New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Battle of ‘brothers’ ends with a Bristol Central win
HARTFORD — It was a matchup between two of the state’s best public school players — Bristol Central’s Victor Rosa and Hartford Public’s Christian Garcia — players so good their coaches made them quarterbacks to ensure the ball at least started in their hands.
It was the biggest game of the year for both schools, whose playoff fortunes were ships passing in the night. Bristol Central was on the upswing and Hartford Public on the down when they met Saturday afternoon.
So what were these two stars doing last week to prepare for this big moment?
They worked out together at Supreme Athlete training — their home base in Hartford — just five days previously.
While the thought of rivals fraternizing before the big game might seem counter-intuitive — “Hey, this isn’t the ’80s anymore!” Bristol Central coach Jeff Papazian said with a laugh when it was mentioned to him — for Rosa it was a simple equation.
“We’re brothers,” Rosa, a 6-foot, 195-pound UConn commit, said of Garcia, a 5-10, 175-pound transfer from Bloomfield. “We’re brothers off the field. When you play football, you gotta do what you gotta do when you get to the field. But we’re brothers off the field.”
In other words, it’s not personal; it was strictly business.
It was a sentiment personified Saturday. Putting their friendship aside, the two traded haymakers all afternoon, ringing up nearly 800 yards of total offense and accounting for 11 touchdowns and nine 2-point conversions apiece. Rosa fought through a nagging groin injury and Garcia had to drag his team back from several 2-point deficits.
“I played through it,” Rosa said of his injury. “It’s football. It’s a hard game.”
It finally ended when Rosa met a scrambling Garcia at the 2-yard line, hit and dragged him to the deck alongside teammate Justin Despins as time expired on a 52-48 Bristol Central victory.
And then Rosa immediately found his crestfallen friend to offer his condolences before joining his teammates in celebrating their fourth consecutive victory.
“I saw Christian scrambling like he always does; they had no receivers in the backfield. I had to step up and make a play.”
Bristol Central, which hasn’t made the state playoffs since 1987, inched a bit closer to that goal.
The Rams sat in sixth place in what is shaping up to be a competitive Class L playoff standings, which includes St. Joseph, Maloney, Windsor, Cheshire, Masuk, and Newington — among many others — vying for the eight spots.
There are also three Connecticut Technical Conference programs — Cheney Tech and co-ops Quinebaug and Thames River in the mix.
It was a crushing blow for Hartford Public, whose coach, Harry Bellucci, is retiring after the year. Without the playoff points a win over Bristol Central would have produced, the Owls are almost assuredly out of the running in Class L.
PLAYOFF PICTURE
It’s far, far too early to legitimately look at the four CIAC playoff divisions, but you can begin to see just how tough each class is becoming by the number of unbeaten and one-loss teams. There are eight playoff spots in each class determined by CIAC playoff points. The more there are, the tougher it gets to qualify.
As mentioned, Class L appears to be the toughest of the bunch. There are only four unbeaten teams remaining.
One of them is St. Joseph, the state’s No. 2-ranked team in the GameTimeCT Top 10 poll. The other three are the aforementioned Tech programs, who all play each other in the season’s second half, but one and maybe even two have good shots to qualify.
Tougher still, there are 14 teams remaining with one loss.
In Class LL there are five unbeaten teams remaining: Hall, Darien, Norwalk, Hamden and New Canaan — all except Hamden are ranked in the GameTimeCT Top 10. There are eight one-loss teams behind them.
In Class M, there are three unbeaten teams remaining — Granby/Canton, Killingly and Coginchaug Co-Op — and only six oneloss teams.
And in Class S, there are six unbeaten teams remaining — Bloomfield, New Fairfield, Cromwell/Portland, Seymour, Ansonia and Ledyard and seven one-loss teams.
BYE BYE BYE
Week 5 was all about the bye. And so will the upcoming Week 6.
If your team wasn’t on the bye, you were talking about the bye. As in, we’re happy we won going into the bye. Or this was a chance to reflect on a tough loss, going into the bye.
There were 39 games played in Week 5, roughly 58 percent of a week’s normal slate, with a majority of the SCC, FCIAC, SWC,
ECC and CTC taking the week off.
This week will feature 44 games as those leagues return and the CCC, NVL and Pequot leagues take the bye. A handful of games used the bye to rearrange their schedules due to COVID postponements.
After this week, the next near-universal bye week is the one before Thanksgiving, Nov. 18-19. As of now, there are 32 games scheduled for that weekend.
ALLIANCE UPDATE
There were just four Connecticut HS Football Scheduling Alliance games played in Week 5, with most of the participating leagues taking the week off.
The SCC went 2-0, the SWC 1-0, the FCIAC 0-1, the ECC 0-2 and Independent Capital Prep/Achievement First won the lone game against the CCC (0-1).
Overall, the FCIAC has fared the best with a 14-12 (.560) Alliance record, followed by the SWC (11-9, .550), CCC (6-7, .462), SCC (17-20, .459) and ECC (3-6, .333). Capital Prep is 2-1.
BY THE NUMBERS
100: Consecutive games Ansonia has won against teams from the Naugatuck Valley League dating back to Thanksgiving Day, 2010, when the Chargers lost to Naugatuck 38-20. Ansonia hasn’t lost to a league opponent since, including a 51-16 Class S semifinal win over Seymour, a 51-12 2013 Class S championship victory over Woodland and NVL championship game wins over Woodland (twice) and Holy Cross. The Chargers’ official NVL regular-season win streak is 95. … The 5-0 Chargers are idle this week but will face rival 5-0 Seymour on Thursday, Nov. 21, at Jarvis Stadium. Seymour hasn’t beaten Ansonia since 2004 — the last time Ansonia didn’t qualify for the state playoffs.