The Road to Boyle

Can anyone tell me who is running against AmyMarie Vizzo-Paniccia and Michelle Lyons for City Council in the 134th district?

I guess if I went to hazardous waste day last Saturday I would have been bombarded with dozens of fliers as I waited in line to dispose of an old paint can.

But I didn’t, and I can’t even find this information online. Not on the City of Bridgeport Website (which tells me the next election is Nov. 4, 2008), not on the State Website. Heck, I can’t even Google it, no matter what search terms I use.

And I’m a fairly intelligent guy, mind you.

Bottom line is I want to know who’s running against the Democrats in my district – Vizzo-Paniccia and Lyons. Why? Because if they are not running unopposed, I will gladly vote against them.

I don’t care if my fellow Democrats blacklist me from whatever I can be blacklisted from, the bottom line is I’m voting for the best candidate available. If it means I vote for an empty chair, I will.

Here’s two reasons:

One of the two candidates stopped by my house over the weekend and stuck a Xeroxed flier in my door with a hand-written note asking for her vote. On it was a recent Letter to the Editor published in Bridgeport News and written by council members urging residents to stand up and fight a proposed building at Old Town and Main.

The reason: The letter said it didn’t want another dormitory to built on Eckert St. like the one that was supposed to be a medical building. But here’s the catch. City Council approved this “medical building,” that suddenly became a dorm. If they were that concern, why wasn’t anything to stop this “dorm” from going up? (By the way, it’s not a dorm, it’s housing that is being rented to Sacred Heart students)

The last straw was today, when I got a Re-Elect Vizzo-Paniccia/Lyons flier in the mail.

On it is the following quote:

The combined budget, which was approved requires a new tax rate of 38.7 mills, a decrease from the current rate of 44.6 mills

Connecticut Post

Makes you think Vizzo-Paniccia and Lyons got this done, and that you should vote for them because of that cap feather.

Then I found this gem on Only in Bridgeport:

The council passed the budget 16-3 with Walsh and North End Council members AmyMarie Vizzo-Paniccia and Michelle Lyons voting against the budget.

So why are Vizzo-Paniccia and Lyons bragging about getting the mill rate down when they voted against the budget?

Maybe they think no one in the City of Bridgeport will care. Maybe they think deception works?

Well this hard-working Bridgeport tax payer does care, and Vizzo-Paniccia and Lyons won’t get my vote.

What does this have to do with high school football? Well they represent kids who go to Bridgeport Central and Notre Dame-Fairfield, as well as other high school football players. That’s good enough for me.

Staples in No. 2 in the latest coaches poll, and suddenly it’s in for the fight of its life against a team with a .500 record.

Yep, high school football is always interesting.

All the hype this week is on Staples quarterback Brandon Pacilio’s broken leg, which requires season-ending surgery.

Now everyone is talking fire and brimstone and a Ludlowe upset…

Now Ludlowe has come a long way since quarterback Rob Ferrara and linebacker-fullback Dan Farina returned from injuries. And you can’t look down on the Falcons’ 3-3 win streak, no matter who those wins were against. Keep in mind that Ludlowe battled hard against New Canaan and Ridgefield, who have a combined 11-1 record.

And without its offensive leader, Staples may struggle. But in making his first career start, senior quarterback Keith Gelman should do fine. Yes, he will have to run the ball a lot, but should have Ryan Burke back from injury to pair up in the backfield with Matt Kelly.

Plus, Staples showed it can run the Wildcat when they played Ridgefield, so the pressure won’t be all on Gelman.

Ludlowe has played some very solid defense, and Thomas Lipp and Tom Nagy are among the best ends in the league. But Staples’ defense has been the story on 2009 so far. Jake Santora and Brandon Rankowitz have done a solid job leading a defense that has allowed just 19 points on the season.

Keep in mind, too, that Ludlowe and Staples played a thriller last season, in which Staples pulled out at the end 8-7.

I say Staples pulls this one out, in a close one like they did last year. And it’ll be a low-scoring game.

Here’s the rest of my picks for Friday’s FCIAC games.

I’m very proud to return to my alma mater, Western Connecticut State University, this weekend. My father, Ray Parry, will be inducted into the Athletic Hall of Fame tonight, and it is a very joyous occasion for me and my family.

But returning to a place that still calls itself “WestConn?” Bleah, as Sean Patrick Bowley of the High School Sports Blog would say.

I’d like to say my diploma says “Western” on it, but I think is says “Connecticut State University” on it. But I’d rather have that on it than “WestConn.”

The first thing I think when I hear the acronym “WestConn” is this:

“Attention, WestConn shoppers. There is a Blue Light Special on Underwater Basket Weaving textbooks and materials in aisle seven.”

Cheap. Unsophisticated. Babyish.

And that’s a shame, because when I set foot on campus tonight, I’m sure I’m going to see a school that is all grown up. But after millions of dollars of academic and infrastructural improvements, the school still uses its baby name, “WestConn.”

You’re grown up now, WestConn, start calling yourself “Western.”

Like we did back in the early 1990s. Alphonso Robinson and I were co-editors of The Echo, the school’s student-operated newspaper, in 1991. We successfully got former school president Jim Roach and the school administration to refer to the university as “Western” instead on “WestConn.”

And that seemed to last through the 1990s. Then I saw “WestConn” overly-used in The News-Times and asked a former classmate of mine, who was a copy editor for them, why they were using it.

Turns out the school was proud to be called “WestConn,” no matter how silly sounding it was.

So how do we get Western to grow up? Well for one, students and alumni can stop calling it “WestConn.”

Another thing we can do is reach out to Paul Steinmetz, the Director of University Relations at Western and a fellow citizen blogger for Hearst Connecticut. Steinmetz is the guy who puts “WestConn” on every piece of information that goes out to the public (by order of some other higher-up at the school, I’m sure).

And hopefully, some day, the school will put on its big-boy pants and call itself by its grown-up name.

It’s a great week for the family of the late Pete Demmerle. Last night, Demmerle was inducted into the Fairfield County Sports Hall of Fame.

Saturday, Demmerle’s number 23 will be retired by New Canaan High School.

It’s just a shame Demmerle couldn’t have received these honors before he lost his long battle with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, in May of 2007.

But from everything I’ve heard about Demmerle from my former New Canaan High School teachers to my friends in the New Canaan Old Timers to the people who assembled last night at the Hall of Fame induction ceremony, Demmerle may have been too humble of a man to accept such an award anyway.

Since Demmerle was diagnosed in 1999, he was on another mission, one to help others. He became a champion for ALS awareness.

Here’s something I haven’t seen – or I should say heard – in all my years covering high school football.

Seymour needed to make some noise in its game against New Canaan, But the stands at DeBarber Field weren’t exactly crowded on a cold Friday night.

If the fans would get loud when New Canaan quarterback Turner Baty was calling the cadence, there would be a good chance the Rams would lose its composure.

So with the crowd not into it, the Seymour bench took matters into its own hands. It created the noise needed to try to rattle Baty and company.

It worked for a few plays. New Canaan was called for a delay of game, and had to call a time out. But New Canaan scored on its next drive and took the noise out of the game.

What can I say, I’m a proud son. My father, Ray Parry, is being inducted into Western Connecticut State University’s Athletic Hall of Fame on Friday night. And I want the world to know. Even if I’m shy about telling people face-to-face.

For as long as I’ve known him, my father has never been a spotlight kind of guy. He was fine in the shadows, whether it as as one of Joe Sikorski’s assistant football coaches at New Canaan High School, as the school’s equipment manager, as a lifelong science teacher, or as a father of five kids and a husband to my mother for 57 years.

Heck, it’s fitting that my father is entering Western’s Hall of Fame as a support person.

Pop retired from New Canaan in 1990, and took a part-time retirement job at Western as an equipment manager. He had experience, having done the job at New Canaan for about 15 years. So he took his strong work-ethic up to Danbury and absorbed himself in the job.

That part-time job became a full-time career. He was up there easily six days a week during the football season, making sure all the teams had what they needed and that the students under his charge were doing their jobs.

One thing to note, he didn’t receive any overtime. And when his position was turned into a full-time one, he chose not to accept the additional salary or benefits.

Not only that, my father made sure the students were responsible for were doing their classwork, that they were fed, and that they were staying out of trouble. And these college kids came to him for career advice, questions about dealing with some of the coaches they’d have to deal with, and even advice on dating, even though my father was much older than them.

Pop was also involved in the transition of the school’s athletic department from aging facilities at the school’s Midtown Campus to its new location at the O’Neil Center at the WCSU Westside Campus, and assisted in the design and configuration of the equipment facilities there.

If that’s not a Hall of Fame support person, I don’t know what is.

Congratulations, Pop. Thank you for helping to shape my Road to Boyle.

The first meeting between Warde’s Duncan DellaVolpe and New Canaan’s Lou Marinelli took place this past Friday. Here’s the game story I wrote for the Fairfield Citizen.

Here’s the interviews I did with DellaVolpe and Marinelli, courtesy of the FCIAC Football Blog:

First we have Marinelli:

And then we have DellaVolpe:

For the second time this season, there are co-recipients of the Fairfield County Player of the Week Award. The honor goes to Griffin McCarty of Ridgefield and Alex Roque of Trumbull.

The Fairfield County Player of the Week Award is sponsored by BlueStreak Sports Training and supported by the FCIAC Football Blog.

Candidates for the Fairfield County Player of the Week award are nominated either direct from their coaches, by media recommendations or by fans of the FCIAC Football Blog on Facebook.

Here’s why the staffs of BlueStreak Sports Training and the FCIAC Football Blog chose McCarty and Roque from the pool of nominees:

Even though he hadn’t taken any snaps in practice since the preseason, McCarty, a defensive back, was inserted at quarterback after the Tigers got off to a slow start against Wilbur Cross. McCarty completed six of nine passes for 99 yards and a touchdown, had an interception on defense, returned a blocked punt for a score, and then won the game with a quarterback sneak on the ensuing two-point conversion attempt.

Roque led the Eagles defense to a 21-0 win over previously-undefeated Bridgeport Central. Roque had 18 tackles, five for a loss, and an interception in the victory. Bridgeport Central entered the game averaging 47 points per game in its first three contests.

Honorary mention goes to:

• Matt Hajducky, LB, Trumbull (15 tackles, three for a loss, against Central)
• Graham Maybell, RB-DB, Darien (two rushing touchdowns, three interceptions, against Wilton)
• Rob Ferrara, QB, Ludlowe (170 passing and two touchdowns, 20 yards rushing and a score, vs. Harding)
• Brandon Pacilio, QB, Staples (9-for-10 passing, 133 yards, two touchdowns, plus one score on the ground, vs. Westhill)
• Tom McNamara, LB-RB, Warde (15 tackles, 78 yards rushing and one touchdown vs. New Canaan)
• DeAndre Harper, RB, Bassick (117 yards rushing and a school-record 94-yard touchdown run, against McMahon)
• Davonte “Petey” Franklin, RB, Bassick (99 yards rushing, an 85 yard touchdown run and a 65 tard kickoff return for a score)
• Cole Duncan, LB, New Canaan
• Cody Newton, WR, New Canaan (six catches, 163 yards vs. Warde)
• Willie Ouelette, QB-WR, New Canaan (5-for-6 passing, 139 yards, mostly from the WR position)

An archive of Fairfield County Players of the Week recipients can he found here.