Telegraph Sports Reporter Tom KIng.

Ah, the true sign of spring is that Easter Weekend has arrived, and while last weekend we went hippity-hoppity down the tourney trail, this weekend we’ll give you a few tids and bits from our Easter basket of sports:

First, remember the number: 677. What was the most amazing thing of this early spring is that many players on the Bishop Guertin High School girls lacrosse team did.

They had apparently gone back and counted the days from the last time the Cardinals had played a game, their 12-11 Divison I state title win in June of 2019 over Pinkerton Academy to Monday’s first day of spring practice.

“It was 677 days since they played BG lacrosse,” Cards coach Leslie Why said. “Multiple kids knew it. My daughter told me last week. She texted someone and said ‘It’s been like 638 days’ and they said ‘No, 677 days.’ They were counting.”

That just shows you how special it was for all the area high school athletes who played spring sports to get out there last Monday after missing the entire 2020 spring season due to its COVID-driven cancellation.

“They kept track,” Why said. “It was a very special day.”

• Sad to see on old friend Barry Scanlon’s blog “Running on Empty” that the heralded Golden Gloves boxing tournament, a staple of the region’s amateur boxing, will not be held this year.

The event at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium had been strategically, but tentatively moved from a January start to April, but the pandemic caused it to be scrapped completely. Too bad, because it was to be celebrating its 75th anninversary.

It’s slated to return in 2022, and hopefully things will be considered safe enough by then to happen. There have been several young Nashua boxers over the years that have competed.

How big of an event is this? As Scanlon noted, famed boxers like Rocky Marciano, Marvin Hagler and Micky Ward competed in the event.

• This region’s fascination with Jimmy Garoppolo is mind boggling and probably won’t stop until he returns to New England.

But please, let’s dispell a myth or two: One, Bill Belichick basically had to trade Garoppolo, not because Tom Brady wanted that to happen, but because Garoppolo wouldn’t agree to a so-called “bridge deal” to keep him in the fold for a year or two; he wanted to hit free agency. So rather than wait a year for a compensatory pick in the third round, the Patriots dealt him to the 49ers for a second. They didn’t “gift” him to San Francisco. The Niners knew the Patriots had to act and you don’t get more than a second rounder for a backup – yes, people, he was a backup – quarterback.

Two, it seems the biggest problem the Niners have with Garoppolo is his ability to stay on the field.

What else could it be? He never was able to play in all four games when Brady was suspended in 2016, and he’s only been healthy for one full season there. But, of course, that one year he took them to the Super Bowl.

Will he come here? The guess here is the Niners will hold on to him until the trade deadline during the 2022 season, if they are ready to anoint whomever they draft as his successor.

• Sad to see that Becker College in Worcester is now the latest small New England College to shut down, after we all experienced that with Daniel Webster a few years ago.

Former DWC assistant AD Ken Belbin noted that five of the original members of the conference the Eagles helped form, the New England Collegiate Conference (NECC) are now or will be closed: DWC, Wheelock, Newbury, Becker, and Southern Vermont.

Belbin notes that other former Daniel Webster foes Green Mountain College and Mount Ida are also gone.

Sad. It should make us all appreciate Rivier University athletics and its growing program even more.

• Seventeen games now, eh NFL? The owners finally got their wish. Cutting the preseason down to three games is a good idea; but do we really need an extra game? Evidently that extra game for New England will be the Cowboys coming to Gillette Stadium, but we’re moving the Super Bowl one more week into February. With that being the case, why not just start the season a week later, and play the Super Bowl on Presidents Day Weekend, with the next day being a Monday holiday. Makes sense, no?

• Wow, predictions in this column are like the kiss of death. We said the Sox would be improved and ace Eduardo Rodriguez comes up with a dead arm. We pick the White Sox to make it to the World Series, written early for publicaton, and their best player Eloy Jimenez is out for most if not the entire season. Gulp.

Hey, at least in our high school hockey tourney picks we went 4 for 4.

Enjoy your Easter Weekend, everyone.

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

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