LOOKING BACK

10 YEARS AGO

With the winter sports season just ending and the start of spring sports a week away, Norwalk High turned its attention to the fall by naming Jen Braswell its new girls volleyball coach. Braswell once played against the Lady Bears when she was an AllFCIAC and all-state player for Wilton High School in 2003. She later earned all-conference honors at Eastern Connecticut State University and has also coached high school-aged travel teams for three years. The 24-year-old Braswell still plays competitive volleyball in adult leagues in Stamford and New York City.

Norwalk’s Angelo Bruno Jr.,a senior captain and first baseman on the Stonehill College baseball team, was named the Northeast-10 Conference Player of the Week after the former Norwalk High standout batted .400, going 6 for 15 with three home runs and seven RBIs in four games by the Skyhawks. The productive week at the plate enabled Bruno to raise his season average to .346.

Meanwhile, Matt Iannazzo,

Bruno’s former NHS teammate on the 2007 FCIAC championship team, pitched eight solid innings for the University of Pittsburgh in the Panthers’ 3-2, 11-inning win over visiting Notre Dame in a Big East Conference game. The junior southpaw allowed only four hits and threw seven shutout innings before yielding a run on a sac fly in the eighth. Iannazzo was in position to gain his third win of the season when Pitt took a 2-1 lead into the ninth, but the Fighting Irish tied it with an unearned run, setting the stage for Pitt’s game-winning rally in the last of the 11th.

25 YEARS AGO

Norwalk’s Mo Vaughn, the reigning American League MVP, started the 1996 season where he left off with three hits and two RBIs in the Red Sox’s 5-3 opening-day loss to the Texas Rangers. The former Norwalk Cranbury League all-star accounted for three of Boston’s eight hits.

The city of Norwalk was in the spotlight when a pair of local amateur boxers met in the finals of the Western New England Golden Gloves in Holyoke, Mass. Shakha Moore of the NEON Boxing Club and Miguel Ortiz of the Greater Norwalk Boxing Club met for the 132-pound championship, with Moore scoring a decision to win the title and advance to the New England Golden Gloves.

Ten-year-old Rockel Willis of the Norwalk Thunderbird Track Club set a new Madison Square Garden record for her age group when she cleared 4 feet, 9 inches in the high jump at the Colgate Women’s Games. The Kendall School fifth-grader, who earned a $1,000 educational grant for her achievement, beat the previous record by 2 feet.

50 YEARS AGO

Over two dozen Norwalkers traveled to New York’s Madison Square Garden to watch native son Calvin Murphy make his third visit to the famed arena as an NBA rookie. The former Norwalk High School great gave his hometown fans plenty to cheer about, coming off the bench to score 29 points in 27 minutes and help the San Diego Rockets post a 125-109 win over the defending world champion Knicks. The 5-foot-9 guard, who shot 11 for 17 from the floor, also had four steals, two assists and a pair of blocked shots as the Rockets beat New York for the first time in the franchise’s four-year history. Murphy, who’s averaging 15.8 ppg., scored 23 points in each of his first two visits to MSG this season.

Murphy’s younger brother,

Sammy Miller, who led Norwalk High to the FCIAC East Division title, and Brien McMahon standout Gary Lawrence were two of the five players selected to the 1970-71All-FCIAC first team. Lawrence, a senior and first-team repeater, received the most votes from the league coaches. He finished second in the conference with a 23.0 scoring average, while Miller, a junior and the lone underclassman on the first team, was third with 21.2 points a game. McMahon’s Robert Little, the league’s ninth-leading scorer at 18.6, was named to the All-FCIAC second team. The senior guard was a first-team selection last year.

The Home Oilers hockey team completed another stellar season with a win and a tie in its final two games. The local semipro club posted an impressive 7-2 victory over the Cowansville Beavers of Quebec, which handed the Oilers two of their three losses this season. Bobby Veilleux had two goals and three assists for the Oilers, who earned a split of the four games they played against their Canadian rivals ... The season ended with an 8-8 tie against another Quebec team, the Sherbrooke Rockets. Russ

McClenaghan, Jean Nicol and Ed Megaffin each scored two goals for the Home Oilers, who finished 17-3-2. In eight seasons of semipro competition, the Oilers are a glossy 130-23-7 under GM and head coach Pete Correnty of Norwalk, who started the team four years before elevating it to semipro status.

The Parochial Basketball League championship was won by the St. Joseph team of Norwalk, which rallied in the fourth quarter for a thrilling 54-53 victory over Assumption of Westport.

Jim Lacerenza led the champs with 29 points and 21 rebounds, while Mike Calise had 20 points for Assumption.