The local high school football community received an important update Friday regarding the upcoming fall season.
The long-discussed Greenfield football co-op with Turners Falls, Mohawk Trail and Pioneer Valley Regional took a final step forward. By a unanimous 3-0 vote by the MIAA’s Eligibility Review Board (ERB), the cooperative program is officially a ‘go’ for the fall 2020 season.
Friday’s vote at Belchertown High School was the final step in the four-school co-op, 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 play home games at Veterans Memorial Field in Greenfield. The team will compete in the Intercounty League.
“I think that this is the first step in trying to rejuvenate the game of football within these towns and communities,” offered Greenfield Athletic Director Mike Kuchieski, who is also the head football coach at the high school. “Hopefully, down the road, schools can all go back on their own and bring the traditions back with their own programs. That’s our goal. Our goal isn’t to make a Franklin County football team forever. It’s hopefully a temporary solution until schools have enough players to go back out on their own.”
Turners Falls Athletic Director Adam Graves, who confirmed the school committee in his district approved the measure two weeks ago, said he was pleased that the co-op was granted final approval by the ERB on Friday.
“I think it’s good for the kids,” he began. “As I’ve said in the past, this is not the situation any of the four schools wanted, but we’re all coming together.”
Friday’s approval provides the program with significantly more time to prepare than last year’s cooperative solution, where Turners Falls and Mohawk Trail came together on an emergency one-year hardship waiver in August in order to have a season. The teams played under the Mohawk Trail banner and competed in the Tri-County League.
“Now we have time to plan,” Graves said. “The scheduling, even little things like offseason workouts. The kids know that this is where they’re going to be playing now. They all know each other, played against each other. It’s certainly a lot better than everything happening at the last minute a year ago.”
Prior to Friday’s ERB vote, the co-op gained approval at February’s Athletic Directors meeting. The ERB was tasked with reviewing the numbers and making the final approval.
“There are some logistics that have to be straightened out but we’ll get there,” Kuchieski said. “I think at the end of the day, we’re all on the same page to continue football in this area.”
Kuchieski anticipated about 16-20 players coming from Greenfield for the co-op, and Graves said his school was looking at “roughly 10 kids.” Neither Mohawk Trail AD Greg Vouros or Pioneer AD Ernest Abramian were available for comment on Friday to offer a number for their respective schools.
“It’s four schools coming together to make the best of a situation,” Graves offered. “For us, we’re going back to the Intercounty League. We’re back playing those traditional schools so that’s a plus for our kids. They didn’t have that connection to the Pathfinders and Smith Vokes of the world, so playing against Frontier, Mahar, those teams again, I think that’s great for us.”
Upperclassmen football players from Turners Falls certainly have a unique distinction. This fall will mark the third straight year Powertown players will compete as part of a co-op, and Greenfield will be the third different uniform they’ll wear during that span (Turners Falls in 2018, Mohawk Trail in 2019, Greenfield in 2020).
“We talked about that, how they’re going to be the only Turners Falls players to play for three different schools,” Graves said. “At the end of the day, they’ve all been given a chance to play, which I think they appreciate. It’s the best we can do under the situation. Hopefully we’ll revisit this in a year and years down the road, build it up to break away back on our own.”
As mentioned in Friday’s Recorder, the MIAA announced the start of spring sports would be delayed by two weeks. Practices are set to begin on March 30, and the first playable day of games would be 11 days after the first practice.
The situation is certainly fluid, and the MIAA expects to revisit the timeline prior to March 30.
“We’ll listen to the DPH (Department of Public Health), but the goal is to have everything done by the regular cutoff dates (prior to the postseason),” Kuchieski said. “Most of our leagues have independent and crossover games in the beginning. Figure you’ll lose some of those games and hopefully still get to play a bulk of your schedule.”
The original cutoff date for baseball and softball is May 30. Boys volleyball (May 25), tennis (May 28) and track (May 25) are the other spring sports on the local docket.
Stay tuned.