With many new changes in our athletic department, not every improvement will break the bank, and not every plan involves branching out and making our programs bigger.

In fact, CRHS Athletic Director Mr. Nick Barbieri has been providing students opportunities to play different sports. Not by adding new programs but by finding schools that would like to co-op. A co-op is when schools come together to form one team. An example of this is hockey, where a few students from Coginchaug play on the Lyman Hall team.

There are also many other sports that do this to such as rugby, swimming and gymnastics. If you’re wondering how much this costs to have Coginchaug offer all these sports, get ready because it costs RSD13 nothing. All the costs are covered by the students that are playing.

Mr. Barbieri said, “The first thing I ask students that wants to play a sport that isn’t offered here is, how far are you willing to travel?”

Although Mr. Barbieri is reaching out to find schools willing to co-op with us on sports we usually wouldn’t have, it’s the opposite here with our programs we already have. “We aren’t focused on branching out, just trying to build the sports we have here now from within and make them stronger by only using the people and resources Coginchaug has,” said Mr. Barbieri. As enrollment here declines, sometime down the road, Coginchaug will probably have to increase co-ops with other schools, for example when Coginchaug’s football team was a co-op with Vinal Tech.

Although it is tough to say exactly when down the road Coginchaug will have to increase co-ops with other schools, Mr. Barbieri said sometime in the next 5 to 10 years, when enrollment will be at its lowest.