Football Mess Reveals A Sorry State Of Affairs

This article was printed in The Day

ByChuck Potter, Day Staff WriterPublished on 12/8/2007

BARBARA GILBERT IS THE town manager of Rocky Hill, Conn., the 35th best place to live in America, according to CNN Money Magazine, as reported by, well, Rocky Hill.
Reid Burdick is, uhh, well, he could be the Grand Poobah of the Fraternal Order of New London Guys. “The Burdick,” as he bills himself, tells it like it is, to anyone who will listen.
It's hard to tell which of them is more ticked off about tinkle-gate.
Tinkle-gate is the riff between New London and Rocky Hill officials. On Dec. 4, the New London football team played, and defeated, Cromwell's team. They played at Rocky Hill High School.
Rocky Hill Mayor Tony LaRosa told The Hartford Courant last Sunday that custodians reported that New London players had urinated and defecated on the floor of the Whalers' team room and restroom. LaRosa said there were no witnesses. The Whalers were blamed because it happened in their area.
In a public and televised Town Council meeting last Monday, LaRosa retracted the accusation of defecation.
Gilbert said the allegation went public when the Courant learned of a memo she sent out, which included that information. Consequently, she said, she heard from New London people all week, in various tones of voice, including one who “threatened to pummel the mayor” if he didn't apologize for unfairly accusing the Whalers.
It wasn't Burdick. He's a little more dignified than that. He requested a protest permit. The Rocky Hill Town Council meets on Dec. 17 and the Burdick plans to be there, to protest outside Town Hall and take the two minutes allowed to each citizen who desires to address the mayor and council.
“If enough people want to go, I'll pay for the bus,” he said. “If he exonerates New London, then there's no need to go. If he doesn't, I'm going. Anyone who did something like that should be arrested. But without the facts to prove it was our guys, those kids deserve an apology.”
Burdick called LaRosa a really nice man who commented based on hearsay information, without doing any research.
“This whole mess could have been avoided,” he said.
Gilbert shares that sentiment, but for a very different reason. She blamed the school's athletic director, Brian Fell. She said he acted outside of proper procedure, failing to register the game with the parks department, which manages the town's fields and facilities. She said the principal didn't even know about the game until the day after it was played. She said Fell pulled a similar stunt last year.
“He (Fell) acted as if it were just another home game,” Gilbert said Wednesday, referring to last week's debacle, essentially quoting the memo she disseminated earlier.
“We run large events all the time and we never have this sort of chaos,” she told me. “All he had to do was follow the procedure and we could have added bleachers, more porta-potties, fire police on hand ... things would have gone smoothly.”
She said Fell put the entire town at risk.
“We had to pull every one of our officers from their regular patrols. We even put our detectives in uniform. There was no one left to patrol the town.”
In her memo she wrote: “It is very apparent that neither of these schools had any regard for our facilities. ... The Rocky Hill High School Athletic Director's actions leave no one else to blame for this debacle. It has to be either negligence or ignorance.”
Fell said he would not comment beyond expressing faith that the real facts would come out in the investigation.
Seems despite the mayor's retraction, there's still a mess in the athletic department.
The apology line might begin with LaRosa, but needs to include Fell, and Gilbert too. Because it is not clear that New London had no regard for their facilities.
One more thing, the New London resident who made the threat needs to be in the apology line, too. His comment was an inappropriate, classless and unnecessary. Apparently, both communities have a little mess to clean up.
This is the opinion of Chuck Potter.