SPB's High School Sports

Ladies and gentlemen, the fall sports schedules have been released for the 2009 season.

Yes, this means football, football, football.

Included is the site for Ansonia football’s opening game with Hillhouse (at Jess Dow Field, Friday, Sept. 18 at 7 p.m.) and Derby’s inaugural NVL football schedule.

Also, it has the new FCIAC football schedules, including complete slates for the large schools, and the out-of-league slate for the small schools. Plus all of the Derby-less SCC slate. Bunnell opens at Newtown Sept. 18, Masuk opens at Weston, 4 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 17.

Of course, the CIAC also has all the soccer, field hockey and volleyball schedules you need.

See it all here at the CIAC’s sports website: http://www.casciac.org/ciacsports.shtml.

Many of these dates and times are subject to change until each sports’ scheduling deadline sometime before the start of the season.

Lots to talk about, check it out and give us your thoughts.

SPB

While reveling in the glory the day after my beloved Syracuse’s 11-6 victory over Maryland in the quarterfinals of the NCAA men’s lacrosse tournament, I must have misplaced my phone.

Too bad, because I missed quite an important phone call — one I didn’t actually get until I listened to the messages on Monday afternoon.

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It took a month and change, but questions about my conspicuous absence from the sports pages has finally started to reach my ears (and via text message).

No. I haven’t left the Connecticut Post, run off and joined a mountaineering club (as this pic of me atop Sleeping Giant might suggest).

Yes. I am still an employee in the sports department.

Yes. I am no longer in charge of covering high school sports…

…sort of.

I have a new position here as the Sports Producer of Hearst Connecticut Media Group Interactive, which is another way of saying I’m the sports editor of the Connecticut Post and its Fairfield County affiliates owned by the Hearst Corporation.

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Fairfield Warde will announce Ansonia native and New Canaan assistant Duncan DellaVolpe as its next head coach Thursday during a meeting with sudents.

DellaVolpe was a standout at — where else? — Ansonia in the late 1980s and was a captain on the 1990 squad along with John Picheco, Dennis Tinney and Kevin Sharkey.

He’s spent the last 10 years as an assistant coach under Lou Marinelli at New Canaan. As the team’s offensive coordinator, he was was a big part of the team’s recent switch to a spread offense and developed three different quarterbacks into state champions — Curtis Casali, Charlie Westfal and Nate Quinn.

DellaVolpe, who was rumored to be a top candidate for the job back in the winter, takes over a club that had made modest strides under former coach Tony Catapano. The Mustangs went from a one-win team in 2005, to three wins in 2007 and 2008.

Masuk’s Rachele Fico, who continued her assault on the national high school softball record books by pitching an all-time best 25th perfect game of her career and her 10th straight no-hitter (another national record), got quite a pump from this week’s Sports Illustrated, which hits mailboxes today.

A year ago, she appeared in ‘Faces in the Crowd.’ This time, she is featured prominently in the magazine’s scorecard section, beneath Gameplan: What smart fans should do this week.”

The magazine suggests readers should check out LSU-bound senior, along with the DVD release of ‘The Wrestler’ and this weekend’s PGA’s Players Championship.

Joe Beler Jr. is a head coach once again.

Law’s defensive coordinator has been hired as the next football coach at Notre Dame-Fairfield. He takes over for Jason Hart, who stepped down at the end of last season.

This is Beler’s first head coaching job since 2001. He spent four season at Foran, and went 20-21-1 but guided the Lions to a 9-2-1 record and an improbable 7-6 SWC championship victory over New Milford in the 2001 season. Foran went on to lose to New Canaan in the Class M semifinals. He was later dismissed in the offseason after a lengthy battle with the school district.

At Law, Beler helped good friend Mark Robinson rebuild the Lawmen into a state playoff contender. The Lawmen went 9-1 and won the SCC Division I West title, the school’s first title of any kind in 25 years, but failed to reach the Class M playoff that year.

In other college football spring news, we received this link on former Stratford tailback Torrey Mack, who apparently has made great strides in his first year at the University of Virginia.

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Fairfield Prep graduate Garrett Brown has been named one of six captains for the Minnesota football team.

He was named captain along with senior WR Eric Decker and junior QB Adam Weber, senior LBs Lee Campbell and Simoni Lawrence and senior DT Eric Small. The captains were voted by the team.

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