Hall nabs first championship since 1980

Wilson notches hat trick to guide Warriors to title

NEW BRITAIN – They knew what the sting of losing a championship felt like. So when Hall High boys soccer took the pitch Saturday night at Veterans Stadium, the Warriors made sure they walked away champs, beating Greenwich 3-1 for the Class LL title.

“It’s never easy in LL,” Hall coach Zeke Seguro said. “But every year when we ended, and we’ve had a lot of great runs, it always ended up with tears in the locker room. And we said one day, we’d do it for everyone.”

Hall’s championship effort was spearheaded from an unlikely source. Sophomore Conlan Wilson, who had scored four goals all season for a team that had scored 60-plus, notched a hat trick for the Warriors (14-1-2) to propel them to the state championship.

“It’s just so big. It’s fun to go out there and play, and when I scored it was so exciting,” Wilson said. “It was a great game. It was so important because we’ve worked hard since last year. We wanted to get back and finish what we started. It was great to finish it out.”

Wilson scored his first goal with 23:39 to play in the first half, off a feed from junior Drew Seguro. Greenwich would answer with 11:24 to play in the half, on a goal from Farid Ghaliya.

The Cardinals (14-6-2) looked like they could crack the

Hall defense through the first 15 minutes of the second half, pressuring the Warriors and finding some opportunities. But they couldn’t find the goal they needed.

“The games we’ve led in the four rounds, we’ve let teams come back in as we’ve started to lose a bit of focus,” Greenwich coach Kurt Putnam said. “But we’ve always been ahead and had goals in surplus. We didn’t have that today and a fantastic team, particularly attacking, ex