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District Officials To Expand Dunning’s Capacity to 4,000-Plus for Turkey Bowl

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District officials say Dunning Stadium will have capacity for about 4,200 attendees for Thanksgiving morning’s Turkey Bowl, and that New Canaan High School as the home team in this year’s rival game will sell 60 percent of the tickets, Darien 40 percent. Asked about a major change in the logistics of the hugely popular football game—under which only advanced, not game-day, tickets will be sold (details below)—NCHS Athletic Director Jay Egan said the district has been keeping “very close accounts this year of comped tickets, student passes and the whole nine yards, so we know how many people are in [Dunning] Stadium.”

The 4,000-plus capacity figure represents 2,000 in regular seating, 1,000 in standing-room, and another 1,000-plus between larger bleachers and smaller units from baseball and softball facilities that are being brought in, Egan said. Superintendent of Schools Dr. Bryan Luizzi, asked about the plans during a presentation before the Town Council on Wednesday night, noted that Boyle Stadium (capacity 10,000) was not available this year for the Rams-Blue Wave game. While the FCIAC has done away with its own conference championship game, the league has preserved the Thanksgiving Day rival games. This year’s Stamford High School-Westhill High School game is to be played at Boyle, home of the SHS Black Knights.

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PHOTOS: 13 NCHS Seniors Sign Early Letters of Intent To Play Sports in College

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Thirteen New Canaan High School student-athletes signed early Letters of Intent on Wednesday to play sports in college starting next year. The gallery above includes photos from a signing ceremony overseen by NCHS Athletic Director Jay Egan, held at in the auxiliary gym at New Canaan High School. We also asked each student about how their experience doing youth and/or high school and varsity-level sports in town helped prepare them for college. (The Ivy League-bound seniors’ letters could be called “likely letters” in that those schools, though they offer no athletics scholarships per se, can issue an agreements signifying that they’re committed to admitting a recruited athlete.)

The tally of 13 marks the largest ever group of NCHS student-athletes signing the early letters, Egan said.

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New Canaan To Honor Town’s Olympic Athletes During Sept. 16 Rams Football Game at Dunning

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Locals will help celebrate the milestone installation of new artificial turf at Dunning Field with a special ceremony honoring three outstanding athletes who call New Canaan their hometown. On Friday, Sept. 16—the night of the New Canaan High School varsity Rams football team’s home game, at 7 p.m. versus Ridgefield—Olympians Andrew Campbell Jr., Charlie Cole and Thomas Dunstan will be recognized for making it all the way to Rio de Janeiro in rowing (Campbell and Cole) and water polo (Dunstan). Conceived and organized by New Canaan resident Tucker Murphy, with coordination from others including NCHS Athletic Director Jay Egan and First Selectman Rob Mallozzi, plans for the 16th include a proclamation read by New Canaan’s highest elected official and possibly video clips of the athletes in action on the scoreboard screen. “We had three kids from New Canaan, Connecticut go to the Olympics and do very, very well—just getting there is a huge feat—so why not come together and show them how proud we are of them and all they’ve accomplished?” Murphy said.

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‘A Milestone For This Town’: Residents Form Private Group To Support New Canaan’s Athletic Facilities; Dunning, NCHS Track On Radar

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Faced with a pressing need to re-turf New Canaan’s premier sports field prior to the start of the fall season, 20 town residents six weeks ago formed a new nonprofit foundation focused on that project and several others. In that very short amount of time, thanks to generous donors representing a wide cross-section of the community, the New Canaan Athletic Foundation (here on Facebook and here on Twitter) not only raised more than $500,000 needed to replace the aging turf at Dunning Stadium, but also sketched out a long-term vision for supporting athletic facilities in town. “It is going to be a community organization, so we are contemplating all sports—not just, say, football, soccer and lacrosse,” said Mike Benevento, chairman of the NCAF board of directors. A New Canaan resident for 13 years and professional asset manager with four kids ranging in ages from 3 to 12, Benevento added: “It’s for athletic projects that can benefit the community as a whole, and athletic facilities. It’s a broad initiative.”

News of the newly formed organization broke Tuesday during a regular meeting of the Board of Selectmen, when a $554,490 contract was approved for Rockland, Mass.-based R.A.D. Sports to replace the artificial turf at Dunning.

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‘I Am Extremely Honored’: NCHS Hires New Girls Varsity Soccer Coach

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New Canaan High School Athletic Director Jay Egan on Thursday afternoon notified local soccer families that the head varsity soccer coach at Brien McMahon had been hired away to fill the same role for the Rams.

Rich Hickson was selected from a final pool of three candidates because he “demonstrated all qualities and attributes we had identified as important for our position.”

“These included having been a head coach in the FCIAC, understanding how to build and maintain positive team dynamics, technical and tactical instructional expertise and the willingness to be involved with our players as they come through youth soccer as well as supporting them if they are interested in pursuing college soccer opportunities. Rich checked all the boxes,” Egan said. What follows is a letter of introduction from Hickson:

Hi all,

I would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself as New Canaan High School’s new varsity soccer coach. I am extremely honored to have been given this opportunity and I am looking forward to getting to know our players and everything else the job entails. 

I have been coaching soccer professionally in America for 10 years and during this time, have cultivated a well-rounded understanding of coaching all age groups, levels, and abilities. My experience at the high school level began in 2008 when I was fortunate enough to have been the assistant for Westhill’s girls varsity team. While I was a part of the program, the team made the state finals two years in a row, winning their first appearance and narrowly losing in their second.