Isn’t it time the Catholic high schools formed their own league?
Catholic schools recruit athletes from all over, often offering scholarships to athletes far from their location. They take star athletes from local public schools and then compete against those same public schools, which are limited as to where their players must live to determine what school they can attend.
Hamden for years was the breeding ground for star hockey players until Fairfield Prep and Notre Dame started recruiting them.
To ask the players in public schools, depleted of their best athletes, to compete against schools able to recruit from anywhere is just plain wrong and unfair to the public school kids.
The Catholic schools profit from the added publicity championship teams warrant, using this as an inducement to entice other kids to attend.
The father of a Hamden High School star hockey player told me years ago that despite he wanting his son to play for Hamden High, he had to give in to his playing for Fairfield Prep since the likelihood of his son getting a college scholarship was greater there, something that would determine whether he could attend college or not.
The recent publicity of a star player on the Fairfield Prep Hockey Team as living in New Haven is an example of what I’ve just related. Why is it that the private schools compete against themselves, but Catholic schools have the privilege of being allowed to compete against public schools and have this privilege extended to even being declared champions in the same league the depleted, athletically public schools are forced to compete in?
Alton Eliason
Northford