Overtime

The Connecticut Post’s Sean Patrick Bowley and I will be doing our weekly high school football chat tonight at 8:30.

Come back here at that time and ask a question or just follow along.

New Canaan High School’s homecoming celebration during Saturday’s game with St. Joseph will have an extra feature: the school will retire former star receiver Pete Demmerle’s uniform No. 23 during a ceremony.

New Canaan athletic director Jay Egan said a company was hired to put a circle on the field’s 23-yard line.

Demmerle was one of the best players in FCIAC history. He was named to the All-FCIAC and All-State teams in 1969-70, in the latter, as a senior, finishing with 102 receptions for 1,419 yards and 15 touchdowns. Playing for legendary coach Bob Lynch, Demmerle still holds school records for career receptions (165), yards (2,550) and touchdowns (28).

Demmerle went on to play at Notre Dame, and was a starter on the school’s 1973 national championship team. He led the team in receiving in 1973 and 1974. He was a 13th round draft pick of the Chargers in 1975 but never played with the team because of an injury.

Demmerle was an academic All-American and Rhodes Scholarship candidate, who went on to a successful law career.

He passed away after an eight-year battle with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), the neurodegenerative illness commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, in 2007 at the age of 53.

“I didn’t know him very well, I only met him a few times, but I used to share an office with Bob Lynch and Bob talked about him all the time, so I felt like I knew him more than I did,” New Canaan coach Lou Marinelli said. “He is someone we want all our athletes to emulate, males and females, because he was not just about athletics but academics.”

For the first time in six years, Bobby Valentine is getting to spend autumn in Stamford. He returned home one week ago tonight after finishing his final season with the Chiba Lotte Marines.

Valentine landed in New York and has hit the ground running, returning to ESPN as a studio analyst, getting back involved with his restaurant and baseball academy and, well, Valentine always has so many things on his plate it is hard to keep up.

The big question everyone keeps asking is whether Valentine will return to a major league dugout next season. He has been linked with the Indians and reportedly has had talks with other teams.

My take: If the right opportunity comes along, Valentine will manage again. Don’t take this as any revelation: this has been the common pattern in Valentine’s life, taking advantage of the right opportunities. It has served him well: try naming an area where the Stamford native has not been successful.

Valentine has a four-year deal with ESPN with an out clause if he gets a managing job with a major league team. If that were to occur, we will probably know in a few weeks.

For now, here is my story on Valentine in tomorrow’s Advocate.

(Cayleigh Griffin, a senior captain on the Trinity Catholic High School volleyball team, will be blogging about her experiences this season.)

By Cayleigh Griffin

It’s hard to believe that we are down to the final two weeks of the regular season. Where has all the time gone?

I remember sitting on my bed writing my first entry, eagerly anticipating the season to arrive. From the start, our team knew the goals we wanted to accomplish: make states, make FCIACs and win a city title.

We can officially check one off our list. After Friday’s victory over Central, the Crusaders volleyball team officially made the state tournament. The win also helped us move into the eighth seed in the FCIAC rankings, placing us in a position where making the FCIAC playoffs is a definite possibility.

Not only that, but we are halfway to our final goal of winning a city title after defeating Westhill, 3-2. I’m extremely proud of everything we have accomplished thus far and can only hope that our determination and desire to win will carry us to ultimately realizing these goals.

As the end is drawing near, we seniors are starting to recognize how little time we have left. We cherish every moment we have together, whether it be winning a point in a match or sharing a laugh over someone’s goofy mistake.

We are strong as individuals but together, we are far more powerful, more than any of us could have ever imagined.

This week also marks the birthdays of three seniors! Happy 17^th to Kelly, Maddy and me!!

The Darien High School volleyball team has a tradition of setting and surpassing goals: this is a program that has won 17 league and 14 state titles after all.

On Friday, the Blue Wave did it again. Setting their sights on raising $5,000 for breast cancer awareness at their second annual Dig Pink event, sponsored by the national Side-Out Foundation, the team ended up raising more than $5,600 through donations, bake sales and admission to Friday’s match against Wilton.

Darien’s event was one of many throughout the country by Side-Out, which was established in 2004 and uses volleyball to help in the fight against breast cancer.

Donations are still being accepted. Just click here.

The poll asking you to pick which FCIAC football coach you would most want in a big game closed today and the winner is New Canaan’s Lou Marinelli. He received 50 of the 115 votes or 43 percent. Staples’ Marce Petroocio was next with 31 votes (27 percent) and Greenwich’s Rich Albonizio was third with 18 votes (16 percent). Sixteen people (14 percent) picked the Other selection.

Greenwich plays both New Canaan and Staples during the regular season.

Here are the final results.

A lot was made of New Canaan quarterback Turner Baty’s outstanding performance in his most extended playing time in last night’s 35-0 rout of Seymour.

But Baty was not the only one to take advantage of an opportunity. Brianna Valente, the Rams’ female kicker, was 5-for-5 in extra point attempts.

In case you missed it, here’s a video I shot with Valente a few weeks ago, after she made her first conversion for the team.

Tonight’s game between New Canaan and Seymour will be held in Seymour at 7 as originally planned.

There was talking of moving the contest to New Canaan because of fear to doing damage to Seymour’s field because of the weather.