Voting has begun for the Fairfield County Player of the Year Award. You can meet the candidates and read all the rules here.

You can vote for multiple candidates, but you can only vote for one candidate per IP Address. So that means you can’t sit at a computer all day and vote for your favorite player.

BlueStreak Sports Training is the sponsor of the Fairfield County Player of the Year Award, and we hope you also choose to support the American Diabetes Association by making a donation on your candidate’s behalf (please note, a donation is not required if you want to cast a vote).

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Hey it’s not too late to nominate a candidate for the Fairfield County Player of the Year Award. This is an individual award, not a team award (Staples fans, love your enthusiasm about the Staples Defense, but last I checked, that’s 11 helmets out there, so you’re just wasting nominations).

Before you nominate a player though, pay attention: The following players will be on the ballot, so there is no need for your nomination:

• Christon Gill, QB-DB, Bridgeport Central
• Mike Lefflbine, QB, Greenwich
• Turner Baty, QB, New Canaan
• Silas Redd, RB, King
• Kevin Pierre-Louis, RB-LB, King
• Tyler Matakevich, RB-LB, St. Joseph
• Tom Jordan, OL-DL, Ridgefield
• Matt Kelly, RB-DB, Staples

Now, if you still want to nominate a player for the ballot (a player needs a minimum of 10 nominations for consideration), then go to the Zoomerang survey.

Good luck – we will shut the ballot box at noon Monday, Dec. 7.

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King running back and linebacker Kevin Pierre-Louis is the Fairfield County Player of the Week for Week 5.

Boston College-bound Pierre-Louis was a force on both sides of the ball for King in its 40-12 homecoming win over Kingswood-Oxford. Pierre-Louis carried the ball 9 times for 226 yards and scored four times, and had 20 tackles on defense.

Other nominees included:

James Barrett, DT, Greenwich: 12 tackles 1 sack, and 3 tackles for a loss.
Turner Baty, QB, New Canaan: 20-27-0-367 and 2 touchdowns, plus one rushing touchdown.
Matt Kelly, RB-DB-KR, Staples: 200 all-purpose yards and 3 touchdowns
Charlie Kunze, DL, Darien: 10 tackles and 4 sacks.
Willie Ouelette, WR, New Canaan: 6 catches for 113 yards.
Matt Reyes-Guerra-Dunn, WR, Wilton: 8 catches for 163 yards and 3 touchdowns.
Jackson Wilbur, QB, Wilton: 15-20-0-238 and 3 touchdowns.

Candidates for the Fairfield County Player of the Week award are nominated either direct from their coaches, by media recommendations or by fans of the FCIAC Football Blog on Facebook.

The Fairfield County Player of the Week Award is sponsored by BlueStreak Sports Training and supported by the FCIAC Football Blog.

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So who ruled Week 5? We’re looking for your Fairfield County Player of the Week nominations, and you can submit yours if you are a Fan of the FCIAC Football Blog on Facebook. We’re taking nominations until 9 p.m. tonight, so log on and vote.

But please, if the player is not a lineman, give us a statistical reason why your nominee should be Player of the Week. “HE RAN SH!T” doesn’t tell the deciding members why someone should receive the award. Even if that’s the slang you kids today use, it doesn’t make sense, even if there was a comma missing between RAN and SH!T. We may think it meant that player ran LIKE sh!t, and that would not be a good thing.

So please, give us some stats…

By the way, I saw a few fantastic performances this weekend: New Canaan quarterback Turner Baty’s 20-for-27, 367-yard passing day at Seymour (plus great receiving performances by Willie Ouelette and Cody Newton), and the King dynamic duo of Kevin Pierre-Louis and Silas Redd, who both ran for more than 200 yards. Pierre-Louis was MVP of that game, according to MSG. But Redd was Homecoming King, so they both made out well.

So, if

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The first name that pops into people’s heads is “Silas Redd.” Kevin Pierre-Louis sometimes gets overshadowed bu Redd’s accomplishments, but those FAA coaches coming up with gameplans, and college recruiters, sure remember his name.

As a junior, in eight regular season games, Pierre-Louis rushed for 1,019 yards and 13 touchdowns, led king with 152 tackles and recovered two fumbles.

Pierre-Louis talked Saturday at the Wilton Jamboree about getting King back to a New England prep school championship game, and hopefully bringing a win back to the Stamford school.

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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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Brookfield quarterback Jordan Burandt has been named BlueStreak Sports Training’s Fairfield County Player of the Week for his Week 5 performance against Masuk.

Burandt completed 21 of 36 passes for 364 yards and four touchdowns and was picked off twice in the Bobcats’ 31-24 upset win over the Panthers, who were ranked fifth in the State Coaches Poll.

Other Week 5 nominees included Nick DiRubio (New Canaan), Chris Evans (Stamford), Kyle Finnegan (Ludlowe), Adler Florian (Westhill), Gaquawn Henderson (Wright Tech/Stamford Academy), Brian Kosnik (Darien), Kevin Pierre-Louis (King) and Joe Scalzo (Brunswick).

Players are nominated both by football coaches representing teams in Fairfield County. A mimimum of five nominees from a weekly fan poll are also included on a ballot, and the Player of the Week is then selected by members of the Fairfield County sports media community.

The award is presented by the FCIAC Football Blog.

The following media members voted: The following media members voted: Rob Adams (WGCH-AM), Bill Bloxsom (Hersam-Acorn Newspapers), Zachary Eastright (WSTC-AM/WNLK-AM), Dan Farrand (News-Times), Scott Ferrari (Greenwich Citizen), Andy Hutchison (Newtown Bee), Jason A. Intrieri (FCIAC Football Blog Live), John Nash (The Stamford Times), Ken Morse (Hersam-Acorn Newspapers), Jesse Quinlan (Greenwich Time), Dave Ruden (Stamford Advocate), Eliot Schickler (Westport News), Dave Stewart (New Canaan Advertiser), Rob Sullivan (Minuteman Newspapers/Bridgeport Banner), Michael Suppe (Hersam-Acorn Newspapers).

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