Winter Sports Restricted Under New State Guidelines
By Joseph Lublinsky '24
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, winter sports at GFA are being restricted to ensure safety amongst students and faculty and to follow the guidelines set by Governor Lamont.
“This year has definitely been challenging,” Director of Athletics Tauni Butterfield said. “We started off with a regular season, and then the governor put a pause on all sports, but allowing us to do fitness with four students to one instructor […] we were able to come up with a schedule of doing both boys and girls basketball… and they have certain protocols they need to follow.”
“It’s a day by day situation,” she added. “We hope that when we come back from break, we are still in the same sports pause. On the 19th, we are hoping that the governor will lift the pause so that we can start playing games.” The games would only be held within the Fairchester Athletic Association (FAA), the school's designated division for all sports, and only on Saturdays.
Due to the limited amount of space at GFA and what the governor allows, most sports (with the exception of wrestling, which is hosted off-campus), are only holding varsity practices. This brought more challenges for the athletic department to solve.
“You make a plan, and two days later you are changing that plan, and two days later you are changing that plan,” Butterfield said. “In order for us to give our kids some type of normalcy, we had to really think out of the box and figure out how to do that, and in order to be successful and to keep them safe.”
“I also think keeping everybody engaged,” Jennifer Harris, girls varsity basketball coach, added, “not knowing what we are gonna have next, it’s more challenging to make sure that all our players and athletes are engaged every single day regardless of if we will have any sort of competition, or it is just amongst us. [...] For a sport like basketball, everything becomes individual and just skill based.”
As a head coach, Harris took the role of making sure that her team both had a will and positivity to play, and to stay safe in the midst of the pandemic. “At least for the girls basketball team, they remained very positive, and I think we are genuinely happy to be with one another and doing what we love,” Harris said.
Harris also has the role of ensuring safety amongst her team. “We wash hands before and after practice, we sanitize the balls before and after. […] We are taking all the protocols that we can.”
Most other schools in this area are not hosting any type of athletics, so even though what the school has in place is not what anyone expected, it is better than nothing. “While it's very disappointing we don't know whether or not we will have games looking forward, right now we are in the gym together, and that is more than some people can say,” Harris said.
During these unexpected times, new changes could spontaneously appear, and no one can say for sure whether or not GFA will host games in the future. However, no matter what, it is important to stay positive. “I believe in positivity,” Butterfield said. Everyday things are changing, and with the vaccine on the rise, you never know. I want to say yes [to games] because if we say no, that's going to shut us from being creative and figuring out how to get playing.”
Unfortunately, Pack the House and other large sporting events will not be possible, but the athletic department may work with the student council and other departments to see if they could host something virtual. Nevertheless, to be able to play any sort of sports is a privilege.
“If there's any chance we can have a game, from what we’ve seen from the school, we’ll do everything we can to make it happen,” Harris said. “Something is more than nothing, and right now we have something, and a lot of other places have nothing, so we have to be happy to have an opportunity to get better.”
