St. Joseph is the top-ranked team in both the coaches’ and media’s Week 3 state high school football polls as the FCIAC has the top three ranked teams in both polls.
And that leads up to this Saturday’s big showdown when coach Joe DellaVecchia’s St. Joseph Cadets host coach Rob Trifone’s perennially-powerful Darien Blue Wave at Dalling Field at 1:30 p.m.
St. Joseph and Darien are the state’s top two ranked teams in The Day of New London’s Top 10 Coaches Poll. Greenwich is ranked third in that poll.
The second and third positions are flip-flopped in the GameTimeCT/Register Top 10. Coach John Marinelli’s Greenwich Cardinals are ranked second and Darien is third.
Last year Darien won its third consecutive Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference Class LL championship with a 31-22 victory over Greenwich while St. Joseph copped the Class S crown with a 42-36 victory over Ansonia.
The FCIAC has four teams ranked among the top seven as New Canaan is seventh in both polls.
New Canaan was ranked first in the season’s first media poll in which the FCIAC had the top four spots – with Greenwich, St. Joseph and Darien ranked 2-to-4, respectively.
But in a pivotal opening-week showdown St. Joseph’s Cadets hosted New Canaan on Sept. 8 and came through with an impressive 28-0 victory which would lead to their ascension to No. 1.
DellaVecchia and new Trumbull coach Marce Petroccio are the two coaches from the FCIAC among the 13 coaches who vote on the coaches’ poll.
St. Joseph received seven first-place votes while Darien and Greenwich received three apiece.
The top 10 teams in the coaches’ poll, in order, are St. Joseph, Darien, Greenwich, Daniel Hand, fifth-ranked Shelton, East Hartford, New Canaan, Ansonia, Killingly and Newtown.
The top 10 teams in the media poll are St. Joseph, Greenwich, Darien, Daniel Hand, fifth-ranked Shelton, East Hartford, New Canaan, Killingly, Naugatuck and Bloomfield.
St. Joseph received 14 of the 30 first-place votes in the media poll. Greenwich garnered eight first-place votes, third-ranked Darien received four first-place votes, Hand got three and eighth-ranked Killingly received one first-place vote.
New Canaan has a 1-1 record and all the other teams in both polls have the same unbeaten 2-0 records.
Greenwich has its bye week this weekend and returns to action on Sept. 28 when the Cardinals visit Norwalk for a Friday night kickoff at 7 p.m.