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Granite State Games have been cancelled for 2020

By Tom King - Staff Writer | May 7, 2020

The Games won’t go on, not this year.

Granite State Games Executive Director and founder Pat Mulcahy announced that the annual Olympic-style event set for June 15-20 that features New Hampshire high school athletes competing in a variety of sports has been cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Always number one was the safety of the players, coaches, parents and officials,” Mulcahy said while at his main job as a girls soccer coach at IMG in Bradenton, Fla. “We just felt this was the best thing to do. But obviously it wasn’t an easy decision to make.”

The Games’ board of directors and sports directors held a virtual meeting on Wednedsday night and made the decision. Besides safety, venues were also an issue as the Derryfield School told Mulcahy a couple of days ago it wouldn’t be able to host some of the sports as it had in the past, not with the school facilities closed since March due to the pandemic. Also, another main venue, Southern New Hampshire University, told Mulcahy it was still discussing whether its facilities would be available for the Games.

“Derryfield was not an option, and SNHU was kind of in a holding pattern,” Mulcahy said.

Sponsors, athletes and coaches have been informed of the decision, Mulcahy said. Some sports had already held tryouts for their regions, but others, such as volleyball and basketball, had yet to do that. Other sports included golf, softball, tennis, field hockey, archery, flag football and baseball. Teams traditionally have competed for four regions: Lakes, Coastal, Southern and Monadnock.

Mulcahy, who founded the Games five years ago, put together an infrasructure of directors and sponsors that will enable the organization to gear toward 2021.

But before that happens, he said, athletes who have paid tryout-registration fees, etc. will have their money refunded. Sponsors, he said, are on board with having their money either refunded or used to pay this year’s operating costs such as insurance, website, administrative, etc.

“We’ve reached out to all our sponsors, and lot of them are friends of mine, and they’ve been very understanding,” Mulcahy said. “Some of them we’ll push to next year but we do have some operating costs that we need to take care of.

“The first step is to close that 2020 loop with our venues, sponsors, etc. Then the next thing for us is we still want to be on people’s minds and keep the brand alive via social media.”

And then all eyes will be on June of 2021.

“We’re lucky we have such an awesome team on board,” Mulcahy said. “Absolutely, the goal is to return for 2021.”

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