Everyone knows Bridgeport Central is a team that is going to come at you on defense, and they do strike fear into their opponents. They did not back down to the Division I star powered King Offense at the Wilton Jamboree.

Teams scrimmaged each other for 20 plays: 10 on offense and 10 on defense. Here’s King’s offensive series against Central’s defense.

For eight plays, Central kept King out of the end zone. Then Kevin Pierre-Louis scored on a short run on play nine. The 10th play though was a classic King play: Pierre-Louis and Eric Joyner in the backfield with Silas Redd as the quarterback in the Wildcat set.

Redd kept the ball and got to the end zone untouched.

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Every team that faced King School on Saturday at the Wilton Jamboree got a little bit better as a result.

On defense, try stopping Silas Redd, Kevin Pierre-Louis and Eric Joyner. On offense, try getting by Redd, Pierre-Louis and Joyner.

First up on Saturday was home team Wilton. As Warriors head coach Bruce Cunningham said during the scrimmage, “The first time I saw Redd turn the corner, I knew no one in Wilton was going to stop him. And I mean no one at this scrimmage.”

Mike Serricchio has improved as a vertical passer, as shown in this touchdown pass to Matt Smyth.

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We all know how good Penn State-bound Silas Redd and future Boston College linebacker Kevin Pierre-Louis are. But if you watched the King duo first-hand against eight other teams today at the Wilton Jamboree, your jaw would have dropped.

It was a show. A freak show. Silas Redd and Kevin Pierre-Louis are probably the two best players we’ll see in Fairfield County this season. Make that two of the best four: King classmate Eric Joyner was not unleashed today, and Stamford linebacker Khairi Fortt and his Stamford teammates were not at the scrimmage.

As Wilton head coach put it: “When I saw Redd hit the corner, no one in this entire town was going to stop him.”

Redd’s speed and acceleration made him a joy to watch. There was a spin-move against Norwalk that left the Bears defense in its tracks. And Pierre-Louis ran for a touchdown in which he stiff-armed a Bears player, then hurdled another on his way to pay dirt.

Now, there were some teams and individual players who were able to contain Redd annd Pierre-Louis, but that was few and far between.

Central’s defense was fired up for King when it had its 10 play series. Kind finally scored on a short run by Pierre-Louis, on the ninth play of the drive.

Then on the 10th, with Redd quarterbacking from the wildcat formation, he went 35-yards untouched for a score.

Best individual play against Redd: King quarterback Mike Serricchio hit Redd on a swing pass, but Redd was immediately hit and dropped for a loss by Ludlowe strong safety Steve Gasper.

King is the best team any of the FCIAC schools will face this season, in my honest opinion. And in return, the schools that King faced today are probably the best King will see, unless King returns to a New England prep school championship game again.

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Remember two years ago, when everyone was talking about the great recruiting class led by Jonathan Meyers? With all due respect to Meyers, who turned down Florida for Princeton, the Class of 2010 is even greater.

The King School trio are just about all set: Silas Redd chose Penn State, Kevin Pierre-Louis will play for Boston College, and Eric Joyner is high on Virginia.

So now we’re waiting on Stamford’s Khairi Fortt, and The Advocate’s Dave Ruden profiles his story today. He’s getting recruited, by, well, just about everyone. He’s putting up super-human scores and stats at camps.

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By Tim Parry

King did not come home from West Hartford with a New England Prep School Athletic Conference championship. It didn’t take home the big trophy after the Sampson-Lourden Bowl. It lost 29-14 to a much bigger, much deeper Milton Academy team.

But Fairfield County should be proud of the King football program. It’s not every season that one of its Fairchester Athletic Association teams makes it to one of the five NEPSAC title games, and its not every season that a team like King could dominate so many of its opponents.

And by all means, King left everything on the Kingswood-Oxford School field yesterday. Including tears. Sure, some would say there’s no crying in football, but I’d rather see a team wear its heart on its sleeve like it did yesterday than take an oh-well approach when failing to win a title.

Here’s the article I did for the Stamford Advocate, and it includes some great photos by Kathleen O’Rourke (who didn’t catch me “chimping,” but did almost impale me with her monopod a couple of times, but she apologized and that’s cool!). And here’s the sidebar by Joe Ryan, which focuses on two senior captains, Vincent Love and Matt Santoro.

Milton head coach Kevin MacDonald and fullback Josh Scott, who was a one-person wrecking ball, had nothing but respect for King’s Big Three – Silas Redd, Kevin Pierre-Louis and Eric Joyner. They knew that the key to the game was to control the ball, and then find a way to contain those three Division I prospects.

And the overall numbers may have not shown it, but sophomore quarterback Mikey Serricchio did a very good job running the offense. And statistically, he did have a better day than counterpart Chris Amrheim, who completed just one of 11 passes.

Though I saw King in the preseason, I wasn’t convince a team like King could compete in the FCIAC. But after watching yesterday, I honestly didn’t see as many holes as I felt it had. And that was with a few key players in street clothes because of injuries yesterday.

What’s your opinion of King? Sound off on this thread on the FCIAC Football Blog’s boards.

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By Tim Parry

King fans, I apologize for doing what I thought was the right thing yesterday, though it meant missing the King-RCD game yesterday. But I think it was a good trade and a win-win situation for all.

I was scheduled to freelance the Staples-New Canaan game for The Advocate. The Post (which is now a sister publication) was going to be there, so I had an option: still do the game of cover King-RCD. And with all the talk on this board about King this week, I chose that game.

But Saturday, Joe Ryan,who has covered King a few times, was scheduled to do Wright Tech/Stamford Academy, and that game was postponed without any notice. And I was emotionally tied to Staples-New Canaan because of the death of a former teammate.

So I asked Joe if he wanted to take King from me – and have a paycheck – and I’d go without this week and go where I spiritually needed to be, and then volunteered my time to The Advocate with a notebook item for Monday’s issue.

In return, Joe will do a post some time this season on King. I just have to work the timing out with him.

Here’s Joe’s article for The Advocate: http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/localsports/ci_10819470

And now here’s my thoughts on King:

• Could King compete in the FCIAC? It depends. When you have a bunch of Division I talent (Silas Redd, Eric Joyner, Kevin Pierre-Louis) you should, in theory, be able to have a very talented team. But with the size of the school, there are a lot of holes on both sides of the ball, and maybe their individual performances don’t stand out as much.
• Are Redd, Joyner, and Pierre-Louis being recruited because of what they do in the Fairchester Athletic Association? While their legends are growing there, that’s not where college scouts determine the potential of players. That has to do with how they performs in camps. Now the academics at King are helping – you need some pretty darn good grades and SAT scores to get into Boston College and Virginia.
• Does it mean the FCIAC has less talent because its players aren’t going D-I? Not all. Ryan Sedlacek (who I saw yesterday at Staples) went D-I and has a shot to start at a very fine academic institution, Illinois, next season. Greenwich stars Jonathan Meyers and Chris Bisanzo turned down D-I offers to go with the academics and I-AA ball (Meyers with Princeton, Bisanzo with Georgetown). And take a look at New Canaan product Zach Renner, who went unrecruited and is a walk-on special teams monster at Georgia. Both the FCIAC and the FAA produce their fair share of Ivy League and NESCAC talent, too (and players who could probably buy and sell me like a commodity).
• Can you evaluate who the better team is by a scrimmage? Not really. Maybe in the final preseason scrimmage before the regular season, when game-planning goes into efect. There you’re talking more about getting ready for the regular season vs. evaluating talent. More often than not we read into scrimmage results as a harbinger for the regular season, only to get burned.

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By Tim Parry

What’s the best game that no one is talking about this week? Brunswick at King.

Neither team ever sees the mainstream spotlight, since they are in the Fairchester Athletic Association, but both have Division I caliber stars in their programs. Right now, Brunswich stands at 2-1, while King is 2-0 and hoping to achieve its best season ever.

This week is a different story when it comes to the press. The Advocate has featured King a few times this week in its sports section. Today it’s this column, Wednesday it was a feature on the team, Tuesday it was a feature on Boston College-bound junior Kevin Pierre-Louis. Today stringer Joe Ryan will be covering a King game for a third time this season, I’ve been told.

The Greenwich Time includes Brunswick football in its coverage… I unfortunately can’t find a link to today’s preview. The Greenwich Post gives you the details about last week’s game here.

Both schools are hard to ignore. Brunswick has Virginia-bound Kevin Royal moving from wide receiver to running back last week to take advantage of his speed. And the King junior class of Pierre-Louis, Silas Redd and Eric Joyner is among the best in the state.

The game is at King at 3 p.m. today, for those of you who are looking for something to do. Or you can listen live on WGCH-AM 1490 (or on the Web).

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By Tim Parry

Looking for the best high school football team in Stamford? You may have to look outside the FCIAC to find it.

King – formerly the clunky-sounding King & Low-Heywood Thomas – has been in the shadows of Stamford, Westhill and Trinity Catholic for its lifetime. But with three juniors who are receiving Division I offers seemingly on a daily basis, the Vikings could be the team to watch in 2008 and 2009.

Despite a 4-5 record in the Fairchester Athletic Association last season, Silas Redd ran for 1,261 yards and 13 touchdowns as a sophomore, and has an offer on the table from Boston College, and one that may come Monday from Virginia.

Classmate Kevin Pierre-Louis is expecting a Boston College offer on Monday. He ran for 754 yards and seven touchdowns last season and had 147 tackles.

And Eric Joyner also impressed as a sophomore with 10 catches for 312 yards in a run-first offense. He, too, is getting the looks from Division I schools.

“Because we’re a private school, people think that if they play sports, they can’t go anywhere,” King head coach Danny Gouin said Saturday during a scrimmage involving multiple teams at Fairfield Warde. “Now we have Nate Collins, who is starting at nose tackle at Virginia. And there’s kids like Silas, Kevin, Eric Joyner, kids like Arlington Hendrickson and Jimmy Georges, who should be scholarship players here. And there’s Vinny Love, who is probably going to play in the Ivys somewhere.”

Gouin returns just about everyone from last season’s team with the exception of quarterback John Honey-Fitzgerald, who played last month in the Hall of Fame Classic. He will be replace by sophomore Mikey Serricchio, who started a game in Honey-Fitzgerald’s absence last season.

If the Vikings can defeat Hopkins in its opener on Sept. 13, Gouin feels King could be the team to beat in the Fairchester.

Which is why Gouin says King, a non-CIAC school, needs to get some scrimmage-time against CIAC opponents. Especially when one of the teams is the neighbor down the road, Trinity Catholic.

“We were very good against Trinity today,” Gouin said. “They are always hard nosed, tough, disciplined kids. Since we’re right down the street, it brings out the best in both teams. For us, as a private school, it takes away the stigma that we can’t compete. Our defense, I don’t think, gave up anything to Bullard-Havens. That’s a huge confidence builder for our team.”

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