Sacred Heart Academy recently defeated Lyman Hall 92-4.
On January 3, Wallingford high school Lyman Hall was defeated, 92-4, in a varsity basketball game against Sacred Heart Academy (SHA), a Catholic girls’ high school in Hamden. While the 88 point difference drew national attention and criticism — including an article from The New York Times — the story has prompted reflection on sportsmanship and proper conduct on the high school level.
One of the most significant outcomes of the game was the one-game suspension of Mr. Jason Kirck, the SHA coach. The school’s President, Sister Sheila O’Neill, told GameTimeCT, “Last night’s girls’ basketball game versus Lyman Hall High School does not align with our values or philosophies.” Both Sacred Heart and Lyman Hall belong to the Southern Connecticut Conference (SCC), an athletic consortium with stated values of “academics, leadership, sportsmanship.” After the incident, SCC commissioner Mr. Al Carbone posed this question to the New York Times: “Do we need to do a better job of teaching what sportsmanship is?”
This question was debated not only by organized conferences and administrations, but among local students and athletes as well. To some, like Wallingford resident and hockey player Dan Altschuler ’22, Sacred Heart’s plays made the game unsportsmanlike. “What upset the people the most was how aggressive the other team seemed to play even after they were leading 56-0 at halftime. Putting the starters in for the beginning of the third quarter is what irked a lot of people,” Altschuler explained.
Similarly, Athletic Director Mr. Roney Eford, specified how he would have handled the situation as a coach. “I personally could not win a game by 88 points as I don’t feel it is in line with good sportsmanship for high school sports,” he said.
The morale of the players in any competition should be preserved, Altschuler argued: “It never feels good to lose by a lot, and being a hockey player, I have lost my fair share of games by 10 plus goals, but I don’t think that comes even close to losing by 88 points,” he said. “That would not sit right with me at all.”
The score disparity is accompanied by a discrepancy in the resources that are accessible to a public school like Lyman Hall in comparison to a private school like SHA. Altschuler noticed this inequitable matchup and noted, “It’s unfortunate that a team that has the ability to ‘recruit’ athletes can play against a town school and feel fulfilled about winning.”
To Jackson Mailhot, a senior at Lyman Hall, the game’s outcome was in favor of SHA, but there was an expectation that it would be a balanced event. “Both teams understood the skill gap going into the game, but the SHA coach continued to pound it into them for a decent part of the first half,” he said. “Sportsmanship would have looked like letting some of the younger girls get their shot at the big stage.”
To Wallingfordians, the fact that a local basketball game has shone attention on their community is surprising. Mailhot commented, “I think it was pretty cool to see our school’s name up on sites like [The New York Times] and [Barstool Sports]. Would have loved for it to be more positive, but still cool nonetheless.”
Altschuler recalled that the score was trending on his Twitter feed, and the game received much visibility on social media. For Mailhot, most of the attention surrounding this ordeal was related to “the hateful and devious comments on our team through social media,” he said.
Altschuler seconded Mailhot’s opinion, saying, “Many people who had no stake in the event seemed to have a comment on it and felt the need to share it on social media. Some of the stuff a lot of people were saying about the players and the Lyman Hall coach was pretty repulsive.”
While the outcome of the game has produced hypervisibility, many in the Connecticut athletics community see it as a learning experience, through which interscholastic teams and players will be more conscious about sportsmanship and collaboration, rather than strict competition. Altschuler said, “While it certainly reflects poorly on sportsmanship at the high school level, my hope is that other schools and teams will learn from this situation.”
