Facing the pending separation of a cooperative football team between Derby High School and Emmett O’Brien Technical High School, Derby school officials claim that the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference has cut off communication with the district.
But officials from the CIAC, which oversees high school football in the state, say they haven’t cut ties with Derby — only that they’re busy.
The dispute probably won’t change the inevitable: that the Derby‑O’Brien football team will likely be disbanded at the end of the school year.
Background
Derby and Emmett O’Brien have a shared football team under a two year agreement OK’d by the CIAC.
But shortly after the agreement was penned, the CIAC changed its cooperative agreement rules ever so slightly.
Now, that rule change and fluctuations in the Derby High School football team roster threaten to alter the Derby‑O’Brien co-op when it comes time to sign a new agreement at the beginning of the 2011-12 school year.
Specifically, it looks like Derby may have too many students to qualify for the co-op anymore — a situation that could leave O’Brien Tech students with no easy way to play football next year.
To qualify to have a shared team, both teams must have fewer than 32 players. That’s less than the 37 maximum that existed when Derby and O’Brien Tech joined together.
Derby currently has 42 players, according to the district’s athletic director, Joe Orazietti.
It’s not clear yet how many players will be on the team next year.
‘Severed Ties’
The undercurrents of the dispute became public in a newspaper piece in the New Haven Register this month, which outlined Derby’s fight to have the rules changed to allow O’Brien students to continue playing with Derby.
Now school officials are claiming that article caused the CIAC to ignore them.
“It is unfortunate that it made it to the newspapers,” Orazietti said at a Derby Board of Education meeting last week. “It put the CIAC in a tough position. We had a nice dialogue with some of the members of the CIAC that were assigned to help us in a couple of different levels, and unfortunately now, their ties have been severed with us.”
Paul Hoey, the associate executive director of CIAC, disagreed with Orazietti’s statement regarding the breakdown of communication between the two organizations.
“I don’t know why they would get that feeling. Joe emails me all the time,” Hoey said. “There is an ongoing conversation with Derby and Joe all the time on a regular basis. I haven’t gotten back to him but that is not unusual. We can get over 100 calls a day here, and it sometimes takes a little while to get back to people. I dont want Derby to think that we are not sensitive to their needs.”
The Real Issue
Derby has urged the CIAC to reconsider the rule to allow the co-op to continue, or at least allow the existing players to be grandfathered in.
“We are asking them based on the mission statement that they have — which is to include as many students athletes as possible because of the importance of athletics in a high school student’s life, and the great value that goes along with the life lesson,” said Derby High School Principal Fran Thompson at the Board of Education meeting. “We would like to minimally have our Emmett students finish out the co-op; to have them grandfathered in.”
The CIAC said it would consider that option — however, the CIAC would then have to allow grandfathering for every sport, Hoey said. It could negatively affect the new students at O’Brien, he added.
“It is a philosophical decision that the board will have to make,” Hoey said. “We are looking at the pros and cons. If we do that, new kids that come in to O’Brien Tech wouldn’t be allowed to play. We want to make sure it is an equal playing field for all.”
