Connecticut High School Football Alliance releases 2019 schedule

January 24, 2019 11:00 pm • Last Updated: January 25, 2019 8:15 pm

By Ned Griffen

Get ready, New London. New Canaan football is headed your way this fall.

New London will open its season on Sept. 13 against the Rams, last year’s CIAC Class LL runner-up, as part of the Connecticut High School Football Alliance, which announced its schedule of interconference games Friday.

Next season will be the third for the Alliance, a cooperative venture that began with the Eastern Connecticut Conference, Southern Connecticut Conference and South-West Conference.

The Central Connecticut Conference and Fairfield County Interscholastic Athletic Conference will take part in the Alliance in 2019. There will be 99 interconference games involving 84 teams from the five leagues.

“Nonleague games offer a bit of excitement and intrigue during a football season, especially with the focus on getting to the state playoffs,” SCC commissioner Al Carbone said in a release. “The SCC is pleased to be part of this partnership and believes the Alliance is a critical step in getting toward true statewide football scheduling.”

ECC schools East Lyme, Fitch, New London and NFA will each play four interconference games. Killingly will play two and Griswold and the Capital Region Education Council (CREC) will each play one.

CREC, a cooperative program of Civic Leadership (Enfield), Aerospace (Windsor) and Metro Learning (Bloomfield), will join the ECC as a football-only member this fall.

"The Connecticut High School Football Alliance has been extremely helpful in filling schedules for the Eastern Connecticut Conference," ECC commissioner Gary Makowicki said in a release. "Some of our schools needed to find five games outside of the league-generated schedule. Filling the schedules for these schools would not have been possible without the scheduling alliance."

The Alliance came about due to the growing difficulties leagues have faced over the years scheduling football games.

The ECC, for instance, has long had a problem with smaller schools refusing to play larger schools. It has not required crossover games between Division I and III teams the past few seasons. It also instituted scheduling this academic year across all sports using a combination of school size and a team’s previous success to determine divisional alignments.

The SCC had a different issue arise when it realigned in 2016 when Amity, Hamden and Wilbur Cross requested to be placed in its second division for scheduling relief. The trio are among the SCC’s six largest schools in boys’ enrollment and all were Class LL in football this past season.

Cheshire, another Class LL school, will move into the SCC's Tier 2 next season while two-time defending Class L champion Hand will rejoin the top tier. To put that in perspective, Cheshire has the state’s 30th largest boys’ enrollment this school year (715), larger than any ECC school other than NFA, which has the fourth largest (1,125). Hand has 567 boys, one less than New London.

The Connecticut Technical Conference, Naugatuck Valley League and Pequot Conference are the state’s only leagues that aren’t part of the Alliance. Carbone said that they tried to get the NVL involved, but that it wasn't interested at this time.

A majority of the Alliance matchups will take place in weeks two (Sept. 20), three (Sept. 27), six (Oct. 18) and seven (Oct. 25) of the 2019 season. There will also be games held in weeks one (Sept. 13), five (Oct. 11), eight (Nov. 1) and 11 (Nov. 22).

“The games that were created through the efforts of the league representatives of the Alliance are appropriate and competitive,” Makowicki said. “The Eastern Connecticut Conference is appreciative for all that participated in the scheduling alliance.”

n.griffen@theday.com