Overtime

Each year I write a fall sports awards column. I’m not certain yet whether it will appear in the newspaper or the blog — I am guessing it will be the paper. What I am certain of is this is probably the hardest year I will have picking winners, and I am probably going to have to create some new categories to accommodate everyone.

Who was the best team this fall? The New Canaan and Darien football teams? The Darien and Stamford field hockey teams? The Staples boys soccer team or Darien volleyball team? On any normal year any one of these is deserving.

What makes it more interesting is that almost every one of these teams has an interesting backstory. Then there is the case of the most valuable player and some other athletes who operate under the radar but have proved worthy of attention.

As I make my final decisions, if anyone out there has any opinions or wants to weigh in, send along your ideas.

Sometime late tomorrow afternoon, either the New Canaan football team will be celebrating a perfect season with an FCIAC and state championship, or Darien will avenge its loss in the league final with a state title as the two arch-rivals play for the second time in nine days.

Whatever the outcome, both teams will walk off the field victors and they deserve to be congratulated.

As the CIAC again shows us that there may not be a more incompetent organization in existence — we still have six state championship games and the location and scheduling of the finals lead to further head-scratching — New Canaan and Darien have given us two perfect weeks of high school sports.

From the hype leading up to the league final between two undefeated teams ranked first and third in the state, to a good but not great game before 9,500 fans, to the teams winning their Class MM semifinal games to create a rematch, to further hype heading into tomorrow, the teams have created perhaps the best two weeks in the 80 years since they first met.

The two teams have handled the scrutiny with dignity and class, starting with the coaches — Darien’s Rob Trifone and New Canaan’s Lou Marinelli — down to their players.

In the process of doing justice to the tremendous buildup for both games, everyone involved has created memories that will last a lifetime.

The outcome of tomorrow’s game is going to create a tremendous storyline for the winning team. But in the final 24 hours before kickoff, lets take a step back and appreciate the excitement two great teams have given to what has already been one of the best years in FCIAC history.

Despite the efforts by New Canaan and Darien officials to get the game moved to Boyle Stadium, the Class MM final will be held at Trumbull High School Saturday at 2 p.m.

The two teams met on Thanksgiving morning in the FCIAC final before 9,500 fans in Stamford. While the crowd Saturday is not expected to be quite as high because many alumni who were in town for the holiday have returned to college or their homes, estimates right now are for a crowd somewhere between 5,000-7,000.

New Canaan, which is 12-0, defeated Darien (11-1) for the league championship, 28-20.

CIAC officials contacted FCIAC executive secretary John Kuczo last week about holding the final in Boyle Stadium, where planned renovations on the turf field were scheduled to begin last Monday. They were delayed until this Monday in the eventuality the state decided to move the game there.

The possible cost of holding the game on the Stamford High School campus might have been one deterrent in the state’s decision to play in Trumbull, though another is the site will host two state finals. Ansonia and Cromwell will meet for the Class S title that night.

I just spoke to both New Canaan coach Lou Marinelli and Darien coach Rob Trifone as they headed up for this morning’s press conference with all 12 finalists. They held the party line: that while they would have preferred to play the game in Stamford, Trumbull was probably the next best option.

“If you can’t hold it in Boyle you might as well hold it in Trumbull,” Marinelli said. “I’m glad they kept it in Fairfield County. It makes sense.”

“No. 1 I’m glad they kept the game in Fairfield County as opposed to the New Canaan area,” Trifone said. “It was the right decision.”

New Canaan will be attempting for its third straight state title. Darien last won it in 1996.

This will be the second time in nine years the teams have met twice in a short time period. New Canaan, which had already won the FCIAC title, defeated Darien on Thanksgiving in 1999, but the Blue Wave bounced back to win a rematch in the state semifinals five days later before losing to Weaver in the final.

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.