Overtime

Mike Rivas

Mackenzie Begley

Mike Rivas of the Trinity Catholic football team, Nate Ryan of the Fairfield Ludlowe football team, Mackenzie Begley of the Darien volleyball team and Maddy McCaffery of the Fairfield Ludlowe volleyball team are this week’s winners of the BlueStreak-Overtime FCIAC Player of the Week awards.

Rivas, Ryan, Begley and McCaffery will each receive plaques and T-shirts from BlueStreak.

Rivas rushed for 230 yards and three touchdowns to lead the Crusaders to the city title with a 45-28 win over Stamford, while Ryan finished with 299 yards rushing, three touchdowns and a two-point conversion to help the Falcons to their first victory of the season, 26-20, over Westhill.

Begley, the Blue Wave’s setter, finished with 24 assists, 10 service points, eight digs and four aces against Guilford and 23 assists, seven digs and four service points to lead the team to the semifinal round of the state tournament. McCaffery had 48 kills, 27 digs and seven aces in state tournament wins over Ridgefield and Staples as the Falcons reached the semifinals.

Next week will be the final week for the award before we select our Male and Female Fall Players of the Year. Nominations are open now until Tuesday at noon for this week’s winners.

To nominate an athlete, click on the replica of the T-shirt the winners receive on the right-hand side of this blog, below the BlueStreak ad. Then email in the name of the person you are nominating. Please include all of the player’s statistics for the week as well as the team results.

The award will be judged on games/matches played Monday through Saturday of each week. Please wait until an athlete is done competing for the week to submit your nomination.

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It will be interesting this week to see if there is much of an outcry because Trumbull will be hosting the FCIAC championship game against Darien. The Blue Wave did attempt to have the game moved but were turned down.

With Boyle Stadium not an option because of the condition of the field, the league had few choices of places that could accommodate a large crowd, had seating on both sides of the field and where the gate could be controlled (that last factor is the reason Wilton was ruled out).

Football is not comparable to other sports, but many other sports have had member schools host league championships. Fairfield Ludlowe hosts the volleyball and girls basketball finals, and Fairfield Warde has hosted the boys basketball final.

If this becomes a pressing concern, the one thing the FCIAC could look into is having secondary sites ready if the original host school reaches a final.

— Friday night’s game will not be lacking for storylines. How many people had a Darien-Trumbull final inked in at the start of the season? Not many. Credit goes to the Eagles for fighting back from a midseason loss to get to the championship game, which has not happened often recently, and to Darien for making it through the season undefeated. Many have pointed out the Blue Wave had one of the league’s easiest schedules (we will touch on that in a second). This will be their chance to silence the skeptics.

The two coaches, Darien’s Rob Trifone and Trumbull’s Bob Maffei, were once teammates at the former Andrew Warde High School in Fairfield.

— One of the more interesting contrasts is the plight of the Darien and New Canaan teams, which will play each other on Thanksgiving Day. The Blue Wave have reached the final without playing eight of the nine schools beside themselves currently ranked in the top 10 in the FCIAC standings. The one game was a 13-10 win over St. Joseph.

Darien is currently ranked second in the Class L rankings; the top eight qualify for the playoffs. New Canaan, which has one of the state’s most explosive offenses and, ironically, saw its one defeat come against St. Joseph, played a weak early-season schedule, one reason it is ranked 10th right now in Class L. It is possible Darien could lose to Trumbull — the game does not count toward the state playoffs — and to New Canaan, yet qualify for the CIAC Tournament while the one-loss Rams would sit home.

New Canaan coach Lou Marinelli, not happy about the scenario, was pragmatic discussing it Friday night after a win over Bridgeport Central. The Rams snuck into the state playoffs in 2001 with a 6-3-1 record and won the title.

“I guess things equal out,” Marinelli said.

— The football schedule is set for the next four years, though Marinelli, the head of the football committee, said it is plausible it could be re-visited if a better system was devised. Right now you have three schools in Bridgeport and Stamford that have to play each other, plus the Thanksgiving rivalry games.

I’m not sure if it would work, but I had an idea that two coaches thought was interesting if it could be fine-tuned. Basically, it would be somewhat similar to what happens in soccer; teams are only allowed to play 15 regular-season games and thus miss three conference opponents.

How about setting up two divisions, but teams would only play six or seven intra-division games and two crossover games (the nine-team division would have to pick up out of conference games)? This is far from a perfect solution, but you would get rid of the point system, have true division champions and if teams within a division played 60 or 70 percent of the same schedule, it is more equitable than the current format.

I’ll have to fool around with this one when I have time.

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As I mentioned on last night’s blog post, we wanted to do something special to pay tribute to the Danbury High School football team in the aftermath of the death of Bo Williams, its popular volunteer assistant coach who died of a heart attack last week at the age of 56.

We didn’t think it was fitting to have the Hatters as a finalist for the Overtime Team of the Week award because you just cannot set up a vote asking people to weigh a team dealing with a tragedy against a team celebrating a win.

Still, we wanted to do something to recognize the Danbury players and the poise they showed in coming back to play a game just three days after the loss of their coach.

Thus, after talking today to Matt Cole of blog sponsor BlueStreak Sports Training, and more importantly Hatters coach Dan Donovan, we are also naming the Hatters an Overtime Team of the Week. We will give them a plaque and a jersey with Williams’ name on the back and the uniform No. 1, which Donovan wanted, for the team to display wherever it sees fit.

It is our small way of joining the many people who have reached out to the program in its time of need.

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One of the most-asked questions as we head to the final weeks of the regular season is all the scenarios that will lead to the 32-team playoff field in the new four-division, eight-team format.

Matt Fischer, the CIAC’s information specialist, who has been hitting nothing but grand slams of late — an iPhone app, the addition of rosters for all schools in all sports — has done it again. He came up with a computer program that figured out all the possibilities, and will be updated as results come in so the media and fans can stay current. It will make Thanksgiving afternoon easy on all of us.

Rather than spell everything out for the local teams, click here on the playoff point standings to stay current.

On behalf of all of us, thanks Matt.

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Each Saturday night, in setting up the Overtime Team of the Week award, I always text the three committee members — Sean Patrick Bowley, Pat Pickens and Tim Parry — with the three finalists, and last night I let them know that I was selecting Trumbull, Trinity Catholic and St. Joseph as this week’s candidates.

Tim texted me back and informed me he was voting for Danbury, out of respect for what the Hatters had to go through this week in the aftermath of the tragic death Wednesday night of Bo Williams, a popular volunteer assistant who died of a heart attack at the age of 56.

Both Tim and Sean — we spoke this morning about this week’s finalists — were at Danbury’s game with Fairfield Warde yesterday, and both wrote passionately about the emotional scene of players who were trying to deal with two losses, one of great consequence and one that matters little in the grand scheme of things.

I just got in after being out all day to find an email from a reader with a link to a post Tim wrote today on his FCIAC Football blog — you can read it here — defending his choice of Danbury as a write-in candidate.

At the end of the email, the person who sent it to me wrote, “You must really be mad at Tim.”

I’m not. I respect him, and his opinion.

And I’m not going to debate Tim’s argument for one reason: I agree with everything he wrote.

You cannot measure what the Hatters experienced this week with Trumbull clinching a berth in the FCIAC championship game, Trinity Catholic winning the Stamford city football title and St. Joseph beating Greenwich for the first time ever. What Danbury went through is a true life experience. What the other three teams went through just appears to be.

And that’s why I opted not to include Danbury as a finalist this week for the award. I just don’t think it is fair to put what the Hatters have gone through up for a vote, to measure the value of a life against the outcome of a football game. It can’t be done.

Similarly, this award is also meant to be both fun and in a small way recognize the accomplishments of high school athletes. We don’t pretend it is anything more.

My thoughts go out to the Williams family and the entire Danbury football community. And we plan on doing our own small part to try and honor Williams’ memory and pay tribute to the players he coached. I have some ideas but have to discuss them with a few people, most importantly Danbury head coach Dan Donovan. We have played phone tag today.

I guess the best way to wrap this up is to suggest you go to Tim’s post and read the words from the Danbury assistant who nominated the team for an award on his blog. It sums things up better than I ever could, and is a reminder that football games are just that, games.

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Moments after the Westhill girls soccer team’s 1-0 quarterfinal win over Hall this afternoon, as their teammates left the field, goalkeeper Jenn Osher and forward Lizzie Van Name were sitting close to the team’s bench, quietly talking.

“This is our last game here and we just want to stay a little longer,” Osher, a senior who is one of the city of Stamford’s most reflective and interesting athletes, said. “This is our field. We don’t want to leave yet.”

While the seniors played their last game on the field, they have not played their final game. The Vikings are now two wins away from defending their Class LL title, which would be an amazing accomplishment considering they started the 2009 playoffs with little on their postseason resume.

Nancy Souza, the mother of Westhill midfielder Allie Souza, took a number of good shots at the game today and allowed us to share them with you.

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Tessa Dunster raises her arms triumphantly as her game-winning goal goes into the net.

Dunster is greeted by her teammates after the goal.

Dunster is stopped on a first-half chance by Hall goalkeeper Madison Hooper.

Westhill’s Nicole Pellicano (right) battles a Hall player for a 50-50 ball.

The Vikings’ Julia Busto tries to get her head on a crossing ball.

One team that has already won the title and another that is in contention for the first time are among the three finalists for the Overtime Team of the Week award, sponsored by BlueStreak Sports Training, Garden Catering and the Stamford Advocate.

Your choices are: Trumbull, which clinched a berth in the FCIAC championship game with a dramatic 15-13 win over Staples; Trinity Catholic, which won the city championship for the first time in five years with a 42-28 win over Stamford; and St. Joseph, which remained in the hunt for a state playoff berth with a 22-20 victory over Greenwich.

The winning team, thanks to BlueStreak and Garden Catering, will receive a plaque and 60 T-Shirts with the team helmet and lettering in the front in the primary color of the school.

The voting is open until noon on Wednesday and will count for 50 percent. The other half will come from the decision of a committee made up of Sean Patrick Bowley, the online sports producer for Hearst Connecticut Newspapers, Pat Pickens, the sports editor of the Fairfield Citizen-News, and Tim Parry, who runs the FCIAC Football Blog.

If the decision of the voters and the majority of the committee differs, the tie will be settled by The Advocate sports department.

This will be the second to last week for the award. The final one will come after the Thankgiving holiday games. Football teams will also be considered for the forthcoming Overtime Fall Team of the Year.

So vote below and check back to find out who is the Overtime Football Team of the Week.

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Former King football star Nate Collins was signed by the Jacksonville Jaguars yesterday off the New York Giants’ practice squad.

Collins confirmed the news in a text message to me this morning, moments after landing in Jacksonville. He said he is hoping to be in uniform for tomorrow’s game against the Texans.

Collins played his college ball at Virginia.

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