Should the New Canaan and Darien football teams win their semifinal games tonight, Boyle Stadium would be available to host a CIAC Class MM championship between the teams on Saturday. The game would have to be in the afternoon because of a rule of no night games when the schools meet because of a fight at a hockey match last winter.
But don’t count on the teams returning to Stamford. Darien athletic director John Keleher just told me he spoke with Paul Hoey of the CIAC, who said if the teams both win — New Canaan hosts Weaver and Darien travels to Hillhouse tonight — the rematch would be held Saturday afternoon at Trumbull High School. A Weaver-Darien or New Canaan-Hillhouse final would apparently be held at Southern Connecticut State University.
The state will decide on the sites and times for its six title games tomorrow morning.
FCIAC executive secretary John Kuczo said this morning that the facility manager engineers for the city of Stamford have agreed to put off renovations on Boyle Stadium, which includes the installation of a new field turf surface, by a week until next Monday.
The CIAC contacted Kuczo last week about the availability of Boyle Stadium for a possible title game rematch. Kuczo had to submit a voucher today for what it would cost the state to hold a game on the Stamford High School campus.
There was a crowd of 9,500 people on Thanksgiving morning for the teams’ FCIAC title game, which New Canaan won, 28-20. One would assume a crowd on Saturday would not be as large because of the alumni who were home for the holiday who attended the game. But you would also pick up a lot of general fans who went to watch other Thanksgiving games and have an extremely large crowd.
It sounds like the cost of holding a New Canaan-Darien rematch in Stamford would be too prohibitive for the state.
The CIAC is foolish not to do everything in its power to hold the game at Boyle Stadium. This would absolutely be the biggest crowd ever to attend a High School game in the state if the game were played there. This is a STATE final and no doubt the fans who were all over on Thanksgiving would come to watch these two class teams play again.
Bad move for promoting high school football if the game is not played at Boyle.
this is kind of a joke…the state stands to make a lot of money if 10k show up
Trumbull holds how many?
NC played in the state finals at Trumbull last year in very cold, windy conditions…there were maybe 1500 people there and the place was still half full
How is Trumbull going to handle this many people?