14 • COMMUNITY ADVOCATE • Friday, April 9, 2021
COMMUNITY SPORTS Northborough sixth grade boys basketball team captures division title By Chris Wilson Contributing Writer
Head coach Steve Adriaansen said the biggest challenge of the season was teambuilding. The one-practice-per-week schedule obviously hurt. But that wasn’t the only loss. The team could not get together for pizza parties like they normally do during the basketball season, Adriaansen said. It took time for the team to gel together as a result.
NORTHBOROUGH – Following a 43-31 victory over ConcordCarlisle on Sunday, March 14, Northborough’s sixth grade boys basketball team took home the MetroWest Basketball League Division 3 championship. Northborough reached the championship game with wins over Weston, Natick and Framingham, celebrating the victory as a triumphant bright spot in a difficult year of youth sports disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The champion Northborough sixth grade boys basketball team poses for a team photo.
Pandemic posed challenges for team Due to the pandemic, Northborough played an eight-game season instead of their usual 12-game slate. Other rule changes included the elimination of jump balls
at the start of games, as well as a six-foot social distancing requirement when the offensive team inbounded the ball. The league also required all players to wear masks during games. Normally, Northborough would have two practices a
week, but COVID limited the program to one 90-minute practice per week. The team also had to rent out the Shrewsbury Club fitness center for practice, as all neighboring schools remained closed because of the pandemic.
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Northborough Youth Basketball Association adapted to pandemic Not only did Coach Adriaansen lead his team to a division title, but he also was the Travel Coordinator for the Northborough Youth Basketball Association during this atypical season. Northborough had 14 boys and girls teams in the MetroWest League, and everything went off without a hitch, according to Adriaansen. “None of our teams missed time because of COVID,” he said. At the end of the season, even with a division trophy in hand, Adriaansen said that a strong record on COVID-19 was its own triumph. “[We] were just excited that we got a season in,” he said.
Algonquin Volleyball holds off Shrewsbury Dr. Mikhail Novikov
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Team provided normalcy through COVID As difficult as things were, Adriaansen recently told the Community Advocate that he felt this program had to continue running through the pandemic. “We gave the kids a sense of normalcy in what’s [been] a pretty miserable time for a lot of these kids,” he said. He went on to explain that these games and this league gave kids “something to look forward to.” Some of the kids on the team have been sitting behind a computer screen on Zoom for the
past 4-5 months without a way to interact with kids their age, Adriaansen noted. The basketball league helped give the kids “two to three hours a week where COVID wasn’t even going on.”
Algonquin’s Sabrina Greenwood spikes the ball as Shrewsbury’s Isabel George and Ellie Michalowski leap up to block. PHOTOS/JEFF SLOVIN
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Shrewsbury senior Emma Brady (18), rallies with teammates between points during the first set of a match against Algonquin.
By Jeff Slovin, Contributing Writer NORTHBOROUGH – The Algonquin Regional girls volleyball team defeated Shrewsbury 3-0 in a match April 1. After Algonquin won the first set 25-20, Shrewsbury took a strong lead in the second set. But Algonquin battled back to take it 25-23. Algonquin then also won the third and final set by a score of 25-23. Algonquinisnow6-0thisseason,whileShrewsburyhasfallento3-3. Girls Volleyball is normally a fall sport in Central Massachusetts; however, due to COVID, it is being played this year during a special season known as “Fall 2” that spans March and April.
