FCIAC Football Blog

New Canaan has knocked off Staples to claim the top spot in the final Bill Gonillo 5 media poll 2009, and is the Fairfield County Team of the Year.

Staples, the FCIAC champion, finished with eight of the fifteen first place voted, while New Canaan, the CIAC Class MM champion, had seven first place votes. But New Canaan picked up some steam with five second-place votes to Staples’ two.

St. Joseph, the Class SS champion, received four second place votes. Pomperaug, the SWC champion, had two first-place votes, and Bridgeport Central had one.

New Canaan is the repeat champion, and had led the poll through the first seven weeks of the season. Staples took the lead after New Canaan lost to Bridgeport Central 42-7 in Week 8, and had held it since.

“This really is an honor, considering we got beat as bad as we got beat that night against Bridgeport Central,” New Canaan head coach Lou Marinelli said. “We were out of sync for two weeks after it. But to put it all together the way we did, it’s great to see people still believe we’re still a team of that caliber. It’s quite a surprise and honor that the media voted the way it did.”

The poll is named in honor of Bill Gonillo, the former News 12 sports anchor who died in September 2007 from complications related to diabetes. The poll also supports the American Diabetes Association’s mission to find a cure for and raise awareness of the disease, which affects 23.6 million children and adults in the United States, or 7.8% of the population.

Tickets to the Bill Gonillo Memorial Double-Header basketball game between Sacred Heart and Fairfield University to raise awareness of the disease will be played this Sunday, Dec. 13 at Harbor Yard. You may purchase special $10 tickets through the FCIAC Football Blog by clicking on this link.

Dropped out: Greenwich (5)

Also receiving votes: Bethel Wildcats 10, Greenwich Cardinals 10, King Vikings 8, Masuk Panthers 4, Ridgefield Tigers 1.

Voters: Damian Andrew (News12), Dave Stewart (New Canaan Advertiser), Eliot Schickler (Westport News), Jason Intrieri (freelancer), John Nash (Stamford Times/Wilton Villager), Matt Levine (WSTC-AM/WNLK-AM), Matt Norlander (New Canaan News-Review/Darien News), Michael Suppe (Hersam-Acorn Newspapers), Nick Fox (WGCH-AM), Pat Pickens (Fairfield Citizen), Paul Silverfarb (Greenwich Post), Rob Adams (WGCH-AM), Tim Parry (FCIAC Football Blog), Tom Renner (Examiner.com), Zachary Eastright (WSTC-AM/WNLK-AM).

The Bill Gonillo 5 poll is a media ranking of the top teams in Fairfield County. All FCIAC and SWC schools, plus FAA, CSC and SCC teams based in Fairfield County, are on the ballot for consideration.

Ballots are totaled on a 10-8-6-4-2-1 formula.

Does one game make a rivalry? New Canaan head coach Lou Marinelli asked East Lyme head coach Paul Teneglia that question from the podium during the CIAC media luncheon on Wednesday.

For Marinelli, the CIAC Class MM semifinal game against East Lyme in 2005 was its last state playoff loss. Marinelli said he remembered that day as the one New Canaan lost at home when a kid kicked a couple of 52-yard field goals.

It was actually a 49-yarder and a 51-yarder by Pedro Belinchon, who had not attempted a field goal all season. But Teneglia, then an assistant coach under Andy Dousis, ordered the field goal attempts.

“That first one was a cannon shot,” Teneglia said. “Andy turned to me and asked what we wanted to do. We didn’t have a great punt team so I figured if we missed a field goal, New Canaan would have the ball at its 20. All the sudden it was three points and everyone was in shock. When we had a chance again, we decided to kick it again.”

But it was running back Tim Allen, with an 84-yard touchdown run late in the game, who gave East Lyme the 20-12 upset win.

“It was a great game, and hopefully it will be a great game this weekend,” Marinelli said.

Rams senior captain Cole Duncan watched the game from the stands, while his brother, Kyle, was suited up for New Canaan.

“I looked at all the seniors on the sidelines and I couldn’t imagine being one of those guys. I don’t want that to happen to me,” Duncan said.

Duncan did get a call Tuesday night from his brother, who is a lineman at Bowdoin College, with one request: Avenge the loss.

“There’s a kid on my brother’s college team from East Lyme, so my brother wants me to win this game so he’ll stop talking smack,” Duncan said.

Tenaglia said he would not allow his kids to say the words “New Canaan” all season, since it may have got them to look ahead and stumble during the regular season. Tenaglia and his staff did get to see New Canaan play on Thanksgiving day, and said he was impressed with New Canaan’s passing attack, led by quarterback Turner Baty and receivers Kevin Macari and Cody Newton.

“Their whole offensive scheme, it’s like a small college the way they run that offense. You can understand why they have won three state championships in a row,” Tenaglia said. “My hat goes off to him, and the job he’s done over there.”

New Canaan head coach Lou Marinelli was inducted into the Connecticut High School Coaches Association Hall of Fame last night.

“I accept this on behalf of New Canaan, the school system and all my players,” Marinelli said during his induction speech at the Aqua Turf Club in Southington. “It’s a tremendous honor.”

Marinelli’s next win will be his 250th career victory. He has 230 since coming to New Canaan in 1981.

Though Marinelli knew for quite some time that he, Harding basketball coach Charlie Bentley and Notre Dame-Fairfield ice hockey coach Marty Roos would be among the nine inductees, he had no idea his entire team would be in attendance.

As the dinner began, the New Canaan football team entered the banquet hall in single file, wearing their red game jerseys over shirts and ties.

“If you don’t think I’m the luckiest guy in the world, all you have to do is look out there and look at my players, because I had no idea they were going to be here,” Marinelli said during his speech. “When they walked in, it brought me to tears.”

Though Marinelli told me before the dinner that he didn’t have a prepared speech ready, he’s had plenty of practice at the podium, having been honored in the past by the Frank McGuire Foundation and the Walter Camp Football Foundation, to name a few.

A limited number of tickets remain for the 5th Anniversary Sports Night dinner on Monday at the Hyatt in Greenwich, so if you are planning to attend, make your plans now.

The evening is highlighted by one of the area’s best array of sports and other unique memorabilia for the silent auction, and a chance at the live auction to bid on a great trip to Notre Dame to see UConn meet the Irish for the first time ever on the gridiron in November.

The six new Fairfield County Sports Hall of Famers and 15 local sports persons of the year from the communities the Commission serves (including New Canaan head coach Lou Marinelli) will be recognized.

New members of the Hall of Fame will be honored as well. They are: Jennifer Rizzotti and Charles Smith in the Jackie Robinson Professional Wing, the late Pete Demmerle and Dick Siderowf in the James O’Rourke Amateur Wing and Joe Benanto and Terry Lowe in the J. Walter Kennedy Community Service Wing.

Also to be recognized are James Hilaire, the Chelsea Cohen Courage Award winner, and Mark Kurimai, the Special Olympics award recipient. George Albano of The Hour will also receive the Bill Gonillo media award.

Thanks to everyone out there who took part in and/or sonated to yesterday’s Step Out: Walk to Fight Diabetes in New Canaan. It was such a fantastic event, both from the entertainment and educational point of view. Gerri Brown of the American Diabetes Association said the move to New Canaan helped bring out a greater number of walkers, but the ADA still fell short of its goal. So… we’ll keep trying to help out. Maybe as a sponsor, I can make more of an impact to help raise awareness of the disease beyond just the bill Gonillo 5 poll.

The New Canaan Rams football team walked again this year (you can still make a donation to their walk team). This time, they didn’t sprint. And they also had head coach Lou Marinelli walk as a part of its team. So of course the sports reporters on my team – Rob Adams of WGCH-AM and Jim Fuller of the New Haven Register (Matt Levine of WSTC/WNLK-AM ran the 3-mile course, cause he’s in shape!) – seized the opportunity to grill Marinelli on everything and anything.

Okay, really, we didn’t grill Marinelli. And he escaped us at the turn-around. But we did give him our two cents about the FCIAC’s scheduling, which has become complicated since the Fairfield school split a few years back gave the league an odd number of schools.

Fuller told Marinelli how it’s done in the 20-team Southern Connecticut Conference, where they break it down to four divisions based on size and strength. Then every two years, the out-of-division match-ups change takes place based on a team’s prior two seasons’ results.

So if you finish first in your division over a two-year period, you would play your four division rivals, and the other three first-place finishers and I think three of the teams from your crossover division.

Why did we bring it up? Basicly there’s some unfair contests on the FCIAC schedules that really don’t do anyone any good. The Greenwich-Harding game on Saturday comes to mind. Greenwich won 41-0 (on its homecoming).

Greenwich has a big clash up in Danbury this Friday that it would have been better preparing for. If you’re Greenwich, how do you get your team motivated to play Harding? And if you’re Harding, how do you pick your team back up after it takes part in that sort of game?

I’m not trying to sound mean, I’m just saying there needs to be some competitive balance here. Maybe instead of basing the schedules on size alone, strength needs to be put into consideration.

Then of course you’ll have some coaches say they have no chance to make the CIAC playoffs because they have to play too tough a schedule, and a string of 5-5 seasons could create a lack of interest in football.

What do you think? As the FCIAC football schedule good, bad, or somewhere in the middle?