Around Town

Did You Hear … ?

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A Darien-New Canaan tussle played out ahead of this week’s highly anticipated Turkey Bowl, and just a few football fields away from Dunning Stadium. At about 1 p.m. on Nov. 11, a 4-year-old miniature Australian shepherd from New Canaan attacked an 18-month-old Vizsla from Darien at Spencer’s Run, the dog park at Waveny. The local dog bit the puppy’s earflap and did enough damage to require stitching, according to a report on file with the Animal Control section of the New Canaan Police Department. “All in all, Spencer’s Run as a rule runs very, very smoothly,” said Officer Allyson Halm, head of Animal Control.

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New Canaan Baseball Unveils Dramatic Plan To Upgrade Little League Fields at Mead Park

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Officials with the nonprofit organization that oversees youth baseball in New Canaan on Wednesday unveiled a dramatic plan to improve the little league baseball fields at Mead Park with larger dimensions and new fences, light poles, bleacher areas and scoreboard. New Canaan Baseball also is seeking to reorient Gamble Field so that home plate is located where left field currently sits and the diamond fans out in the same general direction as Mellick, according to the organization’s president, Jim Higgins. “Our overall guiding principle in terms of what it is we wanted to accomplish was we wanted to stay generally within the footprint of what is there,” Higgins told members of the Park & Recreation Commission at their regular monthly meeting, held at Lapham Community Center. “We are sensitive to reorganizing anything or disrupting any other part of the park, so the plan that we have come up with is substantially within the existing boundaries of the two fields. A couple of the key goals were drainage, trying to get state-of-the-art drainage and the right materials underneath the grass, because we lose a lot of game days due to rain—and not just on the days it rains, but the drainage is not as good as it could be.

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Youth Sports Roundup: Yanks Best Sawx for A-Division Baseball Crown; Strong Showing from U14 Girls Travel Soccer Team

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NC Baseball A Division Championship: Yankees 7, Red Sox 6

In an epic extra-inning affair, the Russell Speeder’s Car Wash Yankees beat the Karl Chevrolet Red Sox in 8 innings to capture the A Division championship. Joe Ho led off the bottom of the 8th with a walk and advanced on a walk by Jacob Kozar. He scored on a clutch single to center by Brendan Bailey, one of Bailey’s game-leading three hits, to complete the comeback from 6-1. Earlier, the Yankees needed two in the bottom of the 6th to extend the game and Theo Doehla’s RBI single with two outs saved the day. Jake Valente added a two-run RBI single in the fourth.

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NC Baseball Falls To New Fairfield, 6-0, in Possible Season Finale

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After a convincing 7-1 victory Wednesday at Greenwich, ranked second in the FCIAC, the New Canaan Rams took to the field at Mead Park on Thursday afternoon needing a win over New Fairfield to clinch a spot in this year’s CIAC Class L Tournament field. It would not come. Though the Rams (7-13, 6-10 FCIAC) had one of their more reliable arms starting on the mound in Zach Lopez, who just last Wednesday notched a complete game victory, two three-run innings from New Fairfield (11-9) combined with the New Canaan bats just not coming alive proved to be too much for them to overcome as they were defeated, 6-0. When head coach Mitch Hoffman took his team out to left field after the game for possibly the final time this season, the seventh-year coach did so with a distinct message in mind. “I said to them that I learned as much about coaching and myself that they could ever imagine,” Hoffman told NewCanaanite.com.

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Lopez’s Complete Game Propels NC Baseball to 6-1 Victory over Central

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Coming into Wednesday’s contest against the Bridgeport Central Hilltoppers, New Canaan baseball had been struggling to find any offense. In their most recent four games, the team was only able to score two runs, combined. So a well-pitched game from starting pitcher Zach Lopez was needed to give the offense a chance to rediscover their punch—and Lopez delivered. The junior threw a complete-game, allowing just one run and striking out six in seven innings of work on the mound, while the offense provided him with more than enough support by plating six runs on nine hits to propel the Rams (6-10, 5-8 FCIAC) to victory over Bridgeport Central (1-14, 0-13 FCIAC), 6-1. “Zach’s been doing a great job all year,” head coach Mitch Hoffman told NewCanaanite.com.