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High school sports has triumphantly returned to new normal

By Tom King - Staff Writer | Sep 9, 2020

They’re baaaaaaaaack….

One tweet from Nashua Athletics summed it up on Tuesday, as school began remotely in the city:

“So great,” it said, “to see our student athletes return to athletics today.”

Or, one from the New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Association:

“First day of fall sports here in NH,” it said. “We told you we would be back! We’re looking forward to a great season.”

And so it begins. The horror that was the end of a winter season without many state champions being crowned, and the entire spring getting cancelled is in the rear view mirror.

There were pictures all over social media on Tuesday. Field hockey players were out at Stellos Stadium for North and South. Soccer practices. Football practices, but without contact.

The “new normal” was starting to look, well, normal.

It seems we’ve improved in stages, even if nationally the pandemic still rages on. Here in New Hampshire things are seemingly more under control, but we obviously must be always on guard. The dark news last spring, the empty fields, the lack of competition, the over reliance on Zoom, etc., turned into baseball practices and then actual competitive games for summer leagues, turned into Silver Knights games at Holman, turned into approved NHIAA summer workouts for all high school sports.

And then Tuesday, things for high schools all around the state got real. Practice with a purpose.

“The kids have found a way to work hard throughout this thing,” Nashua South football coach Scott Knight said the other day. “A lot of them are really excited to get going and perform. For the kids and the coaches. Let’s face it, a lot of us have been cooped up.

“I can’t wait. I get to go to the school, have a full practice. It’s awesome.”

There will be some golf matches on Thursday and into next week. Most of the other sports will either open late next week or, in the case of Division I teams, not until Sept. 21.

But you get the idea – the preseason is turning into the regular season, however abbreviated it may be, pretty quickly.

High school sports is back. Sure, they’re practicing on egg shells; any positive test related to a team will shut it down for at least two weeks. Just ask the student-athletes at Windham High School, who reportedly yesterday had their athletic program shut down due to several positive tests. Meanwhile, elsewhere there’s protocols, assessments, questionaires, temperature-taking.

But there’s sports.

Fans will be limited. Nashua athletics director Lisa Gingras had a great message for all who may not like the fan restrictions (like no visiting team fans, even for North-South games).

“We have to do this,” she said, “because the alternative would be what we had last spring.”

And no one wants that again.

Tuesday was a great way to start the new normal.

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

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