Playoff Panic

 

Rafferty Stadium (fairfieldstags.com)

Thomas Foster of Greenwich ran into the end zone and I blurted the words.

"On first down...Foster...IT'S OVER. TOUCHDOWN, GREENWICH!"

With that Chris Erway and I began to peruse the CIAC football website. Did the Cardinals actually make it into the playoffs?

Yes. Yes, they did.

So it began. Who would they play? For a brief moment, it appeared they were heading to New Canaan, a school that I've called many games from. That could be a safe landing for us.

Within minutes I found out that the landing spot would actually be at Fairfield Prep. The good (nah, great) news is that I know some people there. I thought that would work.

Still, it's a dance to make these postseason broadcasts happen.

First, of course, is the consideration that it's a four-day weekend. Nobody -- justifiably -- wants to talk about playoff coverage on Thanksgiving day or even that Friday.

So other than a quick text to Bob Small at WGCH I let the topic mostly go.

I did connect with my friend Eric Wuchiski who had me speak with Dave Houghton at Fairfield Prep. But Dave admitted that he was sort of waiting for guidance.

You see, in Connecticut, we just sort of call the school and say, "We'll be there if that's OK" during the regular season. The postseason is a little more of a crapshoot. The CIAC might not be OK with us being there and then there's NFHS, of course.

NFHS Network is the controlling factor in postseason broadcasts and they're not big fans of small-time audio streaming broadcasters (aka, Robcasting).

So as this morning hit, I knew I needed to strike. I shot an email to Tom Curran, the athletic director at Fairfield Prep.

Soon, I had a text from Dave Houghton, telling me we were a go. We arranged a quick phone call to go over some specifics, including space for Chris and me to call the game at Rafferty Stadium.

This, of course, is generally much easier when the broadcast is on friendly turf, such as Cardinal Stadium but we were at least safe given my relationship with Fairfield Prep.

It all worked out perfectly. Fairfield Prep will produce the broadcast (their first one featuring broadcasters) and Chris and I will send the audio to them. Audio will go to Robcasting and...WGCH. The game will be streamed live on NFHS.

Sadly, there can often be a clash of egos on days like this and even more so on championship days. As I recall, five broadcast outlets did the call of Shelton/Xavier in 2014, for instance. Four of us were in corners of the West Haven High School booth (with one broadcaster not using his inside voice) while the other one was out in the cold conditions.

There were three at the "Yale Whale" in 2018 for Greenwich and Fairfield Prep in the hockey state championship. Oh yeah, these schools have a history.

It's a lot of jumping through hoops to make it happen. 

I do love calling the games, of course.

It's just never that easy.

Thankfully, everyone at Prep is making this one be great.

We're live tomorrow before 6 p.m.

Oh and the last surprise is WGCH is returning for this game. We can at least say we've covered one game every year since 1964.

The winner plays either Hall or Shelton on Sunday.

That's a whole different thing.