Sports

Knight and Conley Strike Gold at FCIAC Indoor Track Championships

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Two New Canaan track and field athletes took first place in their respective events at Thursday’s FCIAC boys indoor championship held at New Haven’s Floyd Little Athletic Center. Sean Knight blew away the field in the 55-meter hurdles, as the junior established a personal-best time of 7.86 seconds. Sophomore Jack Conley took home the gold in the shot put. Conley’s throw of 48’3″ narrowly edged his older brother Will Conley by a mere half-inch. The Rams finished in fifth place as a team, as Danbury won its fourth consecutive conference indoor title.

Sports

Déjà Vu All Over Again: Darien Football Edges New Canaan 28-21 for FCIAC Championship

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Leave it to the career state record holder to leave his mark when it counted the most. With Darien leading New Canaan 28-21 in the waning minutes of the fourth quarter of the 2015 FCIAC Championship at Stamford’s Boyle Stadium, Darien defensive end Mark Evanchick dropped Rams quarterback Michael Collins for his first sack of the game, forcing a turnover on downs and all but clinching the conference title for the Blue Wave. The Rams would get one more shot to tie the game, but a New Canaan fumble was recovered by Darien at midfield with 1:08 left in the game, sealing the championship for the Wave. It was the second consecutive year the Blue Wave topped the Rams for the FCIAC title, having won last year’s contest by the same 28-21 score. It was also Darien’s fourth straight Turkey Bowl win, as New Canaan has not won the annual Thanksgiving Day matchup since 2011. “We hadn’t really been tested, but we were tested today,” Darien head coach Rob Trifone told NewCanaanite.com.

Sports

Turkey Bowl Essentials: A Breakdown of the New Canaan-Darien 2015 FCIAC Championship

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When it was generally accepted that last season’s FCIAC Championship would probably be the last in conference history, most agreed that the heart-stopping contest between New Canaan and Darien was a fitting end to a storied history of title games. Fortunately for area high school football players, coaches and fans, the Blue Wave’s 28-21 win over the Rams last Thanksgiving would not be the final chapter—the FCIAC was able to work things out to salvage the conference championship game, the 50th in league history. And wouldn’t you know what two teams would end up facing each other in the Turkey Bowl in 2015? Yep…you guessed it. The stage is set once again as the league’s most bitter rivals will face off Thanksgiving morning at historic Boyle Stadium in Stamford.

Around Town

Turkey Bowl Essentials: A Breakdown of the New Canaan-Darien FCIAC Championship

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If Thursday’s FCIAC Championship between New Canaan and Darien is indeed the final conference title game, you couldn’t dream up a more fitting coda to what was once the centerpiece of the Connecticut football world. From the inaugural game in 1966, to the classic New Canaan-Stamford games of the late ’60s-mid ‘70s, right on up through the dominance of Greenwich in the ’80s there was no bigger game in the state—save Harvard-Yale—than the FCIAC Championship when it was played on Thanksgiving at Boyle Stadium. The game would lose some of its luster when the league decreed Thanksgiving to be a day of “rivalry” games in 1994. But for most of us who grew up in the area, the real Turkey Bowl was the FCIAC Championship of old. Now a scheduling mandate from the CIAC might do away with the contest altogether.