Montville — It’s been three years since Montville Youth Football and Cheer had a season of its own.

Now, in its first season back following the coronavirus pandemic and a year-long partnership with Waterford’s youth football team due to low enrollment in both towns, Montville will have new helmets to match their renewed independence.

Monday night, the Town Council approved $16,000 of the $5.5 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds received by the town for the youth football program to restock its field house with roughly 200 helmets.

The vote passed 5-0, with Chairman Tom McNally and Councilor Robert Yuchniuk abstaining due to their involvement with the program.

Kathleen Calash, the vice president of auxiliary and fundraising for the program, called the funding a “huge relief.”

“It takes that weight off our shoulders,” Calash said Tuesday. “Especially as a league and a board, we want to make sure our athletes are safe.”

Between a full year away from the game in 2020 and partnering with Waterford youth football last season to form “Waterville,” Montville youth football had not collected a registration fee since 2019, nor had the concessions been operating, Calash explained.

Worse, the helmets had not been recertified in three years. This deemed all but five of the helmets the program possessed unusable as the helmet shells and the interior padding had fallen out of safety compliance, Calash said.

“You can get by without (new) pants, and maybe finding pads, but you can’t get by playing a football game without a helmet,” Calash said to the council Monday night.

After fundraising events, like a Touch-a-Truck event and selling advertisements for a booster book, did not provide the income the program needed, Calash said she approach Councilor Billy Caron in mid-July.

Calash detailed how supply chain issues delayed the initial order’s arrival and increased the total cost. Now up to $20,000, the $7,000 raised from the two events would not suffice. That’s when Calash and Caron took the situation to Al Mandler, a town councilor and chair of the Ad-Hoc COVID-19 Impact Study Committee.

Normally, this would have to go through the committee before reaching the council, but the council meets the day before the committee does, so Mandler brought it before the council Monday.

“If we wait till the (Ad-Hoc committee) ARPA meeting today (Aug. 9), it would be another month,” Mandler said Tuesday. “The kids would effectively not be able to practice or play.”

“They needed to get this done because prices were going up extremely fast,” Caron said. “The need for that outweighed the time we had to wait (for the next meeting in September). It was extremely important to me and the other councilors.”

Calash said the helmets are arriving this week. With practices starting up this month and the program’s jamboree with four other towns slated for Aug. 21, Calash was “speechless” with the support the program has received.

“We need these sports to keep our kids involved and out of trouble and the community is coming together to make that happen,” Calash said.

k.arnold@theday.com