Bits & Pieces

By Kim J. Harmon

Last week, we published the updated career scoring list for Newtown High School basketball – boys and girls.

Now, we have always recognized that the list of players is incomplete and some of the totals for the players on the list are incomplete. When we went about compiling the list in the first place several years ago we leafed through old scorebooks, old yearbooks, and thousands and thousands of pages of The Newtown Bee and made the list as complete as we could with all the information available to us.

The problem? Well, the bulk of our information came from back issues of The Bee but it wasn’t until the latter stages of the 1970s that the newspaper employed an actual sports reporter. Before then, news out of Newtown High School sports was relegated to a student columnist and while at times the information was great and exactly what we needed, most of the times it was sporadic and sketchy.

Sometimes a whole month would go by without news of the basketball teams. We would be able to piece together a season or two of a player’s career, but information on the other years he or she likely played were lost to us.

There are many Newtown residents – current and former – who played basketball at Newtown High School but since we have no scoring information, they are not included on the list. That said, if anyone has statistical evidence (a plaque, a trophy, an old scorebook) that would enable us to bulk up the list it would be greatly appreciated.

We love numbers here at The Bee.

On that note, it appears our mental computer had a temporary glitch in its programming because it was unable to add two simple numbers – 126 and 85 – together last week. Our list indicated that sophomore Kevin Troy, whose season was cut short due to a wrist injury, has 141 career points when he, in fact, has 211 career points.

Hopefully, the mental computer has been de-bugged and it can move on to add more complex numbers like 245 and 187.

Also, included here is the career scoring list for the Newtown High School hockey team since its re-inception back in 2001. Hockey has existed at Newtown High in the past, but scoring information is non-existent.

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In case you didn’t know, www.casciac.org is a wonderful place to keep up to date on what teams are doing across the state of Connecticut. Besides an email service that immediately updates you whenever your favorite teams makes a schedule date or registers a score, you can run down the results of any team at any school.

But the other day I was poking around and clicked on the Championship Archives link under C.I.A.C (athletics division)/Tournament Info and found a searchable database of all the state tournament championships.

I typed in Newtown and made my search from 1900 to 2006 and found 25 records dating back to 1961 when the Newtown High School boys’ soccer team dropped a 5-1 decision to Hale Ray in the Class S title game.

Then there was …

The football team’s 17-7 loss to Wilton in the 1978 Class L title game.

The baseball team’s 4-1 loss to Waterford in the 1979 Class L title game.

The football team’s 20-7 win over Branford in the 1981 Class M-1 title game, the first time any Newtown team reached a state final and came away with the win.

The softball team’s 13-1 loss to Lyman Hall in the 1989 Class L title game.

And more …

Like the two Class LL soccer championships in 2004 – the girls’ 2-0 win over Trumbull and the boys’ 3-1 win over Norwalk – and the boys’ cross country team’s 2005 State Open championship.

The archives go all the way back to 1922 when the Naugatuck High School boys’ basketball team was declared the state champion based on its season record (the following year, Naugatuck dropped a 21-20 decision to Wilby in the first actual state championship game).

A little more poking around (mostly scrolling around) and you can find that …

The first registered golf state final was in 1931 (Darien won it).

The first cross country final was in 1932 (Hartford Public won it).

The first baseball final was in 1938 (Naugatuck defeated Manchester, 7-0)

The first boys’ soccer final was in 1948 (Wethersfield over Hale Ray, 2-1)

The first girls soccer final was in 1980 (E.O. Smith over Windsor Locks, 5-0).

The first girls basketball final was in 1974 (Trumbull in L and Weston in M were the champs).

This is probably way more information than any of us needs but I think it always helps to stay in touch with the past.