Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference released their decision in September to cancel high school contact football for the 2020-2021 school year.

“This decision was made in alignment with the Connecticut Department of Public Health’s recommendation that football is a high risk sport and should not be played this fall,” said CIAC president, Glenn Lungarini.

The CIAC held a meeting on Friday, September 11th and after a protest of over 1000 players that occurred two days earlier on September 9th in Hartford. Governor Ned Lamont reiterated that he and the CIAC relied on guidance from DPH. 

“We do feel that CIAC exhausted every effort we could, ” said Lungarini. 

Now the CIAC is considering a season pushed back to the spring and, as of right now, is allowing the players to play a 7-on-7 league amongst teams in that league with permission from their home schools. 

The Naugatuck Valley League has a few teams that will participate in the 7-on-7 league including Holy Cross and Watertown. Other players have talked about playing for an independent team but the CIAC recommends that players don’t play any form of 11-on-11 this fall in hopes the players will get to play later on towards the end of winter and into spring. 

CIAC has just proposed a plan for the spring season with conditioning dates starting on February 22nd and games starting a couple weeks into March as early as March 13th. 

“I personally of course really hope it happens obviously being a senior, right now I’m preparing for that potential spring date working out, weightlifting so when the time comes I’ll be ready and I know everybody else on the team will be ready to go just hopefully we get the opportunity especially the seniors,” said NHS student Travis Caetano… 

Naugatuck High School and surrounding schools including Watertown, Seymour, Holy Cross and Derby have all scheduled games for the athletes to play. Naugatuck Interim Head Coach Ollie Gray has scheduled 4 games for the 7-on-7 league this fall for the Greyhounds. 

“I’ve been in contact with other coaches for weeks trying to get our kids some type of game-like action so we’re excited to get the opportunity to compete against somebody else and we wanna win that’s it, “ said Gray.