Ansonia’s winning football tradition: ‘It’s in their blood’

ANSONIA — David S. Cassetti, the mayor of Ansonia since 2013, is walking the home sidelines and he isn’t missing a single snap. Darell McKnight breaks another touchdown. Chris Kaminski finds his half-brother Preston Dziubina for a 12-yard touchdown pass.

The mayor claps or he throws a little jab into the autumn air. His own son, David, breaks off a 43-yard run and he puts a little more pop into the jab.

“Look at through the years what we’ve accomplished,” Cassetti said. “It is big. We’ve got 5,000-6,000 people here tonight.

It’s in our blood here in Ansonia. We’ve got our winning streak in the NVL. And it starts with the feeder programs.”

Young kids like his son, a junior fullback.

“He started when he was 7 and worked his way up through the ranks,” the mayor said. “I’ve been on the sidelines for eight years and now I’m watching my own boy. I’m telling you, it’s in our blood.”

You pull the car off Route 8, take a couple of turns to park at Jarvis Field in the Nolan Complex. You blink once. And it’s like

you’re in yesteryear Pennsylvania or Eastern Ohio. Old towns in the Naugatuck Valley. Proud football towns. None prouder than Ansonia.

As Jim Calhoun used to say when UConn was building into a basketball power in the old Big East, “You’ve got to win your own neighborhood battles first.”

No one has won neighborhood football battles in Connecticut like Ansonia. Seymour entered Thursday night unbeaten at 4-0. Although Ansonia had notched its 100th consecutive NVL victory last week against Waterbury Career Academy, this was the season the Chargers finally were supposed to be a little vulnerable.

Coming off the COVID season. Most of the key players underclassmen. Relatively small numbers for a Class S school. Beyond lineman Alex Romanowski, not a big team physically …

Well, with the eyes of Connecticut high school football directed toward

Jarvis Field, we saw exactly how vulnerable Ansonia is during this NVL showdown and GameTimeCT Game of the Week.

Final: Ansonia 33, Seymour 8.

That would be 101 in a row in the NVL dating to a Thanksgiving loss to Naugatuck in 2010. That would be 101 in a row on the way to — gulp — maybe 200.

The bright lights were flipped on this young group and the defense did a terrific finding Nimo (running back Caleb Nimo-Sefah) and the rest of the Wildcats’ offense. Yes, the bright lights were flipped on and it was Good McKnight! Darell ran for four touchdowns:

45, 71, 4 and 64 yards as Ansonia improved to 6-0.

“This is just a preview of what’s coming up in the next two years,” Kaminski said.

“I think we quieted down the haters a little bit,” said McKnight, who ran for 257 yards on 23 carries.

This was coach Tom Brockett’s 176th victory (against only 13 losses) to move him ahead of “Boots” Jarvis as the second-winningest coach in Ansonia history. Only Jack Hunt,

with 193, has won more. Brockett was still an assistant under Hunt in 2004 the last time Seymour beat Ansonia.

The Charges have won 20 state titles.

Ansonia might not be the richest town in Connecticut, but no town is richer in football history.

“Everything,” answered Kaminski, a junior, when asked what Chargers football means to Ansonia. “Being raised in Ansonia, we learn to love football. The culture of the community, it revolves around it.”

“I grew up around it,” said Dziubina, a sophomore. “My dad, my uncles played. I grew up with a heart for Ansonia football.”

“It’s big for the community, ‘Friday Night Lights’ big,” the younger Cassetti said. “It’s amazing to get to play on this field.”

Cassetti was an Ansonia water boy when he was younger. You can chart the years in Ansonia by who the running backs were.

“Tajik Bagley and Tyler Bailey, No. 4 and No. 5,” Cassetti said, when asked who he kept hydrated. That’s 2014-15.

“Ansonia is just a big family,” McKnight said. “Everybody looks out for each other. People on the streets, even if we’re not in our uniforms, they know who were are. It’s, ‘How you doin’? Keep up the good work.’ ”

Although Ansonia has

beaten Seymour 17 times in a row, the Wildcats came the closest to beating the Chargers during the NVL streak. In 2013, Ansonia managed to win 21-20 but only after some Arkeel Newsome heroics and Seymour missing two winning field goal chances and a 2-point conversion.

As late as 2019, Ansonia needed Shykeem Harmon’s 335 yards and four touchdowns for a 35-32 victory.

So it was entirely reasonable to expect a tight one. Didn’t happen.

This is not the same team from summer Yale camp.

“From Yale camp, we started off small, 15 players,” Cassetti said. “We still don’t have a lot of players, but we’re all solid and practice well.”

“From Yale camp, a totally different team,”

McKnight said. “It took hard work every day. Trusting each other. Team bonding. We came together after practice, go places together with each other. It took all of us as one to become what we are.”

Brockett said what his team has learned to do from the summer is start to compete at a high level.

“That’s real, real important,” he said. “You’ve got to play with great energy. You’ve got to enjoy when those lights are shining bright. I think tonight they took a step in that direction.

“We’ve still got a long, long way to go. Over the years our kids have embraced (the bright lights of a big game), and for us to get where we want to go, you’ve got to be able to win games like this.”

It also helps to have a running back like McKnight. From Montrell Dobbs to Newsome to all sorts of yardage eaters … nobody produces terrific running backs in Connecticut like Ansonia.

Guess what? There’s another.

“He’s a dog,” Kaminski said of McKnight. “Colleges need to start looking at him. That kid is something special. He’s a once-a-decade type of running back.”

“He’s a dog, dude,” Cassetti said. “Every time he has the ball, he has a chance to score.”

McKnight warns us off putting him in the same sentence as all the great Ansonia runners.

“I feel there’s a lot more work to be done,” said McKnight, who also had

242 yards earlier in the season against Oxford. “There are many greats. I’m just making my little mark. I feel like I’ve got to push a little bit harder to get where I want to be.”

The bad news for the NVL is McKnight is a junior. He still has time to work on his arm. In the second quarter, he took a handoff from Kaminski and saw Machi Ingram wide open. Shades of Alex Thomas’ option pass to beat Seymour, 20-12 in 2007.

McKnight had never thrown a pass at any level, but he had worked on the play for two days in practice.

“Perfect throws,” McKnight said. “I wore little bigger gloves (in the game) I’m used to running the ball. Throwing the ball really isn’t my thing. I got to do what I got to do, anything for us to win. Terrible ball, though.”

It was badly underthrown. Wouldn’t you know it? Ingram still turned it into a 29-yard reception. Next play, McKnight scored on a 4yard run.

It was that kind of game. The kind of games Ansonia always seems to have.

Paul Palmer, Dziubina, Ingram — there are a number of sophomores who are stepping up and playing major roles. But kids, you know they say the darnedest things.

On a GameTimeCT video clip in advance of the game, Dziubina was saying all the right things and, boom, he tossed in that he thought Seymour was going to “fold.”

“I thought it was funny,” Kaminski said. “I think he should have said something different, but I guess it turned out OK.”

“It did,” Dziubina said. The half-brothers give a full-throated “amazing” when asked about playing Ansonia varsity together for the first time.

“That (touchdown pass), it’s hard to describe how good it feels,” Kaminski said. “We’ve been working on that for years, since we were little kids in the backyard.”

Thanksgiving 1994. Overtime, fourth down, Naugatuck on the 5-yard line with a final chance to force double overtime. Jason Dziubina made one of the most memorable plays in Ansonia history when he chased Joe Edmonds and drilled him just as he let go of the ball. Incomplete. Final: No. 2 Ansonia 28, No. 4 Naugatuck 21.

Your dad ever mention it? Dziubina looked over at Kaminski and smiled.

“All the time,” Dziubina said. “All the time.”

Ansonia football, it’s in their blood.