Danny Melzer

‘It Was Nothing More Than a Dream’: New Canaan’s Gus Larson Plays in NCAA March Madness Tourney

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Gus Larson already had several years of competitive basketball under his belt—starting in the New Canaan youth league as a West School fourth-grader and playing through his sophomore year at New Canaan High School—before he even dreamed of playing Division 1 hoops. It was at NCHS, Larson recalled last Thursday afternoon, that he “started to take basketball really seriously and realized that I had the potential to do something with basketball.”

“I started to grow quite tall,” Larson, who wrapped up his collegiate career as a 6’10” center for Queens University of Charlotte the week before, told NewCanaanite.com. “I loved to play, I loved to be in the gym, and [NCHS coach] Danny Melzer was kind enough to let me use the shooting gun during some of my lunch breaks at New Canaan High School. And so at that time you start to take it seriously. But I never really dreamed of playing Division 1 basketball at that point, much less the March Madness tournament.

Around Town

On Ponus, a Family’s Barn Restoration Project That’s Benefitting the Larger New Canaan Community

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From the start, the antique barn out back drew the Larsons to the 2-acre Ponus Ridge property and Colonial home they moved into 18 months ago. In plain view at the bottom of a hill that runs toward the rear property line, the red, cupola-topped ca. 1910 structure not only graced the tree-lined view but also had potential for practical use for the active family which includes three boys and is headed by a Midwest native dad who grew up on a sheep ranch and mom from Dallas. When last winter’s snowfall took a massive toll on the structurally deteriorating barn—the roof began to sag, on the verge of collapse—the Larsons conceived of one way they might pull together the wood to restore it, namely, by seeing whether any of the dead or dying trees already surrounding their new home could be used. “It’s been fascinating for all of us and exciting for all of us,” Kristina Larson said on a recent afternoon as she stood about halfway down the hill, near five piles of wood that had been salvaged from the carefully dismantled barn.