Spring Sports

By Bill Fisher

After a pandemic year without an Upper School sports program, students and coaches were thrilled to take the felds again starting March 29 as intramural spring-season practices for lacrosse, baseball, softball, and track and feld began. “The vibe was incredibly positive,” says Athletic Director Nancy McNall. “The opportunity for the kids to be outdoors, connecting through athletics, was glorious.”

McNall had been eager to restart an Upper School sports program ever since the COVID-19 pandemic efectively shut down all competition in spring 2020. While McNall and fellow physical education teachers Mike Pannozzi and Lynn Pisanelli were able to provide students with remote workouts and practice videos that spring and, when school reopened in the fall, relatively normal physical education classes for the Lower School, a return to Upper School sports remained out of reach. High rates of COVID-19 transmission in the region made close competitive play too risky.

In the spring, however, with coronavirus numbers dropping and plenty of evidence from the fall to suggest that Shore’s safety measures were efective, it became possible to consider a restart. Families and students were all for it, says McNall. “One of the things I’ve always enjoyed about working at Shore is that the students and families are so supportive of the athletic program. Everyone was ready to get back out there.”

The frst step toward a spring season was devising safety protocols that would continue protecting children from COVID-19 even while competing. That meant dropping interscholastic play and travel in favor of scrimmages among Shore teams only, and it also meant closing locker rooms, requiring masks, and keeping players as physically distanced as possible while on the sidelines.

Step two was fnding willing coaches among Shore’s faculty and staf. Explains McNall, “Because we depend

on our teachers to coach our kids, I wasn’t sure we’d even have a coaching roster for the spring given the added stress our teachers were already facing because of the coronavirus.” But the response was overwhelming, says McNall. “I couldn’t believe that almost all of the coaches said yes. They knew sports would be great for their students, and they couldn’t wait to get out on the felds alongside them. To see that selfessness in our teachers—despite the ways the season would look diferent, and despite the challenges—was amazing and gratifying. The season wouldn’t have happened without their willingness to step up.”

McNall says she couldn’t be happier about how the restart went. “Our kids were so good about following the COVID-19 safety rules. The worst thing that could happen was that a mask might snap and break. That’s the reason we had replacements in our medical kits.” More importantly, sports brought back something that was missing from Shore during an unprecedented year—a way for students to build connections across peer groups and grades. “What we really did is go back to what we used to have at Shore—a robust intramural program on campus that’s very spirited. We had all grades playing together on the same feld, so they could compete against one another or practice separately, whatever the situation called for.”

McNall planned other ways to make the spring season feel special. One day a week, there were “Blue and White Game Days,” when students were divided into blue and white squads in honor of Shore’s colors. Then they competed against each other to earn points for their color and try for the championship at the end of the season.

Regardless of any prizes that may have been won, McNall saw big rewards for all Upper Schoolers in the afterschool sports program. “It was great for the eighth and ninth graders who were leaving Shore to have one last season on the felds after missing last spring, fall, and winter. For our sixth graders, it was their very frst chance to be involved in spring sports. This propelled them into this year and gave them a sense of what the program is all about. It was especially important for our seventh graders, who will be the leaders on our teams this year. This spring will surely have given them a little bit of confdence as they head into the fall.”

McNall says Shore is planning to run the full afterschool sports program in the fall, when the hope is that COVID-19 will have receded enough into the background to allow a return to something close to normal. But this spring, intramural practices and scrimmages helped to give everyone the sense that normal was within reach. “Being out on the felds, I felt we were right where we should be as a school,” McNall says. “If anything, this past year has made me appreciate even more how important sports are to our program, and how much I love what I do.”

“What we really did is go back to what we used to have at Shore—a robust intramural program on campus that’s very spirited. We had all grades playing together on the same feld, so they could compete against one another or practice separately, whatever the situation called for.”

—Athletic Director Nancy McNall