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Ladies and Gentlemen. It’s officially football season.

Why? Because today is the day I sent out my 2007 preseason prospectuses to all the coaches whose emails we have on file in our 50-team region. The rest we send by mail on Monday morning.

Every year, we hold our breath and wait for the first response, which usually takes an hour. Kevin Jones of Stamford was the reigning two-time champion, beating Chris Anderson of Woodland by a few hours in the last two years.

I sent this year’s batch at 2:58 p.m. on Sunday afternoon.

At 3:44, we had an upset winner.

Here’s the email I sent to the winning coach.

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

TONY CATAPANO of Fairfield Warde, you have won the 2007 Connecticut Post “Fastest Prospectus” Award. Your return in 46 minutes beats two-time champion Kevin Jones’ of Stamford’s record of 53 minutes in last year’s unofficial contest.

The reward is a set of steak knives… which I can’t seem to find at this moment. So consider this an I O U.

Congratulations again!

Sean P. Bowley
Connecticut Post.

And so it begins…

If you’re a coach and you haven’t received my email, please email me at sbowley@ctpost.com and I will get a prospectus out to you as soon as possible.

Seven days to first practice…
33 Days to football Season.

SPB

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Once again, we’re going to attempt a running blog here at a state championship game. It’s Seymour vs. Waterford for the Class M championship at Yale Field.

They’re announcing the starting lineups, so let’s get underway… SPB

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I vote in the baseball state poll, conducted by Joe Mo of the NHR. It’s one of three polls of which I’m a voter. It’s also the one I give the least amount of credence.

After all, in baseball, more than any other sport, a team cannot be measured on a single game. The true strength and character of a team depends almost solely on the strength of its pitching staff. Even the best pitcher is capable of having an off-day. So if an ace is uncharacteristically giving up walks and home runs, there’s very little his teammates can do about it. It’s up to the other pitchers to account for these unlikely, but common snafus.

With that in mind, ideally you need about a five- or seven-game series to figure out how good one team is over another (in high school baseball, we’ll even accept the best out of three).

Yet we’re constantly asked to debate the merits of a team based on single games. The state tournament is the biggest culprit. How many times over the years have we seen too many of the 5 or 10 seeds getting knocked out by No. 28s or No. 30s?

That’s the problem, even if your ace has his usual stuff, he still can be trumped by the guy on the other team who happened to go 8-0 during an 8-12 season. That’s high school baseball, take it or leave it. (I’m more of a fan of the state’s American Legion tournament, where the best teams in the state at least get two games in a double-elimination format. Have a bad game, you still have one left.)

This is not to devalue the state champion, but to make some excuses for teams that really should have been in contention late in the year instead of sitting home the day after Memorial Day.

Anyway, in a week we voters will bang heads and come up with a No. 1 team–most likely either Amity (if it wins Class LL) or Waterford (if Amity loses and Waterford wins Class M).

If neither of these teams win, wish us all luck… we’re going to need it.

SPEAKING OF POLLS, in lacrosse (for which polls make a lot more sense)… If Greenwich and Darien win their respective state tournaments, who’s No. 1? I’ll have to go with Greenwich. If someone like Prep beats Greenwich and Darien can win Class M, they’re No. 1 again.

SPB

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Because People absolutely go bonkers for this stuff (this stuff and recruiting)…

The League by League Tournament Scoreboard

Class LL: 1 SCC (Amity); 1 SWC (Bunnell); 1 FCIAC (Stamford); 1 CCC (Newington).
Class L: 1 SCC (Guilford); 1 NWC (Berlin); 1 SWC (Pomperaug); 1 CCC (Bristol Eastern)
Class M: 2 NVL (Seymour, Woodland); 2 ECC (Montville, Waterford);
Class S: 1 ECC (St. Bernard); 1 FCIAC (Trinity Catholic); 1 NWC (Northwest Catholic); 1 NCCC (Windsor Locks)

So, for those of you scoring at home (Joe Mo, this means you):

Two SCCs, Two FCIACs, Two CCCs, Three ECCs, Two SWCs, Two NWCS

Pretty Balanced.

SPB

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Kind of a shocker over at Eastern where Fitch lost to Newington in the Class LL quarterfinals, 2-1 in 12 innings, which shakes up the brackets a bit.

I know we were all agog about Fitch, but I’m not saying Newington’s win is a real upset. After all Falcons’ All-American prospect Matt Harvey can only pitch every four days and, as Ned Griffen from the Day of New London said: “They’re going to have to win all of their games 3-1 or 2-1 because they can’t hit.”

That leaves Amity, which dispatched Masuk 4-0 tonight, as the odds-on favorite to claim the title. The Spartans play hot Stamford in the semifinals.

On the other side, Bunnell is finally playing the way we all felt it could when the season started. The Bulldogs and their star pitching staff edged Fairfield Prep to reach its first semifinal in (years?) They’ll play an obviously good Newington team. The Bulldogs need to get the bats going or they’re going to be in trouble.

Both of the Class LL semifinal games are at Yale Field on Tuesday.

Also, don’t look now but Seymour is quietly heading for a showdown with Woodland for the Class M championship. Both NVL teams reached the semifinals of that draw. Seymour plays defending champion Montville Tuesday at Eastern.

SPB

BTW, everybody should be lucky enough to hang out with Stratford baseball coach Joe Reitano during a game. He’s a treat, regaling me and Elm City Sports writer Mike Madera with stories of his coaching days in South America.

“This was in 1985,” Joe says after a sprawling story about boxing matches in Cartegena, Columbia, interspersed with segues into what he called his ‘inside baseball stuff.’ “My buddy and I are walking to a restaurant and we spot a chicken crossing the street. ‘I want that chicken,’ my buddy says.

“An hour later, we ate it.”

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Cheshire 1, Southington 0.
Mercy 2, Amity 0

OK, so maybe softball isn’t THAT predictable.

But things like scoring the game’s only run on a Little-League play–a runner on third with two outs, a walk to the batter who keeps running to second, drawing a throw from the catcher, eliciting a rundown, enabling the runner on third to practically walk home–are annoying.

Now, we have Masuk embroiled in a tit-for-tat, whouldathunkit, suspended-after-nine 0-0 battle with league rival Newtown for the right to face Mercy in the semifinals. The bracket has certainly opened up for Masuk, who should now be a huge favorite to win Class LL. But, one little mistake in today’s resumed against Newtown and the Panthers will be going home.

So, yes. Unpredictable. Mea Culpa, softball peeps

But, still, let’s move the mound back to the college distance, huh? Until we do that, this is little league.

Thanks.
.

SPB

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It’s been kind of a crazy month for me, hence why there’s not much going on here. Now that I have some time, let’s do a little recapping as we hit the midpoint of the baseball and softball state tournaments and see if we can’t end this spring season with a bang.

Actually, before we begin a note to any league running any tournament(SWC, cough, SWC, cough): Get SOMEBODY to make rosters to hand out before the games.

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Usually I love the idea of conference holding postseason tournaments to determine their overall champions. But they’re not THIS important, are they??

The FCIAC, in the interest of getting all of its playoff berths and seedings wrapped up by today, is having Ridgefield play two games, even though the Tigers are already out of the hunt.

The first is a home makeup game against Fairfield Warde in the afternoon, an important game for the Mustangs, who need to win for a shot to become one of the four teams to secure the eighth seed. Later on, the Tigers might (and we say, might) have to travel somewhere in Stamford for another makeup game with Westhill.

The problem is Westhill doesn’t have lights to accommodate a night game and, apparently, can’t find a field somewhere that does.

FCIAC, which has already pushed the start of its playoffs from Monday to Tuesday, is ready to just give up on trying to squeeze this game in since it only really matters for seeding. If Westhill can’t get a site, the FCIAC will allow it to skip the game, finish 12-5 and be the third seed all for just the sake of starting the league quarterfinals by Tuesday.

The SCC is just as much of a nightmare. They’re trying to squeeze in their quarterfinal round between Xavier and Hand, Sheehan and Branford to be played on Tuesday. Problem is, Sheehan still has a regular season game against East Haven left and can’t play until

Bleah. Only in baseball and softball do we see these kind of crazy manipulations to get the league playoffs in. Some leagues, like the CCC, have pretty much given up on the whole idea. I’m about ready to jump onto that bandwagon.

After all, the spring season is too short to begin with and doesn’t need to be made shorter. Rare are the years when rainouts don’t dramatically alter the schedule.

Besides, high school baseball isn’t a sport that can legitimately be played on consecutive days (mostly because the lack of quality pitchers. Yet that tends to happen when trying to get the league playoffs in before the state tournaments start.

And, especially in a year like this where the Class LL playoff field is stacked, a lot of teams might end up playing state tournament qualifying games on Saturday. So now it’s possible that a team that’s seeded seventh or eighth in its league playoff could play–what?–five, six or seven games in a week? By the way, three of which are meaningless.

Even the better teams with pitching depth (Norwalk for example) could end up playing four games in a week. If I’m Norwalk’s head coach, the only game my No. 1 pitcher is thowing is the state tournament opener. To heck with the league tournament.

And if that’s the thinking, we aren’t exactly getting the best efforts from some of these teams, which is why you have all kinds of crazy upsets during league playoff time. For the teams that do try to win the league tournament, I’d venture that they’re a bit worn out and ripe for the plucking come state tournament time.

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Just an addendum to my column on lacrosse’s explosive popularity from today.

My roommate, a high school soccer coach, said he really didn’t agree with me.

Lacrosse has only really caught on in the Connecticut Post’s area, i.e. Fairfield County, while it hasn’t been as big a deal in New Haven County and even less so in Middlesex and New London counties.

Now, understand that he’s not a big fan even though he also went to Syracuse with me. He’s one of the soccer people like our own Mike Cardillo. But that’s fine and his point was well received.

But I’ll only meet him halfway. I do believe that lacrosse’s popularity has been and will be spreading faster than he and others may like.

And, and, I’ll bet that within the next three years, you’ll start to see more lacrosse programs in the eastern half of the state. Once that happens, the fans will follow. Lots of them.

As that happens, I’ll even go as far to say there will be more fan interest in lacrosse at the high school level than there is soccer or any other sport with the exception of football, basketball and hockey.

Print this out, and give it to me in three years if you think I’m full of it.

SPB

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According to Greenwich football coach Rich Albonizio, the Cardinals might be going national this fall.
Albonizio, whose team has an open date on Nov. 9, said he has been in negotiations with ESPN on playing an out-of-state high school power on national television next year.
Nine FCIAC schools have been scrambling to fill dates since the SWC schools added Nonnewaug to even their schedules. While a few teams have found opponents, apparently nobody in Connecticut wanted anything to do with filling the defending Class LL champion’s open date.
“We were looking all over the country for a game,” Albonizio said. “Somebody at ESPN got wind of it and called to ask if we’d entertain the possibility of being one of their games of the week. I said, sure.
“They asked if we were willing to travel,” Albonizo said. “I told them, sure. Anywhere but the West Coast. I think the West Coast would be tough to do.”
Albonizo said ESPN is now looking around in football-rich states like New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida or Georgia. And it would have to be a school that isn’t busy playing in a state playoff game.
Albonizio said he didn’t have a deadline to fill the date, but that he was hoping to talk to representatives cable network in the near future.

SPB