On Friday, the local high school football community received an important update regarding the upcoming fall season.
The Greenfield football co-op, which has long been discussed with Turners Falls, Mohawk Trail and Pioneer Valley Regional, has taken a last step forward. By a 3-0 unanimous vote of the MIAAs Eligibility Review Board (ERB), the co-op program is officially launched for the fall 2020 season.
The Friday vote at Belchertown High School was the last step in the four-school cooperative, which was approved for the 2020-2021 school year only. Greenfield High School will serve as the home school for the co-op, which will wear GHS uniforms and home games at Veterans Memorial Field in Greenfield. The team will participate in the Intercounty League.
I think this is the first step in trying to rejuvenate football in these cities and communities, proposed Greenfield Athletic director Mike Kuchieski, who is also the head coach of high school football. . Hopefully, in the end, the schools will all be able to go back and bring back the traditions with their own programs. This is our goal. Our goal is not to form a Franklin County football team forever. Hopefully this is a temporary solution until the schools have enough players to leave on their own.
Turners Falls director of sports Adam Graves, who confirmed that his district's school committee approved the measure two weeks ago, said he was pleased that the co-op had obtained final approval from ERB Friday.
I think it's good for kids, he started. As I have said in the past, this is not the situation the four schools wanted, but they were all meeting.
Friday's approval gives the program much more time to prepare than last year's co-operative solution, where Turners Falls and Mohawk Trail came together for an emergency waiver from a year in August in order to have a season. The teams played under the Mohawk Trail banner and participated in the League of Three Counties.
We now have time to plan, said Graves. Scheduling even small things like off season training. Kids know this is where they are going to play now. They all know each other, have played against each other. It is certainly much better than anything that happened at the last minute a year ago.
Before the CER's vote on Friday, the cooperative obtained approval at the February sports directors' meeting. The REB was responsible for reviewing the figures and making the final approval.
There is a bit of logistics to straightening out but good to go, said Kuchieski. I think at the end of the day we were all on the same wavelength to continue football in this area.
Kuchieski expected 16 to 20 players to come from Greenfield to the cooperative, and Graves said his school watched about 10 children. On Friday, neither Mohawk Trail AD Greg Vouros nor Pioneer AD Ernest Abramian were available to comment on an issue for their respective schools.
Its four schools come together to make the most of a situation, proposed Graves. For us, we were going back to the Intercounty League. I was back in these traditional schools, so this is an advantage for our children. They didn't have that connection with the Pathfinders and Smith Vokes of the world, so playing against Frontier, Mahar, those teams again, I think it's great for us.
The Upperclassmen football players from Turners Falls certainly have a unique distinction. This fall will mark the third year in a row that Powertown players will compete in a cooperative, and Greenfield will be the third uniform they will wear during this period (Turners Falls in 2018, Mohawk Trail in 2019, Greenfield in 2020).
We've talked about it, how they're going to be the only players in Turners Falls to play for three different schools, said Graves. At the end of the day, they all had a chance to play, which I think they enjoy. This is the best we can do in the situation. Hopefully, let's revisit this in a year and years later, let's build it to break with ourselves.
As mentioned in Fridays Recorder, the MIAA has announced that the start of spring sports will be delayed by two weeks. Training is scheduled to start on March 30, and the first playable day of the games would be 11 days after the first training.
The situation is certainly fluid and the MIAA plans to review the schedule before March 30.
Listen to the DPH (Ministry of Public Health), but the goal is to have everything done by the usual deadlines (before the playoffs), said Kuchieski. Most of our leagues have independent and crossover games at the start. Suppose you lose some of these games and hope that you can continue to play a large part of your schedule.
The initial deadline for baseball and softball is May 30. Men's volleyball (May 25), tennis (May 28) and athletics (May 25) are the other spring sports on the local register.
Stay tuned.
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