A Night With Hall of Famers

A good friend of the blog invited me to join him at the Connecticut High School Coaches Association Hall of Fame gala Thursday night at the Aqua Turf Club in Southington and it was my pleasure to tag along.

He doesn't like getting credit for these things, so I won't say his name.

Anyway, since I promised that I wouldn't editorialize about the evening (in other words, I'm keeping the opinions to a minimum), let me just say congratulations to the honorees

•Charlie Bentley (Harding-Bridgeport), 624-137 record in boys basketball, nine state titles, 16 conference titles since 1977.

•Paul Davis (Amity-Woodbridge), 351 swimming wins, four league titles, 12 state runner-up finishes as boys (1979-1993) and girls 1979-2003) coach.

•Mark Logan (RHAM-Hebron), five girls cross country and two girls track state titles, 639 wins, 46 league titles in 1981-2009.

•Ellen Mahoney (Ledyard), 355 softball wins (1977-96), seven state titles, 12 ECC titles, and 178 tennis wins (1980-93) and eight ECC titles.

•Lou Marinelli (New Canaan), seven state football titles and 241 wins at New Canaan and two high schools in New York since 1981.

•Marty Roos, most career hockey wins in state history with 511 combined at Fairfield Prep (1971-89) and Notre Dame-Fairfield (1991-2009), and six state titles.

•Gil Varjas (New London), 430 baseball wins, 12 ECC titles, four state titles and four state runner-up finishes.

•Bill Wallach (Guilford), 220 boys soccer wins in three stints at Guilford, including six state titles and 11 Shoreline Conference titles.

Inducted from the media will be Ken Lipshez, who has covered high school sports since 1991 with the Bristol Press and New Britain Herald.

We sat at the table for Charlie Bentley, someone that I knew in passing through covering GHS hoops for years. What nights like this make me realize is that people in the state really don't know me because I'm solely the "Greenwich broadcaster" where guys like Tim Parry are more known because of his coverage of the FCIAC (plus he played for New Canaan, and so on). I'm really just a very small fish in the bigger sea.

It was a nice affair, the food was good, the speeches were the speeches, and I'm back home. Since I'm off to Boston later today (Friday), I'll stop here.

Congratulations once again to the newest member of the Hall of Fame.