[INTRODUCTORY CAVEAT: I realize most of my readers don’t care about Newington High School sports. But, seeing as how this blog is called The Living Room Times — named after my old NHS newspaper — it seems only appropriate to post this here.]
Back in 2006, on the eve of the Connecticut Class L boys volleyball state championship match between Newington High School and Staples High School of Westport, I wrote about my alma mater’s long streak of runner-up showings in state title games and matches. Not only did NHS never capture a state championship while I was there, but they hadn’t done so in many years before or since.
Alas, the Indians lost to Staples in ’06, and the trend has continued. We’re now at 12 consecutive second-place finishes in CIAC sports where Newington has cracked the top two: 1988, 1990 and 1991 in football; 1993 in girls basketball; 1998 (my junior year) in ice hockey; 2000 in boys soccer; 2004 and 2005 in golf; 2006 in ice hockey and boys volleyball; 2007 in baseball; and 2008 in football.
Will the NHS boys volleyball team — which actually won Newington’s last state championship, in 1994, but that was way back when boys volleyball was a non-CIAC-sanctioned sport (with a rather non-traditional, single-day tournament format) — finally break the streak in 2010? The Bristol Press provides reason to hope so:
[T]he reason why [Newington has not won a state title in the CIAC era] can be summed up in one word: Staples. …
While the…Indians have [a] very good program[], the Wreckers have what is probably the second-most dominant program in the state (in recent memory) in any sport, behind only Danbury’s remarkable wrestling team.
In 2006 Newington had what it believed was its best team ever, led by senior all-state setter Peter Kolinsky. The Wreckers were not impressed, rolling to an easy three-game win in the Class L final.
In the three years following the Wreckers lost only a single match [and won three consecutive state titles] …
But there are reasons to believe…Newington could take home [its] first title this year. The first is simply that…the Indians are in Class M this year, right below the [Class L] cutoff line.
That means the Indians won’t have to face Staples…and Burns is trying not to get overexcited about what is clearly the best chance the team has ever had to win a state title.
“I don’t want to jinx myself. I do know that we have a good team,” Burns said after knocking off Lewis Mills last week. “Class M has got good teams in it.” …
Unbeaten Masuk must be considered the favorite, but Newington has shown it can hang with anybody[.]
The tournament bracket is here. Newington (17-1), whose only loss is to a Class L team (Southington) that they won’t have to face again, is the #2 seed. Their first test will be tonight, at home, against #7-seed Lewis Mills, whom the Indians have swept this season, albeit in two tough, four-game matches. Match time is 7pm Eastern (5pm Mountain).
The match is on the Indians’ home court, the Richard E. Rogalski Gymnasium, so that’s good. But frankly, this has 1999 softball-esque heartbreak written all over it. That was the year — spring of my senior year, the final sports season of my high-school days — when NHS beat its archrival, Southington, whom it had never defeated before in program history, twice in the regular season, en route to a 20-0 record and #1 state ranking, only to lose in the state tournament quarterfinals to… G-d damn f***in’ Southington, dashing my hopes of publishing the long-awaited Living Room Times State Championship Edition, and proving once again the maxim about how difficult it is to beat a quality opponent three times in one season.
Anyway, if this year’s volleyball Indians can get past Lewis Mills — *fingers crossed* — they’ll face either #3-seed Farmington (14-4) or #6-seed Fermi of Enfield (10-6) in the semifinals, again at home (I think). That would be next Tuesday. Win that one, and it’s on to the state championship game, probably against #1-seed Masuk (17-0), at nearby Conard High School in West Hartford. Newington’s a helluva lot closer to neighboring West Hartford than is Monroe, so the Indians stand to potentially have something of a “home-court advantage” in that possible title clash.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First, the Indians need to avoid the three-times-in-one-season curse against Lewis Mills, and win tonight. If they do that, a tough semifinal match awaits. Win both of those, and then we can start dreaming about bigger things, including possibly some on-the-scene correspondents for special blog coverage of the title game, and maybe even a special Living Room Times print edition, the first in 11 years, celebrating the first NHS state championship in either 16 years*, 28 years**, or 30 years***, depending on how you do the math.
*1994 non-CIAC-sanctioned boys volleyball title
**1982 CIAC boys golf title (non-single-elimination format)
***1980 CIAC football title (last win in a single-elimination CIAC title game)
As a graduate of another HS that has also been a bridesmaid a couple times but not to the same school repeatedly (boys have lost finals in football and baseball, although girls won track and cross country a few times), I can sympathize.
On the other hand…boys’ volleyball? School-sanctioned boys’ volleyball with tournaments and everything? You really DO do things differently out there. 😉
Boys volleyball isn’t that unusual, JD. PA has a boys volleyball title. Its actually a fun sport to watch and play – one of the games where, at a glance, you see who has momentum – its who has the serve. Not having the serve immediately creates a bit of nervousness – and the longer you don’t have it, the more doubt creeps into your mind. “Look at that score. Can we even GET the serve back?” And of course, the opposite is true of the team with the serve. Plus, nothing quite so satisfying as a good legal spike or block.
It’s funny you say that, B. Minich, because one thing I love about volleyball is how, momentum be damned, no deficit is insurmountable. Granted, if you’re down 29-0 (assuming 30-point scoring… I know sometimes it’s 15, or whatever… I get confused about that), you’re very, very unlikely to win. But it’s not impossible. And certainly, teams can rally from deficits like 27-14 or whatever. Tennis and baseball are like this too — big leads are great, but crazy comebacks remain mathematically possible until the very last moment. Basketball, football, hockey and soccer, by contrast, all share the reality — because they have a clock — that, at some point, the lead really is just too big to overcome. “It ain’t over till it over” is simply not true when you’re down 42-0 to USC midway through the fourth quarter. It’s over.
Indeed. In fact, in volleyball, if you are down 29-0, but then you start scoring, the momentum shifts to your side. Again, all the other guys have to do is score once and its over. But the serving team always feels better in volleyball. It can lend itself to epic choke jobs, as that other team scoring just GETS IN YOUR HEAD, and your team loses cohesion. I’ve seen it happen, as that desperation to just get that ONE point we need to win gets more and more urgent.
Volleyball: it plays with your head.