WOODBURY — Any Nonnewaug hallway you walk down or any corner you turn, there’s a decent chance you’ll see something that says, “Pride In the Tribe” all around Nonnewaug. Students and administrators walk by it every corner they turn.
Many students and staff can relate to the phrase, “Pride in the Tribe,” but what does it mean?
“I think it’s a little bit of everything,” says Nonnewaug principal Mykal Kuslis. “I think a lot of people relate it to our sports teams and trying to get down to our sports games, but it’s just a little bit of everything. It’s pride in your school.”
Pride in the Tribe has been around at Nonnewaug for years. The meaning slowly arose when assistant principal Declan Curtin thought of a slogan idea.
“A few years ago, I was thinking of slogans for our fan sections and fan base, and the slogan came from just talking amongst one another,” says Curtin. “Next thing we know, it stuck around, and then later came the spoon, then our crowds just got bigger and larger. To this day we’ve grown that Pride in the Tribe mentality a lot.”
With Pride in the Tribe being at Nonnewaug for years, this means that it has seen its fair shares of ups and downs with the support of the students and faculty. Some after-school sporting events would have a terrific turnout, while others had only a couple of people.
“I think it’s about advertisement and effort being put in,” says senior swimmer and lacrosse player Kristi Sundstrom. “They have themes for basketball and football, but not for any other sport. I feel like we have good school spirit, but just for certain sports.”
When the pandemic hit, it was a total game-changer. Covid paused Nonnewaug as a whole, and therefore paused the “Pride in the Tribe.”
“I think there was a lot of school spirit before Covid, but it’s difficult to describe the differences except to say we lived through Covid,” says Nonnewaug culinary instructor John Dominello. “We lived through a period that was really two years where we went from not understanding what Covid was, or what it could do to us, to having people around one another getting ill, having to stay home and the struggles of staying home, and then also struggling to not be a part of your team.”
With Nonnewaug being on pause, this means sports were, too. Spring sports in 2020 were hit the most because they had the whole season taken away from them. This means there was no softball, baseball, track, or lacrosse.
Fall sports in 2020 saw a difference. They were allowed to still have games, but their season was shortened. They didn’t have a Berkshire League tournament, nor did they have states, both very important games for high school athletes.
“The beginning of that season was very, very difficult,” says NHS boys soccer coach Toby Denman. “We had a league competition with a record number of games and limited travel games. We had practice in cohorts; you could only have a certain number of people.”
It did not only end there, though. Even with the outdoor practices, people still had to take in the safety precautions, like still having to disinfect the equipment, and giving players their own practice pennies so they can still have in practice scrimmages.
For boys soccer especially, it was a difficult time. With a talented team, but no state tournaments, the boys had little to play for.
“It was a very, very challenging season, but we were also very good,” says Denman. “We would have been in Class S that year for the first time in 1993, and I think if we were not the favorite, we would have been on the shortlist for being the favorites in the class that year.”
It’s a heartbreaking moment for a team that was projected to be so good, to have their season cut short due to the virus.
The Covid rules did not only affect Nonnewaug but the Berkshire League as a whole. A lot of games were on pause, rivalries were postponed, and with that, so was the school spirit.
But Denman found a way around that. He created Berkshire League Backyard Sports.
“I was honestly sitting in my backyard with a solo stove, and I was putting the solo on the stove because no one was hanging out with anyone. The first person I was discussing this idea to was Mr. [Nick] Sheikh, and I was like ‘I’m pretty bored,’” says Denman. “I’m like, ‘I miss sports.’ We might need to come up with this trick shot competition, and how would this happen or what would this look like. I called Mr. [Adam] Brutting, and after some conversations, we were like, ‘We are going to put something together.'”
This Instagram page found its fame across the Berkshire League, and eventually even the news.
“I bought a basketball hoop into my backyard and set it up probably 25 or 30 feet tall and I set up my garbage can on the other side of the barn,” Denman adds. “I sent the video to Dr. [Taryn] Fernandez to post on the Nonnewaug Instagram with the hashtag Berkshire League Backyard Sports and hoped it would take off. Later on, I created my own Instagram account named the Berkshire League Backyard Sports. The goal was around 64 videos and to run a bracket setup, and later on we were getting hundreds and thousands of views. And before you know it, NBC picked up on the story, too.”
With the fame of the Berkshire League Backyard Sports page, it sparked something in the community. Once school was back in motion, and sports were starting to feel normal again, it was like Nonnewaug entered a new era of “Pride in the Tribe”
