For the second straight year, there will not be a championship series in High School Boys Division I Rhode Island Interscholastic League Hockey.
Mount St. Charles Academy (Woonsocket) was scheduled to take on Bishop Hendricken High School (Warwick) in a best-of-three series, but due to a positive COVID-19 test in the Mount program, the series was canceled and both schools were named co-champions.
Last year, Mount was scheduled to take on La Salle Academy (Providence) in the championship, but due to the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, that series was not played, either.
“I feel so bad for our seniors, but at the same time feel so much pride with how they’ve conducted themselves both Friday and all year,” said Mount St. Charles coach Matt Merten.
No. 1 Mount St. Charles (11-1-1) had a player test positive for COVID-19 late on Thursday night March 4. Once the player began experiencing symptoms, he got tested for the virus. The last day the player was at a Mount practice was on Tuesday, March 2.
According to Merten, the team followed proper protocols and practiced that week in preparation for Game 1 of the finals, but he acknowledged the situation was the “elephant in the room.”
The championship series was scheduled to take place beginning on Friday, March 5. Game 2 would have been Saturday night, and if necessary, a deciding Game 3 would have been on Monday.
Bishop Hendricken coach Mike Soscia said he first found out the championship series could be in jeopardy when he awoke to a text message from a player Friday morning and was on the phone making calls by 6:30 a.m.
Eventually the ruling from RIIL came in Friday afternoon: The championship series was canceled.
“I’m just trying to comprehend the ruling of the Rhode Island Interscholastic League,” Soscia said of the league’s decision to not push the series back. “Although I can understand what they said, I don’t approve of it. I don’t agree with it.”
According to Soscia, the RIIL did not want a potential championship, whether it was the usual three-game series or just one winner-take-all game, to take place after March 8.
“I really think they should have taken a different approach to this COVID season. It’s an unscripted book that they set hard deadline dates to,” Soscia said.
Additionally, according to Soscia’s understanding, if there were no more positives and proper protocol was followed, the schools could have been playing by Wednesday, March 10 or Thursday, March 11.
Since the finals will not be held, the teams decided to be named co-champions. No. 2 Bishop Hendricken (9-2-1) had the option to take the title, since the positive case came from Mount. The team declined.
“It was classy for Hendricken to not just take the championship, to say they wanted to compete for it, which really says a lot of the Rhode Island Hockey community,” Merten said. “It was a really classy thing to do, to not even consider winning a championship without even playing in it.”
“It’s an easy decision — for mutual respect for both programs for what we’ve been through,” Soscia said. “We’d rather lose in the finals than be named champions. It was an easy decision to make; we are going to be co-champs.”
Both coaches said they had to tell their respective teams about the decision over Zoom and did not get to do so in person like they would have liked to do.
“Unfortunately, I could even do it in person. We had to do it over a Zoom call. That, for one thing, was hard to do. And two, actually telling the kids was probably the hardest thing I’ve had to tell the kids so far. Their season was taken away. It was the toughest two-month grind I was a part of,” Soscia said.
The matchup of Mount vs. Hendricken was set to be a battle of two true heavyweights. Mount had an undefeated regular season while Hendricken entered the finals winners of eight straight games.
In an attempt to get closure on the season and do some good, the two schools will attempt to play a benefit game at a later date for A.J. Quetta, a hockey player from Bishop Feehan High School in Attleboro, Mass., who suffered a spinal cord injury earlier in a game this season.
