Which photo do you think the Wilton Villager Sports Department should use for the girls cross country preview in this week’s paper? You can vote below and find which photo wins when the paper comes out on Friday. (Voting ends at 12:30 p.m., Thursday, so pass on the word if you want your friends to [...]

It’s going to be a busy day for the Wilton High School athletics teams, some of whom are less than a week away from opening their seasons next Tuesday. On campus and off campus, the Warriors will be in preseason action a lot today, so let’s get right to it.
TODAY’S SCHEDULE
FOOTBALL — Wilton at Bunnell, [...]

With the three-day Labor Day holiday now officially behind us, things get back into full swing on the preseason front with practices and scrimmages galore coming up over the next week as we are seven days from the start of the regular season.
Today’s Schedule
Boys Soccer — Wilton hosts Joel Barlow at Lilly Field at 7 [...]

On paper, or in my own oddly twisted mind, I liked the idea … Start at the top of a really big and steep hill … Roll down some watermelons and make a bunch of kids race down after them, falling over each other and whoever returns to the top of the hill with the [...]

Trophies and honors and things that celebrate the sports scene at Wilton High School are pretty much scattered through the hallways and offices and, probably, closets of campus, which I must admit is a shame.
One things that always had its exploits exploited, if you will, were the track and field records, which hung high off [...]

Today’s Schedule
The big item on the schedule today is the Wilton High football jamboree, which starts at 9 a.m. Eight teams will be there, including Wilton, Norwalk, McMahon, Trinity Catholic, Fairfield Ludlowe Bridgeport Central, Fairfield Prep and King. Everything should be wrapped up by 1 p.m., which is when the Wilton football boosters host their [...]

The Wilton High School Cross Country Team will have its season kickoff event on Wednesday, Sept. 8, at at Allen Meadows, after practice around 5:00 PM.
Pizza and water will be served.
Please join those supporting the team, meet the coaches, see the athletes and join your XC Booster Club.

The fall sports season is approaching so fast you can almost feel it like the breeze blowing through your hair … oh wait, that’s just Hurricane Earl brushing by the side of us.
Just the same, the high school season is getting closer and two weeks worth of High School Previews will be coming at you [...]

Fall is just around the corner, but as summer winds down to an end we bring you a variety of stories this week about sports folk in the Wilton community.
First and foremost, the Ancient Warriors played their second game of the season and got their first three points on the board with a 3-0 victory [...]

Due to an error somewhere in the pipeline from the e-mail that was sent to us by the Wilton athletic department, an incorrect starting time was posted and published on the Warrior Nation Sports Blog, the Wilton Villager and The Hour.
The cross country team will open its 2010 season with its first practice at 6 [...]

Practice schedule for the 2010 Wilton High School fall sports season.
Football: Conditioning, August 23; Practice, August 18. At the football field.
Cross Country: August 28, signups 6:30 a.m. at the track; practice 9-11:30 a.m. at the track.
Boys Soccer: August 28, conditioning 9-11:30 a.m. at the track; practice 1-3:30 at Lilly Field.
Girls Soccer: August 28, conditioning 8-11 [...]

Celeste Hoelzl, who received a $7,500 college scholarship through the SAMMY Awards, also got her milk mustache and will soon appear in a copy of USA Today.

In Friday’s edition of The Hour, associate sports editor George Albano wrote a column, profiling Wilton’s long-time cross country and track coach Jeff Gee.
Gee has been coaching for a quarter century this spring, dating back to 1986.
“I’ve been blessed with a great group of very determined and talented and hard working Wilton athletes who made [...]

Most people around town know Kristina “Tuna” Durels as the Wilton girl who met NBA super star LeBron James last summer. After all, the Wilton Villager made the meeting its Cover Story back in its July 31, 2009 edition.
Truth be told, there is so much more to Durels, a senior three-sport athlete who runs cross [...]

For me, personally, one of the best thing about getting to cover the world of sports in Wilton is knowing that many of the town’s student-athletes are just as active outside of their respective arenas as they are inside.
And this week, the Wilton Villager’s news department, brings you a story about just that.
This week’s front [...]

Wilton High junior cross country runner Tim Becker will be named to The Hour’s 2009 All-Area Boys Cross Country team in Monday’s paper.
Here’s what The Hour said about Tim in the tribute to his season: “Becker was expected to be one of Wilton’s stronger runners this season, but nobody expected him to come out and [...]

Five Wilton High School girls cross country runners will be honored by The Hour on Monday as 2009 All-Area performers.
Those runners are: Senior Celeste Hoelzl, juniors Julia Broach and Zoe Gaston, sophomore Rebecca Craig and freshman Alosha Southern. Those five were all over the map when it came to who was going to lead the [...]

Thanksgiving is tomorrow and the Wilton Villager hits the streets the day after, so what is there to be thankful for? Well, this fall sports season is one thing.
With that in mind the Wilton Villager Sports section takes a look back at the 2009 Fall Sports Season with a two-page look back at the last [...]

With football having the weekoff and with most of the Wilton High teams out of the state tournament, things have slowed considerably around town sports-wise.
However, we do take the time this week to catch up on a couple of BIG events from last week, incuding the Girls Class M swim championships and also the New [...]

FYI — I’ve discovered iMovie.
Haven’t really discovered it, per se, since it’s been on my computer ever since I purchased it, but before this weekend it seemed simply too darn difficult to try and learn how to do it – especially considering the other 27 things I do on  daily basis as part of my [...]

For the last month, I’ve been writing about the Wilton girls cross country team’s exploits through this championship meet season. But I’m taking today off. Sort of.
While I did make the trip to Wickham Park for Saturday’s New England Championship meet, instead of offering up the Warrior Nation faithful a couple of hundred words about [...]

From Dan Chamness’s “College Notebook” which appears every Monday in The Hour.
Wilton grad Jeff Ragazzini and Weston grad Ryan Lane both competed in the New England Small College Athletic Conference Championships. The race was held in Wickham Park in Manchester. Ragazzini, a Tufts University runner, finished the five-mile race in 27:26, which was good for 21st. Lane, [...]

If there is anybody that knows what is in the heart of a Wilton High School girls cross country runner it is Paige Lyons.
The sophomore got her first taste of the Warriors XC program in 2002, when she was only 8 years old and her sister Kerry burst onto the state’s  cross country scene and [...]

It was a fun week for the Wilton High School sports department.
They took a 7-0 lead on the University of New Canaan’s football team on Friday night, it won a state Class L girls cross country championship on Saturday, it advanced to the FCIAC semifinals in field hockey on Tuesday and, on Thursday, a sophomore [...]

Personally, for me, one of the scariest things I’ve ever had to witness at an athletic event — and I’ve seen it probably a half dozen times in my 25-year career — is the athlete who pushes themselves so far and so hard that their body simply refuses to carry it forward any further.
In last [...]

Just a couple of follow-up items from Saturday’s State Class L championship meet, featuring your state championship-winning Warriors…
• • •
Heard from Sarah Guth’s mom today via e-mail. She informed me that Sarah is doing great and has been cleared to run again. “We were very fortunate that the race officials, her coach (Coach Jeff Gee) [...]

Alosha Southern was scared. She tentatively approached the roped-off area 20 yards from the finish line, her heart beating faster inside her chest, tears starting to well up in her eyes.
Southern’s emotion had nothing to do with Saturday’s state Class L cross country championship meet. She had already conquered those butterflies, kicking their tiny little [...]

The Wilton girls cross country team won the State Class L championship on Saturday with an 86-89 edge over Fairfield Warde.
The Warriors celebration was tempered slightly because junior runner Sarah Guth collapsed at the finish line and was taken to a Hartford hospital, where she was being treated for symptoms of dehydration.
Wilton’s Zoe Gaston was [...]

Emily’s back.
And so is another edition of the Wilton Villager sports pages.
The “Emily” in question is none other than girls soccer senior Emily Kobyra, who has shrugged off the effect of two broken vertebrae in her middle back to get back out on the soccer field as the Warriors try to defend their State Class [...]

From Dan Chamness’ “College Report,” published in Monday’s editions of The Hour:
Wilton graduate Camille Basurto finished eighth in the 5,000-meter run at the Seven Sisters Cross Country Championships, which was hosted by Mount Holyoke College. The Wellesley College runner finished the race in 19 minutes, 37 seconds. Wellelsey, which put five athletes in the top [...]

For the record, Zoe Gaston is not from Manchester, England, and is in no way related to Claude Hooper Bukowski, one of the main protagonists in the Broadway show “Hair.”
However, just like Claude, she has found the secret to a happy life — at least on the cross country trails — and it’s in her [...]

There was good and there was bad news and there was plenty in between this week around the Wilton sports scene.
The best news of the week came when the Wilton boys football team stopped being Ilton on the season and earned a W (Ilton .. Wilton… get it?) with a 21-13 victory over Fairfield Warde.
Unfortunately, [...]

• • •
In a few hours, the Wilton girls cross country team will be chasing its second straight FCIAC championship. On paper, the meet looks as though it’s going to come down to three things:
1. Wilton.
2. Ridgefield.
3. Pack time.
For those who don’t know cross country terminology, a “pack time” — perhaps the most important thing [...]

Girls Soccer
STAMFORD — Casey Pearsall scored one goal in each half to lead the Wilton girls soccer team to a 2-0 win over the Stamford Black Knights on Tuesday afternoon.
Lauren DeCarlo set up one of the goals by the freshman midfielder.
Wilton is now 5-3-3 on the season and play at Ridgefield at 6 p.m. on [...]

Every Monday in The Hour, Dan Chamness catches up with area athletes, updating readers on what they are doing in college … well, at least on the athletic fields.
I’ve been a bit lax are getting those postings up online lately, but here’s the latest members of Warrior Nation who are gone, but not forgotten.
• • [...]

Games, games and more games were played this week, so we at the Villager bounced around to different events, trying to get as much covered as possible.
The morning after the Wilton football team suffered its third loss of the season, the weekend began on Saturday with a visit to the Wilton Invitational Cross Country. Granted [...]

I spent part of Saturday morning at the first of three assignments — the Wilton Invitational cross country meet — where I snapped this photo of Wilton sophomore Rebecca Craig right after she crossed the finish line.
For some reason, when I first saw it, an instant, albeit fictitious Nike ad popped in my head [...]

If there is one thing the Wilton running community has been waiting for it’s the chance to see freshman Alosha Southern running varsity cross country.
Two years ago, shortly after I first arrived here at the Villager, Southern burst onto the scene when she qualified for the Junior Olympic National Championships as a seventh grader. Now [...]

It was a blue week for the Blue and White in a couple of sports and, unfortunately, we were there to cover it.
The Wilton boys soccer team notched another scoreless tie, running their non-scoring streak to nine games dating back to last year and counting preseason matches this fall. After the 0-2-2 tie to Warde [...]

When I saw the first photo and saw the eye-black smeared along Alosha Southern’s face, the first thing I thought of was “freshman initiation.”
But then I remembered we live in a PC world where grown ups in society have taken all the fun out of the team bonding experience.
Next I thought maybe, just maybe, it [...]

It was a day of close losses for two of Wilton’s most prolific fall sports teams — girls soccer and cross country.
Greenwich’s Shannon Colligan scored the game-winning goal with 20 minutes left in the second half to lift Greenwich to a 2-1 home victory over Wilton in FCIAC girls soccer action Tuesday. Courtney Callahan put the [...]

Let’s just call it the Wilton High School athletic performance of the fall.
So far.
Sure girls soccer player Lauren DeCarlo has scored all four of her team’s goals through two wins. And yes Amy Drummond netted four goals in a season-opening win over Westhill.
But last week Tim Becker, the Wilton High School junior cross country runner, [...]

Are you ready for some football? Because football season is here and the Wilton Villager is bringing you a doubleheader.
Not only will you get a season preview of head coach Bruce Cunningham’s squad in this week’s paper, but we’re also holding our deadline slightly to make sure we get Thursday night’s opening night game against [...]

I heard back from former Wilton cross country runner Camille Basurto on Sunday night and wanted to pass on her thoughts to the loycal members of Warrior Nation.
Basurto is running at Wellesley College now and she was part of a blog post further down as well as my column in The Sunday Hour. While I [...]

This photo came in a little too late for The Sunday Hour’s deadline, but it was still something that needed to be shared with the Warrior Nation.
At left you see Cornell Big Red freshman Cara Costich, the former Warriors distance running standout, competing in her first-ever college meet. She placed ninth in the meet, helping [...]

It was a very good weekend for the Wilton High School cross country team and they didn’t even have a race.
Instead, it was their alumnus who represented everything that the Warriors program is about, setting foot into the world of college cross country in every impressive fashion.
Cara Costich of Cornell, Camille Basurto of Wellesley, and [...]

In this business, the one thing that drives me batty, breaks my heart and makes me angry is when I screw something up and make a mistake that finds its way into print.
Typographical errors are one thing: With newspaper cuts depleting staffs and copy editors seeming to go the way of the dinosaur, or at [...]

From Thursday’s Edition of The Hour:
The Warriors, probably the most successful program in the area since the turn of the century, will be defending its FCIAC championship this fall.
And, while plenty of talent returns, Wilton must still replace three key graduated seniors in top runner Cara Costich, Camille Basurto and Phoebe Gaston.
“I think the easiest [...]

From Thursday’s edition of The Hour
The Warriors have two proven veteran runners who have been through the FCIAC trail wars before in juniors Dan Prospect and Tim Becker.
How successful the Wilton team will be this fall will depend on what kind of support those two strong runners get from behind them.
“The boys are a little [...]

For those of you who might have taken time out to read my column about the running and the Wilton Running Club in this week’s edition of the paper, I goofed.
When I listed the WRC’s Web site, I listed it as a dot-com when it’s actually a dot-org.
So the address should read: http://www.wiltonrunning.club.org.
I apologize for [...]

We’re so close to a new high school sports season I can almost smell it … OK, so maybe that’s the locker room at Veteran’s Stadium, where the Wilton football team has been in action for two weeks, taking advantage of a CIAC rule that said any teams which skipped spring practice got to start [...]

The Wilton Running Club is looking for something pretty important: Runners.
The team, which has graduated a number of the town’s top runners over the last four years, is gearing up for its fall season and is looking for more runners to become a part of the team’s roster.
Practices are slated to begin on Tuesday, Sept. [...]

Here we are between seasons, which means — for a week at least — the Wilton Villager gets to step away from its primary coverage to bring you a couple of other interesting stories around two.
Our “Cover Story” this week is on the growth of the Wilton YMCA’s gymnastics program, which has grown threefold in [...]

Wilton sophomore Danny Prospect was named to The Hour’s All-Area Cross Country Team for 2008.
Here’s the skinny of Prospect and his season:
Top runner for Warriors throughout postseason. Helped team to eighth place at FCIAC meet by finishing 21st overall in time of 17 minutes, 13 seconds. At Class L meet placed 30th overall in 17:39 [...]

From Dan Chamness’ “College Report” in Monday’s edition of The Hour:
Cole Larned scored the Franklin Pierce University soccer team’s final goal of the year on a penalty kick in
the first round of the NCAA Division II East Regional. The Wilton grad scored at 40:18. Franklin Pierce lost to
Dowling College 3-1. The Ravens, who won the [...]

The following athletes from Wilton High School were honored by the FCIAC for their exploits during the 2008 fall sports season.
• • •
BOYS SOCCER
Scott Brown — All-FCIAC First Team
Mack Herlyn — All-FCIAC East
Ian Ross — All-FCIAC East
Ali Sadeghi — All-FCIAC East
GIRLS SOCCER
Taylor Brown — All-FCIAC First Team
Rachel Reda — All-FCIAC Second Team
Brynn Hansson  – All-FCIAC [...]

From Dan Chamness’s “College Report” published in Monday edition of The Hour.
***
Wilton’s Jen Braswell spent only one year as a right-side hitter in college. But during her senior year, she proved not only that she’s a quick learner, but also that she can execute the position quite well.
Braswell was one of three Eastern Connecticut State [...]

Visit Flotrack For More Videos
While looking for some information in regards to the 2008 New England High School track and field championship, I stumbled across this video. Look for some familiar faces about 1:50 to 2:00 minutes in and then watch the Warriors finish one by one after about 6:30 mark.
Enjoy.

As if finishing fourth in New Englands wasn’t enough to make the Wilton Warriors day. How about meeting a legend as well?
Joan Benoit Samuelson (fifth from left), who won the gold medal in the marathon in the 1984 Olympics, was part of the scenary at the 2008 New England Cross Country Championships. She took time [...]

From Dan Chamness’s “College Report” published in Monday’s editions of The Hour:
Tufts University runner Jeff Ragazzini (Wilton) and Trinity College’s Ryan Lane (Weston) both competed in the New England Small College Athletic Conference Cross Country Championships. Ragazzini finished 58th in the 8,000-meter race, crossing the finish line in 27:26. Lane took 62nd with a 27:28. [...]

From Dan Chamness’s “College Report” in Monday’s edition of The Hour:
Franklin Pierce College’s Cole Larned, a former Wilton soccer player, scored the first goal in a 4-0 win over Assumption College. Larned hit the back of the net at 15:05. He also had one assist in the contest. Franklin Pierce is 10-6-1 overall and 8-2-1 [...]

For the fifth consecutive year, the Wilton girls cross country team has finished second to Guilford in the state Class MM cross country championship meet. This year, Guilford put five runners in the top 12 to take a 42-62 victory over the Warriors. The 20-point differential was the closest Wilton has been to the top [...]

The Wilton High School cross country teams will race for their state “Class” titles on Saturday at Wickham Park and the entries for both races have been announced by the CIAC.
In the girls Class MM race, the Warriors will rely on a top seven of seniors Camille Basurto (Bib No. 152), Cara Costich (153) and [...]

From Dan Chamness’s “College Report” that appeared in Monday’s editions of The Hour:
University of Chicago cross country runner Catherine Stolar finished 63rd in the Lucian Rosa Invitational hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. The Wilton graduate finished the 5,000-meter course in 20:01. Chicago took ninth as a team with 256 points. Ferris State University won [...]

As I went back looking through my photos that I snapped at Thursday’s FCIAC Cross Country Championship (Point of Order: Why is such a important event like the championship of the alleged best athletic conference in the state of Connecticut crammed into a four-hour time period on a Thursday afternoon, getting out just in time [...]

Well I didn’t mean to take 24 hours off since Post No. 100, but unfortunately a 12-hour work day, an FCIAC cross country championship meet (Congrats to the Wilton girls on that one!!), lots of writing and the publication of the Oct. 17 edition of The Wilton Villager ate up all of my time.
However, there [...]

While browsing through the results of Tuesday’s cross country meet at Greenwich, I was quite stunned by the Wilton results.
I went down through the list one by one: Camille Basurto in second … Julia Broach in third … Rebecca Craig in fourth … Celeste Hoelzl in fifth … Phoebe Gaston in sixth … Sara Guth [...]

From Dan Chamness’ “College Report” that appeared in Monday’s edition of The Hour:
Wilton grad Dan Stebbins had four solo tackles as the Tufts University football team defeated Bates College 34-7. Tufts is 2-0 both overall and in the New England Small College Athletic Conference.
…
Kate Macauley, a Wilton grad, assisted the game-winning goal in the Yale [...]

The Wilton girls cross country team is hitting its midseason stride, posting a trio of easy wins on Monday.
The Warrior girls put perfect scores up against Bridgeport Central and Fairfield Ludlowe while taking a  19-41 win over Trumbull.
Cara Costich led the way over Wilton’s 2.4-mile course, winning the overall race in 14 minutes, 33 seconds.
In [...]

From Dan Chamness’s “College Report” in Monday’s edition of The Hour:
St. Luke’s grad Tommy McDonagh, a Wilton resident, shot a 214 at the Fighting Illini Invitational golf tournament hosted by the University of Illinois. The Penn State University sophomore opened the 54-hole tournament with a low round of 69 and finished 11th overall. Penn State [...]

WILTON — Last fall, toward the end of the Wilton High cross country season, Phoebe Gaston could hear the footsteps behind her.
They had a familiarity about them, as though Gaston had heard the pitter-patter of the gait before. Perhaps it was a sound she had heard in her own backyard, or somewhere around her family’s [...]

It was a successful Tuesday for Wilton Sports teams. Here’s a look at some of the results:
Boys Soccer
Wilton 6, St. Joseph 1
Junior forward Scott Brown scored three goals to lead the Warriors (1-2) to their first win of the season in Trumbull. Matt Herlyn, Ali Sadeghi and John Hoag also scored for Wilton, which finished [...]

From Dan Chamness’s “College Notebook” that was published in Monday’s edition of The Hour:
The Hamilton College soccer team has won its first three soccer games. In two of those contests, Wilton grad Kate Fowler was the goal keeper of record. Fowler played all 90 minutes in each game. In a 2-1 win over the Rochester [...]

One of the most important statistics used to acknowledge success in sports is Pack Time. Football has it’s 1,000 yard rushers; baseball has its .300 hitters; basketball has its points-per-game; and cross country has its Pack Time.
In short, a pack time is the elapsed time between runners making up a cross country team. The lower [...]

The Wilton girls cross country team opened its season with three wins during a multi-way meet at Danbury on Wednesday.
Wilton beat Danbury, 16-47; New Canaan, 15-49; and Westhill, 19-44.
Cara Costich, a senior, won the race in 16 minutes, 34 seconds while freshman Rebecca Craig was third overall in 17:18. Celeste Hoelzl was fifth in 17:26, [...]

Wilton’s cross country meet at Danbury has been pushed back a day, getting rescheduled from Tuesday to Wednesday at Danbury’s Tarrywile Park. Starting gun remains scheduled for a 4 p.m. firing.
Seems as though back in my day we had cross country meets where we had to run 3.1-miles through three feet of snow, uphill both [...]

The Wilton High School fall sports season officials open on Tuesday with regular season in action a trio of sports. On tap:
Boys Soccer — Wilton at Bridgeport Central, 6 p.m.
Field Hockey — Darien at Wilton, 4 p.m.
Boys & Girls Cross Country — Wilton, Westhill, Brien McMahon, New Canaan at Danbury (Tarrywile Park), 4 p.m.
Check back [...]

The Hour newspaper published its boys and girls cross country previews on Friday and here’s what they had to say about the 2008 Wilton High School cross country teams:
WILTON GIRLS
A pair of senior captains — Cara Costich and Phoebe Gaston — will power the Warriors this season.
“Cara and Phoebe bring a tremendous amount [...]