Cadets are No. 1
For the first time in 37 years St. Joseph finishes in the top spot
They stalked the leader all year, then knocked off the leader on the last day of the season to win their third consecutive CIAC football championship. St. Joseph, No. 2 all regular season, finishes the year as the No. 1 team in the GameTimeCT Top 10 poll.
“This means a lot, for the whole football team, community, coaches, teammates, everybody,” Cadets senior running back Jaden Shirden said after the CIAC Class L championship game, a 1713 St. Joseph win over Hand, which had led the poll from the preseason.
“It’s been a great four years. What more can I say? It’s awesome.”
St. Joseph last topped the poll (then branded as the New Haven Register’s) in 1982 after going 110 and winning the Class SS championship, the third, as it happens, of five titles in a row. The Cadets went 110 the next year, too, and re
Final Top 10 poll on B3
peated in Class SS but finished second in the poll to Class S champion Ansonia.
They hadn’t been undefeated again until this year. They hadn’t been No. 1 again. They won a third consecutive title in three different classes.
“We’ve got to figure out what we’re going to do.
We’ll have something made,” coach Joe Della Vecchia said. “I was telling someone, I’ve never been part of an undefeated team in my life. It’s amazing, amazing.”
St. Joseph received 24 of 25 firstplace votes. The other went to Newtown, which won the Class LL championship 137 over Darien on a touchdown
pass at the buzzer.
The Cadets completed a climb unprecedented in CIAC football, which began sanctioning playoffs in 1976. They won Class S in 2017. In 2018, the CIAC moved them to Class M because of the “success modifier,” which affects schools of choice that had reached the semifinals in backtoback years; they won Class M. The modifier, obviously, affected them again this year, and since their enrollment alone would’ve moved them to Class M, they got bumped to Class L.
And they celebrated a third time in three years, this time at New Britain’s Veterans Stadium. Of the dozen teams that had won three CIAC titles in a row, none had done it in more than two divisions.
“I’ve been here before, but I’ve got to say, it gets better every single time,” cocaptain and threeyear starter Mike Morrissey said.
“There’s no words I can use to describe it,” added fellow senior defensive lineman Jermaine Williams, who also started as a freshman in a run to the Class M final, a loss to Hillhouse. “It’s the best feeling in the world. I’ve dreamed of this.”
St. Joseph was regarded highly from the start of the year. A Week 4 game at New Canaan loomed as a measuring stick, even after the Rams lost to Ridgefield in Week 2.
The Cadets beat New Canaan 5814. They followed that, after a week off, with a 4213 win at Fairfield Prep. And a week after that, they shut out Ridgefield, a fine defensive team, 410 to improve to 60.
“Since Day 1, we’ve all been together, going to each other’s house and watch film,” senior defensive back Davee Silas said. “Going out to eat, everything we’ve always done is better for being a family.”
St. Joseph won a pair of FCIAC rematches in the playoffs, beating Wilton 497 and New Canaan 420, to set up a No. 1 vs. No. 2 showdown on Saturday. The Cadets never trailed, as they haven’t in the past 19 of their 23 consecutive wins.
“We were looking to play fast and physical. We came out ready to go from the jump,” Silas said.
Newtown hopped over Hand to take the No. 2 spot in the poll. The Nighthawks went 130, winning their first title since 1992, when they went 120.
Both Hand and Newtown received 12 secondplace votes and 12 thirdplace votes, finishing eight points apart. Newtown received that one firstplace vote, while Hand received one fifthplace vote.
Hand had won 36 games in a row and the previous two Class L titles. It received 22 firstplace votes in the preseason poll and 19 in the final regularseason poll.
“They’re just a tremendous group of young men that I couldn’t be any more proud of,” Hand coach Dave Mastroianni said Saturday of his Tigers.
Class LL runnerup Darien took fourth. Sheehan, the Class S champion, jumped from well out of the top 10 to round out the top five. (The Titans were knocking on the door of the Top 10 at the end of October before a couple of losses dropped them.)
Two teams whose only losses came against Darien, Southington and Greenwich, took the sixth and eighth spots; they were the Blue Wave’s victims in the semifinals and quarterfinals, respectively. In between them was Weston, the Class M champion, earning a spot in the final top 10 for the first time ever.
Class S runnerup Bloomfield and Class L semifinalist New Canaan rounded out the top 10.
In all, 46 different teams received a vote at some point this season, with 22 getting a vote in the final poll.