NHS Skaters Approved For Step Up To D-II; Coach’s Co-Op Concerns Heard

By Andy Hutchison

Newtown High School’s hockey team reached the quarterfinals of the Division III state tournament this past winter and will lose only two players to graduation. But, rather than stay put and try again for a title in the weakest of the state’s three divisions, the Nighthawks are making the move to D-II next winter.

NHS Coach Paul Esposito and the Hawks applied for an upgrade to the higher division as Esposito strives to continue to raise the level of hockey in town, as well as set up his team against like competition. Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) officials, in late March, approved the move. Esposito is excited about the prospects for success at the D-II level next season and for years to come.

“We’re optimistic. We’re raising the bar. It’s going to be a challenge — it’s not going to be easy,” Esposito said.

The coach added that his players will have to work hard in the offseason, and he plans to add practices to the weekly schedule to better prepare the team members for game action.

“We have the talent. We have the ability to play with these kids,” he said of the tougher D-II teams. The Nighthawks have had some D-II teams on the schedule throughout the years, and they held their own in a tough 5-3 loss to Guilford, the 2010 D-III state champs who were bumped up this past season and went on to lose to D-I-bound Cheshire in the final.

CIAC officials take into consideration team success, numbers of returning players, and anticipated numbers of incoming players when moving teams to different divisions. Newtown, Esposito expects, will have 26 or 27 players come out for the varsity team next year. If that’s the case, Newtown should be able to field a junior varsity squad, the coach said, which will allow the up-and-coming players to work their ways into the varsity ranks. What’s more, with more players, more practice ice can be paid for without much, if any, change to the amount players and their parents currently pay, the coach notes.

This past season, team fundraising efforts cut the approximate $2,500 per-player fee basically in half, Esposito said.

One of the reasons Esposito wanted to make the move to D-II was also because D-III included 20 teams, 15 of which were two- and three-school co-ops, something that didn’t sit with the coach, who argued that opponents had unfair “all-star” team-like advantages. At the D-II level, among 19 teams were 16 single-school programs in 2010-11.

The Nighthawks can’t seem to escape multischool opponents. They will be joined at the D-II level by the team that beat them in the state playoffs, Windsor-East Granby-Avon, along with D-III champion Watertown-Pomperaug and runner-up Staples-Weston-Shelton. None of the divisional changes are officials until late April as coaches of affected teams may appeal with the CIAC.

Esposito, along with fellow single-school D-III team coaches from this past season, Joel Barlow’s Pete Maxfield and Masuk’s Andy Townsend, met with CIAC officials to express their concerns about some teams gaining unfair advantages by joining forces with other schools to create powerhouse teams instead of building their own programs. Esposito pointed out that he believed there were coaches not reporting incoming freshmen when applying for co-op status, and getting away with bigger, more talented roster than they should have been permitted to have. Co-op rules are such that no one school may have more than 15 players and no three schools may total more than 30 skaters.

The coaches also addressed what they consider to be an unfair playoff point system in which teams earn bonus points for winning games against out-of-state teams. Esposito claims that some teams are piling up wins against weaker non-Connecticut teams to earn a better playoff ranking. He is also concerned about the co-op opportunity causing coaches to not build up their own programs, which he points out, is reducing the number of state high school teams. Esposito said hockey will only remain a CIAC-sanctioned sport as long as a high enough percentage of Connecticut schools have teams.

“The three of us walked away from the meeting very happy. They were very receptive to the issues we brought up,” Esposito said. “I’m really hoping we raised some awareness to it.”