Overtime: High school athletics in Connecticut

As news of Brien McMahon hiring A.J. Albano as its football coach started to spread yesterday, among the factors discussed was that Albano is 26 years old, extremely young to be taking on such a demanding job.

If Albano were 10 years older, the fact that he has served as an assistant coach at Darien for five years, the last three as defensive coordinator, would make everyone view him as battle tested.

So is Albano’s age a liability?

Seven years ago, Trinity Catholic made what appeared to be a bold move by hiring Bryan Fox, who was 27 at the time. Like Albano, Fox had played for the school he was taking over and had served his apprenticeship as an assistant.

The Crusaders went 24-27 during five seasons under Fox, who stepped down at the end of the 2008 season.

Perhaps no one has a better perspective on what Albano is going through, and what he can expect, than the person who helped rebuild the Crusaders’ program and led it to a pair of seven-win seasons.

“It’s got to be super exciting for him,” Fox said. “I know it was for me. To go back to your alma mater. I don’t know him, but everyone I’ve spoken to has said he’s a good coach and well respected.”

Asked if he faced any kind of immediate backlash because of his age, Fox said, “I didn’t, and he won’t to his face, though I’m sure it happened behind the scenes, especially after I went 2-8 that first season. I’m sure his expectations are going to be through the roof. He’s going to be shooting for the stars, and that’s the way it should be. He’s looking to succeed at the highest level.”

Fox said he had one simple bit of advice for Albano: “Find the best staff possible. The first thing I did was surround myself with good people. I was lucky.”

Mark O’Connell of the Greenwich swim team and Talisha Peeler of the Bridgeport Central girls basketball team have been named co-winners of the BlueStreak-Overtime FCIAC Player of the Week award.

O’Connell and Peeler will receive plaques and T-shirts from BlueStreak.

O’Connell, a two-time All-American diver, surpassed the 300-point mark in two meets last week. Earlier this year he broke a 20-year school record with a 337 point performance against Staples.

Peeler had a big week for the Hilltoppers, with 21 points and 19 rebounds in a 43-24 win over Westhill and 27 points and 21 rebounds in a 53-32 win over Bassick.

Nominations for next week’s award will be accepted starting at noon today and run until noon next Tuesday.

Here again are the instructions for nominating an athlete.

Brien McMahon High School is turning to a favored son to try and rebuild its football program.

The Senators this morning hired A.J. Albano, a former player at the school and an assistant coach at Darien for the past six years, to replace Joe SantaLucia, who was fired at the end of last season.

“We think he’s enthusiastic and will bring a lot of life back to the program,” McMahon athletic director Joe Madaffari said. “He’s good at motivating student-athletes and he’s a graduate of McMahon.

Albano graduated from McMahon in 2000. He has been the defensive coordinator for Darien High School, which is coached by Albano’s former coach with the Senators, Rob Trifone, for the past three years.

Albano is also currently the wrestling coach at Greenwich.

“A.J. comes from a winning program so that is certainly going to help us,” Madaffari said.

McMahon was 21-30 during SantaLucia’s six years and is coming off a 3-7 season. SantaLucia had just one winning record, in 2006.

A press conference was held this afternoon and a complete story will be in tomorrow’s edition of The Advocate.

Vlad Ducasse is one of the great sports stories to come out of Stamford. Plucked from the hallways of Stamford High School because of his size, and having recently moved from Haiti with little knowledge of English, coach Kevin Jones got Ducasse to join the Black Knights’ football team. At the time, Ducasse didn’t even know how to put on shoulder pads.

The rest is a poor man’s version of The Blind Side. Ducasse earned a scholarship to UMass, developed his game and now is considered likely to be picked anywhere from the bottom of the first round to the third round of the upcoming NFL Draft.

Ducasse’s excitement has been tempered by the catastrophe in his homeland, where all his family survived the earthquake and Ducasse was able to send over 20,000 bottles of Vitamin Water.

I interviewed Ducasse Sunday afternoon — he got back to me in the third quarter of the Jets-Colts game! — for a story that will be running in Thursday’s paper, and he said one of the motivators is to use some of the money he hopes to earn from the NFL to help the people of Haiti.

Ducasse is in Mobile, Ala., this week and will play in Saturday’s Senior Bowl. During yesterday’s first practice, Ducasse was engaged in a one on one blocking drill with Wisconsin’s O’Brien Schofield, who earned defensive MVP honors at the East-West Shrine Game last weekend, when Schofield tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee.

Ducasse was not at fault but shaken up by the incident.

“What happened to him, I’m a little down about that right now,” Ducasse told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Look for a complete column on Ducasse Thursday in The Advocate.

With 20 nominations from eight different schools in seven different sports, this week finds the deepest field of candidates for the BlueStreak-Overtime FCIAC Player of the Week award. Thus, I have decided to pick six finalists for consideration.

They are:

On the boys side: Conor House of the New Canaan boys basketball team, Mark O’Connell of the Greenwich swim team and Zach Garoffolo of the Fairfield Ludlowe wrestling team.

On the girls side: Cayleigh Griffin of the Trinity Catholic girls basketball team, Talisha Peeler of the Bridgeport Central girls basketball team and Angie Wacek of the Greenwich gymnastics team.

The winner, who will be given a plaque and T-shirt from BlueStreak, will be announced tomorrow morning.

The best referees in sports, as they say, often go unnoticed. It is only when a perceived or real mistake is made that the spotlight is turned their way.

“When was the last time you watched a professional game, an NFL game or a college game and thought that the refs had done a great job?,” asked Joe Gintoli, the secretary-treasurer of the Fairfield County board of the International Association of Approved Basketball Officials, the governing body for basketball referees.

Next week the local group of over 200 officials will be going out of their way to call attention to themselves.

And no one will be complaining.

For the third straight year, the group will be using pink whistles during all games as part of their promotion of “Blow The Whistle On Cancer,” a national fundraiser.

Working both with the Coaches vs. Cancer Foundation and the American Cancer Society, all the officials will be donating part or all of their pay from games. There will also be pink megaphones at the entrance to each gymnasium for fans to make contributions. Fifteen schools are going to allow their cheerleaders to go into the stands to collect at halftime of games.

“This is a good win for everybody,” said Gintoli, who is the New England representative to the national committee. “Our board does something every year. We do more than blow a whistle.”

Two years ago, the Fairfield County board of IAABO raised $6,000. Last year it raised $7,200. Both times it was the No. 1 board in the country, and Connecticut raised more money than any state.

Gintoli said the county officials have raised around $75,000 through an assortment of endeavors going back to 1991.

Gintoli has worked college games exclusively for the past five years, though he has remained as an administrator on the high school level. He was always considered someone coaches wanted on the court for a big game.

Next week’s events are especially important to Gintoli: he has been a cancer survivor for 19 years.

“This is important for everybody, but it means so much more to me personally,” Gintoli said. “We have had a few members of the board touched by cancer and lost members to cancer.”

While inherently officials in all sports have a thankless task that often makes their relationships with coaches and fans appear adversarial, hopefully next week everyone will follow their lead in this admirable cause.

To get more information or to make a donation, you can contact Gintoli at jgintoli@aol.com

Andrew Kimberly of the Fairfield Ludlowe boys basketball team and Addie McKeon of the Greenwich girls hockey team have been named co-winners of the BlueStreak-Overtime FCIAC Player of the Week award.

Kimberly and McKeon will receive plaques and T-shirts from BlueStreak.

Kimberly had a big week for the Falcons, with 22 points and 13 rebounds in a double-overtime victory over New Canaan and 29 points and 16 rebounds in a 58-55 loss to Harding.

McKeon, a senior goaltender, was equally impressive, stopping 19 out of 20 shots in a win over Wilton and then stopping 31 out of 32 shots as Greenwich defeated New Canaan, 2-1.

Nominations for next week’s award will be accepted starting at noon today and run until noon next Tuesday.

Here again are the instructions for nominating an athlete.

People seemed to write off the Trinity Catholic High School girls basketball team after it opened the season with a pair of losses.

But the Crusaders have come storming back with eight straight wins, the most impressive being tonight’s 48-37 decision over Danbury.

Trinity gets strong inside play from sisters Cayleigh and Mackenzie Griffin, and Eileen Ornousky, has a defensive stopper in Clare O’Leary, a good point guard in Erin Sottosanti and an underrated bench.

In a wide-open league, the Crusaders showed tonight they are as capable as anyone of winning the conference title.

I caught up with Trinity coach Tom Kriz after tonight’s game. He discussed the reasons for his team’s success, against the Hatters and during their recent roll.