week if possible. So the Kings, instead of having another game perhaps mid-week, don’t play again until next Saturday when they host Merrimack.
“We’ve got four more practices until our next game,” Sarracco said. “That gives us a chnce to really dig in and work on what we need to work on from here.”
That game will bring us one day away from football again. But then again, it’ll be the last – and bigget – game of a season we didn’t know whether we’d see in its entirety.
Same with the high schools, but they’re out there playing, so enjoy.
Tom King can be reached at tking@nashuatelegraph.com, or on twitter @Telegraph _TomK.