WESTFIELD – A handful of local sports teams are about to get an extended holiday break.
Several high school sports games scheduled for Thursday, including Westfield-Holyoke girls’ basketball and Westfield-South Hadley hockey at Amelia Park Ice Arena, have been postponed due to the developing snowstorm.
Westfield High School enacts a “no-school, no-play” policy when classes are canceled due to weather-related conditions.
The Southwick-Tolland Regional High School-Turners Falls girls’ hoops game has also been postponed. According to published reports, many area schools have already, in fact, postponed school for the rest of the week.
With the high school slate now in flux for the remainder of the week, some teams have their eyes to the future.
The Westfield High School wrestling team, fresh off a 32nd place finish among a 74-team field at the Lowell Holiday tournament, will next host the Bombers duals, a 19-team event on Jan. 11, beginning at 9 a.m.
“The kids are working really, really hard,” Westfield wrestling coach Bob Coe said. “We’re trying to make some noise in Massachusetts.”
Westfield is in the midst of producing 4-5 New England qualifiers, a feat which has not been accomplished in 25-30 years.
Last weekend, at the Lowell Holiday event, Westfield wrestler Dominic Liquori captured a fourth-place finish. Liquori lost to 170-pounder, Justice Bolden (Central) in the quarterfinals, but rallied to defeat the Golden Eagle in the consolation semis.
Liquori put Bolden to his back late in the third period to pull out a narrow victory.
Westfield’s Austin Shrewsbury earned a fifth-place finish, and Ryan Bucko was 16th.
“Everybody (from Westfield) wrestled really, really well,” coach Coe said. “I feel (we) were really, really strong, and the level of competition was the best of the best.”
The two-day event lasted nearly 32 hours.
“It was a really, really long weekend,” said coach Coe, who has already had one snowstorm wreak havoc with an away match.
It appears that it is also going to be a very long weekend for a host of other area sports teams, but in a very different way.
