Bill Burt: Three cheers for Timberlane, wrestling and N.H.

Mar. 1—It was a typical Saturday night in late February in America.

The best two teams in the state going head to head for a championship. Elite athletes in their sport competing against each other.

And, of course, spectators were cheering loudly.

Must be some place in Florida, probably a basketball game, right?

Wrong. It was Plaistow, N.H. And it was wrestling.

Timberlane Regional is only 7.8 miles away from Whittier Regional Vocational School in Haverhill, but it might as well be divided by a giant ocean.

While Whittier student-athletes and parents were gathering to discuss their next options to play football, a Fall 2 outdoor sport, Timberlane completed is sixth straight year winning the New Hampshire Division 1 state team championship.

In Massachusetts, wrestling is the hot potato of sports when it comes to the coronavirus. Like football, it was postponed. Massachusetts football has already started practicing with games beginning on March 12. Wrestling has been put off until late April ... God willing.

Timberlane wrestlers started working out with carefully guided workouts just after Thanksgiving, and then started their season with official practices on Dec. 14.

The perennial powerhouse opened its season on Jan. 14, 2021, and ended up wrestling in seven dual meets, with three canceled to COVID-19 issues with opponents.

Then the Owls competed in the team championships, winning three straight meets in blowout fashion: 69-12 over Pinkerton, 74-0 over Nashua North, and 60-9 in the finals on Saturday night over their recent chief rival, Concord.

Beat virus, too

But the better story is how they faced and beat the virus. Other than one Timberlane wrestler being quarantined due to tracing outside of school and another being around a family member with virus over Christmas break, the wrestling program was as perfect as its record.

"Out of the gate for some reason we did hear that wrestling can't be done," said Owls coach Dan Donovan. "We set it up for practices to be safer, for dual meets to be safer. To be honest, the way we did it I believe the wrestler is safer than any other sport."

A few things Timberlane did, beyond a near obsession with social distancing and wearing masks, is keep partners together for almost every practice. On buses, everyone sat in the same spot, so as to help with tracing, which never happened.

Donovan said it helped that the entire school was in lock-step, including all sports and teachers. And the Timberlane athletic director, Angelo Fantasia, apparently led the charge.

"We took our cues from national federation, the sports medical committees and the NHIAA (NH Interscholastic Athletic Association)," said Fantasia. "It wasn't business as usual. You have to make modifications. Our coaches in wrestling, really all sports, deserve a lot of credit. They followed all of the guidelines we requested."

Fantasia said including parents to attend meets and games, probably helped their cause.

Feeling lucky

Timberlane went full-bore this winter with basketball, gymnastics, swimming, hockey and cheering. The only program that wasn't able to compete was the indoor track teams, because of the lack of facilities in the state, but they were allowed to practice to prepare for spring track.

This really isn't a surprise. New Hampshire has made a concerted effort to play sports and allow their school-age children to participate in extra-curricular activities.

Basketball centers in Derry, Plaistow and Hampton have all continued running youth tournaments nearly every weekend, with parents allowed to watch. The only prerequisite was wearing masks and social distancing.

Wrestling, though, is a different animal. Because of the one-on-one contact, Massachusetts schools moved it to the spring hoping the virus will be better controlled by then.

But on Saturday night, with Timberlane allowing parents from both teams, as well as all wrestlers, about 120 people were together being entertained with a championship at stake.

Timberlane's star junior 220-pounder Cooper Kelley, who also played football in the fall with the vast majority of other N.H. schools, said he feels lucky compared to what's happening a few miles away in Massachusetts.

"It was different, the entire year," said Kelley. "Wearing masks when you wrestle takes time to get used to. We had to wash the mats after every match. But nobody ever complained.

"If these were normal times, that gym would have been packed for that meet (on Saturday night) with people going crazy," said Kelly. "We were very lucky. We got to compete all winter and in the end, compete for a championship. It was cool."

Congrats to Timberlane wrestling on another great season.

Congrats to Timberlane school officials for getting so many people to follow the guidelines without a complaint.

And congrats to New Hampshire for letting its residents figure it out.

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E-MAIL: bburt@eagletribune.com