Revenge: A dish best served wet
Ledyard — It is tradition at Bill Mignault Field now. Don MacKenzie, the public address announcer with the puckish sense of humor, plays the song "It's Raining Men" by The Weather Girls as the teams enter the field moments before kickoff.
How fitting, indeed, that it was Tuesday's musical interlude, too, given the weather: raining as it did for Noah. It wasn't merely raining men. It was raining, men ... Hallelujah! as the lyric goes.
The footballers of Ledyard High were happily awash in the showers Tuesday, slogging, sloshing and smashing their way through Bacon Academy. The Colonels splattered and slopped their way to the state Class M semifinals, following a 55-6 victory.
Turns out revenge – which Ledyard earned after it lost to Bacon in September — is the dish best served wet.
Even Bacon coach Erik Larka admitted after the game that he asked athletic director Kevin Burke if there was any chance the game would be postponed. Larka, whose team likes to throw, knew the answer.
"This game was going to be played no matter what," Ledyard senior Mike Leandri said. "What a great time. It fits well with our offense."
It certainly used to be that way, back in the days when program patriarch Bill Mignault would turn three-and-a-cloud into gridiron artistry. Not so much, though, in the days of Jim Buonocore. But then, football is nothing if not about evolution.
And the numbers from Tuesday — 44 carries for 449 yards — suggest that Ledyard has reinvented itself with the old days.
"We have a different coaching style here now," assistant coach Jose "Pasta" Sanabria said. "All the coaches with Jimmy now all used to be linemen. Now it's 'rain, rain, bring it back so we can keep ourselves on track.' Before he was always worried about the sniffles. He's got a lot of character now. He should have been a lineman. He'd have been all right."
(Pasta will be here all week, folks. And don't forget to try the veal.)
Seriously, though: Even Buonocore admits he once hated the idea of singing in the rain.
"A year ago, if I heard the same forecast, I'd have been freaking out all day," he said. "But it didn't rain enough. We wanted it to come down harder. Please, rain harder. This is what I think our team is geared towards. The kids embraced this weather. What an impressive effort."
As quarterback Ty Ebdon said: "We like to play in the rain. It's hard to play in the mud with us."
This was the final time the Ledyard seniors would ever play on their home field. This just in: They never lost. Not as freshmen, junior varsity or varsity players. Now that deserves more cowbell.
"A great way to go out on our field," Leandri said.
"We told these kids it's tradition. It's 50 years of great football here," Sanabria aid. "Playing at Ledyard always has a weather factor. We saw the rain and thought, yes, this is our kind of football. It helps the Rocky Balboa swagger we're having."
The Colonels get a day to dry out and recover before preparing for the next assignment: Monday's semifinal at No. 2 seed New Fairfield, which throttled defending Class M champ (and Ledyard nemesis) St. Joseph of Trumbull in Tuesday's quarters. It is a crisp 103 miles between the schools (Gillette Stadium is a mere 81 miles from 24 Gallup Hill Rd.), meaning that if the Colonels leave now, they may arrive by kickoff.
And the worse news: early forecasts are calling for 50 degrees and sunny during the day Monday for the game on the turfed lawn in the shadows of Danbury. So that means no more mud, no more slogging and sloshing. No more Raining Men or cowbells.
Alas, the Colonels must advance the old fashioned way. Maybe, though, they can bring their own mud and slather it on their uniforms before kickoff.
Then they'd be right at home on the road.
This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro.
Twitter: @BCgenius
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