‘They Just Refused to Lose’: Recalling New Canaan Football’s Historic Undefeated 2008 Season, 10 Years Later

The year 2008 was supposed to be about rebuilding for the New Canaan Rams football program: The team was ranked in the bottom half of the FCIAC’s preseason polls and only a handful of starters from the previous season were returning. They were not expected to accomplish anything special. Yet they ended up doing exactly that, with unforeseen contributions from a particularly tight-knit squad that would post an undefeated record heading into a dramatic showdown versus New Canaan’s longtime rival before moving on to states—cementing a legacy whose storybook season launched 10 years ago this month. Behind center

One of the squad’s returning starters, tri-captain Nate Quinn, switched from defense to quarterback for 2008, marking a dramatic turnaround for what New Canaan had been fielding in recent years at the all-important position. The Rams had won consecutive state titles in 2006 and 2007 with guys like Curt Casali and Charlie Westfal at QB.

‘Complete Your Path’: New Canaan Football’s Jarrett Torromeo

The 2015 New Canaan Rams football season is already rife with story lines: the 4-0 start, senior quarterback Michael Collins’ record-setting TD passing pace, this weekend’s “Marinelli Bowl,” as Lou and the Rams take on Johnny and the Greenwich Cardinals. That said, the best storyline—certainly the most poignant—might be that of NCHS senior Jarrett Torromeo. Ever since he started playing football in the third grade, Jarrett ‘JT’ Torromeo dreamed of being a New Canaan Ram. His best childhood memories include New Canaan Football’s “Youth Night,” when grade school kids run across Dunning Field in front of a packed house during halftime of a Rams game. “You’d see the big stands and to me it looked like there were thousands of people there,” Torromeo told NewCanaanite.com.