Overtime

With six starters gone, people might have been ready to write off the defending state champion Stamford High School field hockey team when it opened the season last week with a 3-1 loss to Greenwich.

Here’s a word of advice for those doubters: Dumb move.

While the Black Knights are still a team in transition, they remain loaded and will be a factor in the race for the Fairfield County Interscholastic Athletic Conference title. And few would be surprised if they successfully defended their state crown.

This afternoon, on a day when they did not play their best game, the Black Knights were able to beat a good Norwalk team, 2-1, on Madi McLaughlin’s goal with 19 seconds left.

“Even though we struggled at times the best thing is we didn’t quit,” Stamford coach Matt Forker said.

Though their are plenty of new faces, it is the five veterans who are the team’s greatest strength. McLaughlin, who set a city scoring record with 26 goals last season, is a dynamic presence and tremendous athlete. The same goes for Laura Dembofsky, who scored 18 goals last season and was one of the state’s most underrated players. She has moved to center midfield this year and is adjusting well to her new role.

Katie Pape scored Stamford’s lone goal in the loss to Greenwich and is a tremendous leader — she will be a captain in three sports this year — while the always solid play of defender Emily Powers and goaltender Heather Wilson tends to get overshadowed by the flamboyance of the offense.

Thus far the new starters have adapted quickly. Junior Dani Robustelli scored two goals in a win over Brien McMahon.

Forker is the perfect coach for this team. He is an excellent in-game strategist who also relates well with his players.

There is a long way to go in the season and the Black Knights don’t have a lot of depth and can ill afford an injury to any of their key players. But all the pieces are in place for the program to remain championship contenders again this fall.

Sportswriters love to make predictions. Most times they are incorrect. Nowhere is the pitfalls of prognostication more evident than in early season high school football.

If you believed the experts, this was going to be the year that perennial powers Greenwich, Staples and New Canaan were going to come back to the pack, and new faces would make the jump to championship contender. This year’s darling was Norwalk.

So what happened in the opening week? Greenwich and New Canaan won by blowouts, Staples rallied to a win over Brien McMahon, and Norwalk was stunned by Fairfield Ludlowe on a last-second field goal.

The talk already has begun: Norwalk is overrated and the other three are going to be the lone players in the race for the Fairfield County Interscholastic Athletic Conference title hunt. A week from now, the outlook will probably change again.

Don’t read too much into what happened last weekend. The truth is, as much time as sportswriters spend going to scrimmages and evaluating rosters, with so much turnover if we are going to make predictions — and the belief here is making predictions on high school sports makes no sense — It is probably wise to wait two to three weeks until you can really get a real of how the playoff chase will take shape.

The hope here is to supplement the coverage in The Advocate sports pages, with a heavy emphasis on high school athletics, along with an occasional opinion on subjects outside our little corner of the world.

I hope to use Overtime to offer commentary, profiles and supplemental information that does not find its way into the paper. The intent here is to make this a quality blog, and while I greatly welcome your feedback and comments, I urge you to keep them to a professional nature. As the blog grows, we may even add some regular features, so if you have any ideas or know of a compelling story, please write to me at Overtime@scni.com.

This is a new venture and, as someone who has covered local sports for 26 years — the last 16 at The Advocate — one I am excited about.

So I hope you will take the time to bookmark this site and check back often, and I promise to try and make this an informative blog equal to the passion local fans have for their teams and players.