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Incident Involving New Canaan Youth Football Game At Center of Fairfield County Football League Lawsuit
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Saying a New Canaan youth football player roughed up one of his, and that the incident’s fallout led to his being unfairly ousted, a former assistant coach in Fairfield is suing the nonprofit organization that oversees a countywide league. According to a lawsuit filed recently by a former assistant coach of the Fairfield Wildcats team of the Fairfield County Football League, a New Canaan sixth-grade player during a scrimmage last summer kicked a Wildcat “in the back of the head with great force while the Wildcats player was defenseless on the ground after completion of a play.”
In response, the plaintiff, Robert O’Connell, “reprimanded the offending player and directed him to return to his coaches,” according to the lawsuit, filed July 27 in state Superior Court and embedded below as a PDF. “Subsequently, the plaintiff approached the offending player’s [New Canaan] coach and informed him of what had just happened, in reply to which the player’s coach directed foul language toward the plaintiff and aggressively approached him whereupon, rather than engage and escalate the situation, the plaintiff turned and walked away.”
The lawsuit does not name the players or New Canaan coach involved, yet it says that largely as a result of the incident and what Wildcats board members claim to have happened, O’Connell was suspended from coaching in the league and his son, by extension, was forced to undergo an awkward re-registration that effectively prevented him from playing in it, as well. The lawsuit names the FCFL and the Fairfield Wildcats as defendants, as well as the Wildcats’ board president, Clarence Zachary, and vice president, Timothy Ihlefeld. The Wildcats and its officers are represented by New Canaan’s Lambert Toohey & Rucci LLC, while O’Connell is represented by Green & Gross PC of Bridgeport and the FCFL of Wilton’s Bayer & Black PC.