Communication key as high school sports teams try to navigate the Providence bridge closure

PROVIDENCE — It took 90 minutes for the East Providence girls basketball team to travel the 6 miles from the high school to La Salle Academy for their game on Wednesday night.

Considering the circumstances, it was a fast trip.

The closure of the I-195 westbound lanes on the Washington Bridge caused a traffic nightmare and turned the city of East Providence into a parking lot. Drivers trying to get from the East Bay to South County created gridlock on the Newport Bridge. Rhode Island was officially in Traffigeddon.

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State officials scrambled to explain why the move was necessary and hurried to make plans to help alleviate the issues. East Providence was the city most affected by everything, but this wasn’t just a problem for one city or town. The traffic issues were causing problems for everyone in the state, including high school sports.

This week, the Rhode Island Interscholastic League kicked off league play and, while the timing of the bridge closure seems like it couldn’t have occurred at a worse time, this week might have been the best time for it. On Wednesday, the RIIL held a videoconference call with the state’s athletic directors as they tried to figure out solutions to a traffic problem that has the potential to wreak havoc with high school sports this winter.

“It hasn’t made it easy,” said East Providence's athletic director, Alex Butler. “The most important thing for people to recognize is how good a lot of our athletic directors are with communicating and helping out and just talking and how responsive people are.

“We’re hoping that with the amount of change the state is going through right now with construction that this is kind of a temporary thing where we can alleviate some of the traffic and deal with it.”

“[Tuesday] was the worst day because everybody just had to react to it in real time,” RIIL executive director Michael Lunney said. “From the reports we got [Wednesday], it was a lot better in regard to traffic flow, but there are a lot of adjustments to be made.

“[Wednesday] was a lot better and we anticipate with the bypass and lanes opening on the weekend, there will still be delays but it will be reduced.”

Getting games started on time is the biggest issue. Most varsity games begin at 6 or 7 p.m., and with junior varsity playing at 4 or 5 p.m., it puts schools going to and from the East Bay in the heart of rush hour. It created some wild travel scenarios that don’t seem possible in such a small state.

On Tuesday, Bay View's athletic director, Fallon Scorpio, told her swim team that they had to leave for their 7 p.m. meet at the Smithfield YMCA right after school. Scorpio said most of her swimmers left by 3 p.m. and some — who had to go back home after the 2:30 dismissal to get their suits and gear — still didn’t arrive until after warmups had started.

On Wednesday, the Middletown girls basketball team was set to play at North Providence. The plan was to take the Newport Bridge and travel north. After taking more than two hours to get from Middletown to his home in South Kingstown the day before, athletic director Scott Rollins told the bus company that if it took more than one hour to get to East Greenwich, turn around and they would postpone the game.

“There’s more time to reschedule if you have to,” said Rollins, whose team made the trip safely but went home with a 45-40 loss to the Cougars. “If this happened in midseason, we’d be trying to jam four games in in a week, and that’s not ideal.”

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Canceling JV games seems like the easy solution, but all parties involved in Wednesday’s call with the RIIL agreed that wasn’t something that they wanted to be a part of the equation.

“Those afternoon games are in the most jeopardy, so it’s just being creative in finding ways for those kids to participate,” Lunney said. “Those kids deserve opportunities as much as anyone else. The ADs are doing a wonderful job already looking at alternatives and I don’t know what they will come up with.

“Maybe it’s weekend opportunities or round-robin opportunities; we don’t want them to lose opportunities if at all possible.”

When it comes to on-campus events, the most difficult sport to find solutions for is track. All events run at the Providence Career and Technical Center, a location that’s hard enough for teams to get to on a typical meet day.

Track is one of the few sports in which its four divisions are broken down regionally. That creates issues for the Metropolitan Division, which has East Bay Schools, and the Southern Division, which includes Portsmouth and Rogers.

Every race matters for the athletes, who are trying to clock times that could qualify them for state meets. Meets run on top of one another and you can’t pause one to wait for a bus to arrive.

The sport’s organizers were on the call Wednesday and they found a simple and creative solution. If an athlete misses their event, adjustments will be made so the athlete can compete, even if it means running solo, and any team score changes will be made later.

Solutions aren’t so easy for events at off-campus sites. Hockey plays the majority of its games on weekends and at regionalized rinks, so it should, in theory, make travel easier than a weekday basketball game.

Swim is a little different. A limited number of pools means limited time to compete, and in some cases, practice, and in most cases meets need to be finished by a certain time so the pool can get its next event — youth practice, party, community swim — in the water on time.

That is why Rollins called South Kingstown athletic director Terry Lynch on Wednesday. Middletown and SK were set to swim at the University of Rhode Island’s Tootell Aquatic Center, but Lynch, unsure whether the Islanders would arrive on time and finish in the time set aside for the pool, agreed to postpone the meet.

Communication like that has been key. Many assume the RIIL is behind schedule cancellations and postponements, but during the regular season, those decisions are all on the schools. The RIIL mediates only when two schools can’t come to an agreement.

When the pandemic hit, it forced athletic directors to be in constant communication as everyone was on a day-to-day schedule. In some ways, it prepared ADs for what’s going on right now as they try to make decisions that will help everyone.

“[Tuesday] morning, Jamey Vetelino texted me and reached out just to see how things are going. Jamey is down in Westerly and has nothing to do with what we’re battling with right now, but he still wanted to check in,” Butler said. “All the athletic directors in the state know the job and we have plenty who are reaching out and have been supportive.”

“It’s a willingness for everyone to make sure everybody gets a chance to play,” Providence Country Day AD Marquis Harper said.

“It’s being able to make sure we’re communicating with one another.”

The city of East Providence has been ground zero. Bay View decided to start its holiday break early, so athletes will commute to games from home. Providence Country Day is having its “Holiday Sendoff” on Thursday, but made it optional for students to attend. It also canceled games Wednesday and Thursday, but the girls basketball team will play at Johnston on Saturday afternoon.

It's been a little different at East Providence High School. The city went to distance learning Wednesday and, along with other measures taken by the city, it seemed like traffic improved. On Thursday, schools went back to in-person learning and reports on Thursday morning made it seem like traffic was degrading back to what it was on Tuesday.

These aren’t decisions Butler makes. In addition to running the high school, Butler also runs athletics at the city’s two middle schools. He looks at his giant wall calendar to figure out what’s going on for the day and figures out what can and can’t be done. Butler then sends emails and makes calls to bus companies, ADs, game administrators, trainers, coaches, among others, when decisions have to be made.

On Wednesday, he focused on the girls basketball team getting to Providence safely. The team was scheduled to leave EP at 3 p.m. and Butler said a 4:30 arrival time would be a win. They left closer to 3:15, but the bus got to La Salle at 4:38. Junior varsity started on time at 5:15 and varsity started at 7 p.m. and the Townies were back on the bus following the 58-28 loss by 8:30 p.m.

A long day? Yes. But Butler is willing to deal with the scheduling problems, postponements and even the traffic because of the potential for what could have happened had I-195 not been closed.

“This is an inconvenience,” Butler said. “But what would have happened if one of our buses was on the ramp coming home from a game and the ramp went down?

“You have to keep things in perspective … and that’s what I’m trying to stress so everyone can have some patience.”

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: East Bay high school teams try to navigate Washington Bridge closure.