Cheshire High School senior Andre Nguyen strolled onto the school’s campus shirtless. Pink body paint was smeared across his torso, arms and face. His mullet was caked with pink spray paint, although you could faintly make out the shade of faded blonde underneath it. Though far from the societal definition of “tall,” his demeanor and confidence made him look much bigger.
Nguyen has developed a reputation as the official Ramland Superfan for the Cheshire Rams football team. He carries proof with him at all times; his business card with his name and title fits nicely in his wallet, and he never hesitates to pull it out. He beams with pride talking about his sacred position.
“The fact that I come out there and cheer on my boys, people I’ve been hanging out with for years now, it means a lot to me,” Nguyen said.
As routine as Nguyen made it seem to waltz onto a set of bleachers screaming over a bullhorn with over 100 other students, there was a 646-day streak where it was impossible.
The Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC), in conjunction with the Department of Public Health (DPH), decided to cancel the 2020 high school football season due to COVID-19 concerns on Sept. 3, 2020. Given the impact high school football has on local culture, they were prepared for some backlash. It didn’t take long for the uproar to culminate, and at the state capitol no less.
Over 1,000 people gathered on the steps of the Capitol building in Hartford, Connecticut, on Sept. 7. They were all armed with protest signs that read “Let Us Play” with football helmets and pads painted on them in broad strokes.
Players around the state organized the protest in an attempt to convince the CIAC to overturn that decision, but it was to no avail. The CIAC and DPH did not budge, and the 2020 11-on-11 football season was up in smoke.
“It really put a damper on everyone, because football is a big thing in Cheshire,” senior linebacker and guard Luca Raccio said. “With it being cancelled, it was just hard to be around people.”
The Cheshire Rams played their final game of the 2019 season on Dec. 4. It was a 17-14 loss against Simsbury in the quarterfinal round of the Class LL state tournament.
Fast forward 646 days.
Music was blasting out of the Cheshire High School stadium speakers. Lil Baby and Pop Smoke were in heavy rotation, so the team probably put together the playlist. The student section was wearing all black, with eyeblack and face paint to match. Parents were wearing Rams gear and were socializing, as if perhaps this were the first time in nearly two years they had all convened in the bleachers for Friday night lights.
In fact, it was. The Cheshire Rams hosted the Notre Dame-West Haven Green Knights for their season opener on Sept. 10, seemingly an eternity after their most recent gridiron showdown.
Senior running back Christian Russo put on a fireworks show for the Cheshire crowd. He ran for 177 yards and had two touchdowns, including the game-winner in overtime. High school football overtime rules say that the team that wins the coin toss gets four downs from the 10-yard line to score a touchdown. If they do, it’s game over.
Russo was bold enough to briefly take over play calling duties. Luckily for the Rams, his confidence paid off.
“I got on the mic and talked to the offensive coordinator,” Russo said. “And I said we’re gonna run the ball four times … We both agreed on that. And we just so happened to score on the first.”
After scoring the walk-off touchdown on the very first play of overtime, an easy 10-yard run, he walked around the field in tears. He hugged coaches and teammates, yelling about what they did for this night to happen.
“It was two years of just kempt-up emotion and all forms of aggression,” Russo said. “Like, just being upset about not having a season, and all the hard work, it finally was the night and it ended the way we wanted it to end. It started off with a lot of adrenaline flowing and then once that all kind of died down, everything else took over.”
Nguyen, who found his way onto the field mere minutes after the final whistle, ran around the field telling local reporters that Russo was the best running back in the state. Cheshire head coach Don Drust embraced his players, particularly Russo, with enough passion for a whole season’s worth of football.
The emotion and euphoria of high school football was boiling over after being bottled up for almost two years. And these coaches, athletes and school officials have learned all too well what it’s like to have no outlet for those feelings.
“It was nice being home on Friday night, but it wasn’t right. Something was missing.”
Steve Trifone, Cheshire athletic director
According to the CIAC website, football is classified as a sport at high risk for COVID-19 because of extended periods of close contact between players with little protective barriers between them and a high likelihood that “respiratory particles” are transmitted.
On Aug. 28, 2020, CIAC Executive Director Glenn Lungarini held a press conference in which he explained the CIAC’s intent to play full contact football, and explained the many mitigation methods the organization proposed to the DPH. Some methods were specific to football, while others were general methods to prevent the spreading of COVID-19 throughout student-athletes of all sports.
The CIAC’s 24-page proposal released on the same day offered mitigation strategies including a 30-yard expansion of the team box, electronic whistles, and a gradual increase in close contact throughout the preseason to limit COVID-19 risk while allowing football activities to continue.
But on Sept. 4, the CIAC posted another press release saying “high risk full contact football is no longer a viable option.”
“We had plans in place to safely play every sport last year,” Lungarini said. “Ultimately, we are in a pandemic, this is a public health crisis, it’s not a sports crisis … Our superintendents were very clear with us that they were going to follow the recommendations of DPH. We made every potential COVID plan that we could and represented that to the DPH, but ultimately we were gonna follow the recommendation of the department.”
The fallout of the CIAC’s decision was immediately visible. Drust, the ninth-year head coach for the Rams, was tasked with keeping a group of football players engaged while their minds were more than occupied.
“I think the only way to approach it and the only way to handle it was to keep kids’ minds from so many challenges going on, because there were so many things that kids were going through,” Drust said. “The only way to get through it was to find something to grasp onto and be positive about.”
The team’s positive was being able to host pasta dinners, go on team trips, and of course, practice every day. Players and coaches were able to maintain a shred of normalcy by staying motivated on the practice field, even though Russo said they were more focused on fun competitions instead of installing plays. What’s the point of game-planning for a specific opponent when no one in the world knew when they’d be allowed to play again?
But all those team moments excluded an important demographic of the high school football scene: the spectators. The absence of Friday night football was detrimental not only to the students and faculty of Cheshire High School, but the entire community.
“It was missed very much,” Nguyen said. “This is probably our most watched sport, with the most fans. Without it, it took a little bit out of the Cheshire community. Not having it last year hurt people, but for the junior (football players) last year, it gave them a motor and a chip on their shoulder coming into this year.”
Nguyen embodies what it means for football to be back. Much like the guys in helmets and pads on the field, he never takes a play off. Offense or defense, he’s constantly on his feet screaming for his team.
“He brings a crazy amount of energy,” Russo said. “I mean, everybody knows who he is now. He’s definitely made a statement… Andre’s leading that student section, and he’s doing a really good job with it.”
Nguyen has a lot of close friends on the team, Russo being one of them. Nguyen never played football on the high school team, although he considered it this year. He ultimately chose being a superfan, perhaps for the better.
He and his friends have watched each other grow with the sideline as a faux barrier between them. While his classmates were growing as football players, Nguyen’s blossoming confidence rounded him into a gameday phenomenon that no one could ignore.
“How do you miss him?” senior defensive lineman Kevin D’Errico said. “Chunky dude with bleached hair, it’s pink now. He’s wild, but it juices you up and fires you up seeing him. He has our backs and it’s awesome to see.”
He was never exactly in the background; even as a freshman, he was at the front of the student section, despite the unwritten rule that underclassmen belong at the back of the student section while seniors get the front-row seats.
Cheshire Athletic Director Steve Trifone agreed with Nguyen that the school was different without having football every week during the fall season.
“The school is usually buzzing on Fridays,” Trifone said. “The kids usually come in dressed up and all that jazz, and that was missing. The kids all felt it, so that was a big gap… I really missed football last year. It was nice being home on Friday night, but it wasn’t right. Something was missing.”
On Oct. 15, Cheshire hosted Xavier for a football game. It was always going to be a competitive game — Cheshire ended up losing 21-20 — But based on the student section, you’d think Cheshire romped Xavier.
Russo, who would easily have passed the 1,000-yard threshold if not for an ankle injury that held him out a few games, scored the first touchdown of the game. He had missed the previous two games due to injury and was clearly itching to get back onto the field. After scoring, he calmly walked over to the Cheshire sideline, and passed the student section on his way.
The students in pink were as loud as they were all night after taking the lead. Seeing the rumbling coming from the bleachers, Russo looked at them and let out a resounding “Let’s go!”
That really set them off.
“To see a small town like Cheshire all come together on Friday night to support the team, and then it goes down to the kids with the student section, it’s awesome,” Russo said. “… Cheshire just has a huge tradition of football. It’s a small town, but we put up good numbers on those nights like we’re a whole city.”
High school teams usually have up to five captains. But in most locker rooms, there’s one guy who commands everyone’s attention. Russo has been that guy for Cheshire.
“He’s a role model for Cheshire, and I think he represents himself and the team really well,” D’Errico said. “When he talks, we listen. His leadership role is important for this team to keep the locker room together.”
Sometimes it takes a global pandemic to push a player into that role. D’Errico’s account of the locker room says that Russo isn’t the type of guy to demand a huddle in the locker room at every halftime or make a speech every time the defense gets scored on.
Russo’s leadership skills are the result of him being the de facto leader since he was a freshman. As a naturally skilled athlete, he was a varsity player right away, and the experience he gathered during his first two years on the team helped him lead by example as an upperclassman.
“I just kind of made a statement then that I’m going to be in this varsity program for four years, and so I just established myself as a leader,” Russo said. “Last year it picked up because at that point I was a junior. I had two years of Varsity experience under my belt and pretty much all those guys had one or zero … Really, it almost forced me to be a leader.”
The role of locker room leader calls for someone who can make people around them notice that all their chips are in. Of course, players like D’Errico and Raccio see it.
But when the athletic director of the school, the man spread between every sport played at Cheshire High School, can see that Russo has taken on that role, his status becomes even more cemented.
“We’ve talked to the kids: ‘Think about last year’s senior class who didn’t get to play, especially football. And you have the opportunity now to play. So what are you gonna do with it? Are you gonna embrace every moment of it or just let it pass by?’” Trifone said. “And Christian Russo is one of those kids that makes sure kids are embracing it. It snowballs, so we just pass the torch to the next group and keep the positivity going.”
Every week, whether Russo is in the lineup or on the sideline nursing an injury, the student section will be there, and according to Trifone, it’s bigger and louder this year than ever before.
They’ll sing at the top of their lungs to “Party in the USA” by Miley Cyrus while Trifone takes pictures of them on his phone. They’ll chant players’ names, like they did for Russo when he scored against Xavier. They’ll put on so much body paint that it looks like no amount of rubbing alcohol can make a dent.
And maybe they’ll throw a couple jeers here and there at the opposing team. But that’s the culture of competition when it comes to high school football. To think that all of that was missing in the 2020 school year was a constant bad dream for football players everywhere.
High school football offered an identity to those who needed one. Russo entered freshman year as a football player and came out a man, a leader, a role model. D’Errico and Raccio grew alongside him as important parts of the program.
And Nguyen gained the confidence to paint his body pink in front of hundreds of people.
The football-free nightmares were bound to end. For some teams, like Notre Dame-West Haven, it was a hard awakening to play a football game for the first time in two years and taste the agony of defeat, in overtime no less.
But for others, like Cheshire, the euphoria of victory sprang from the back of their minds and restored their urgency. A lot of players had no other release for the physicality and emotion that football provides them, and nearly two years later they blew out every ounce of their steam, making their lives normal once again.
“I think it made everybody play so much harder because it made everybody appreciate the game and all that because you never know what can happen and can be taken away just like that,” Russo said. “We played way harder than we ever have.”