It is evident that baseball in the FCIAC is very strong in this 2025 spring high school sports season as the regular season is heading into the homestretch and it is still in the middle of the conference season.
The latest GameTimeCT Top 10 Baseball Poll which was released May 5 is one barometer which gives credence to that.
Norwalk is ranked No. 1, Fairfield Warde is No. 3, and Staples is No. 7.
And there are a few very big showdowns in the immediate near future involving those three teams which will be pivotal toward how the higher seedings eventually get decided for the 2025 FCIAC Baseball Tournament which commences May 23 with four quarterfinal games.
Fairfield Warde Mustangs are involved in two of those games within a span of 54 hours and they do happen to play Staples twice in their next three games.
Coach Brett Conner’s Mustangs are home for a noon start this Saturday (May 10) against Staples and on Monday (May 12) they travel southbound to play at Norwalk at 6 p.m. The next day Fairfield Warde travels to play at Staples in a non-league game, as Saturday’s high noon game between the two is the conference game which affects the FCIAC standings.
Coach Ryan Mitchell’s top-ranked Norwalk Bears, No. 3 Warde, and coach Jack McFarland’s seventh-ranked Staples Wreckers all have 7-1 FCIAC records after the games played through Wednesday, May 7.
The FCIAC is very deep and balanced this year with several very good teams and plenty more good teams. So, things are aligning for a finishing stretch of the conference season loaded with teams vying for either high seeds or trying to earn some of the remaining handful of berths to qualify for the FCIAC tournament.
An example of the conference’s balance was how there were many consequential games involving quality teams on Wednesday’s slate of eight FCIAC games which was loaded with rivalry games. There were four matchups of crosstown rivalry games and another pair of games pitting bordering town rivals against each other.
At the end of the day Norwalk was no longer an undefeated team after having been 12-0 going into the day, and things were tightened up in the FCIAC playoff race as there are still at least a dozen teams still involved in it.
Norwalk traveled across town to play at Brien McMahon and coach Steve Buckett’s McMahon Senators knocked Norwalk from the unbeaten ranks with a 4-2 victory.
In Wednesday’s three other crosstown rivalry games: Fairfield Warde defeated Fairfield Ludlowe, 5-2, at Kiwanis Field; Stamford nipped Westhill, 4-3, at Cubeta Stadium; and St. Joseph shut out host Trumbull, 3-0.
In the two games involving bordering town rivals: coach Mike Scott’s Darien Blue Wave played at New Canaan and got out of town with a big 3-2 victory, and Wilton won at Ridgefield, 3-1.
In the two other conference games: Greenwich’s 8-1 home victory over Danbury enabled coach Adrian Arango’s Cardinals to even their conference record at 4-4 and pull into a six-way tie for sixth place in the FCIAC, and Staples cruised to a 13-0 victory at Bridgeport Central.
Wednesday’s wins by Fairfield Warde and Staples enabled those two teams to tie Norwalk for first place, with all three of them now at 7-1. Norwalk’s 14-1 victory at Staples on April 23 gave the Bears the potential heads-up tiebreaker advantage over Staples.
Brien McMahon improved to 5-3 and is alone in fourth place, while Darien is the only team to play in nine FCIAC games and is in fifth place at 5-4.
The wins by Stamford, Greenwich and St. Joseph, and the losses by Trumbull, Fairfield Ludlowe, and Ridgefield on Wednesday had all those teams at 4-4 in that six-way tie logjam for sixth place.
Westhill and New Canaan were tied for 12th place at 3-5 and maintaining hopes for hot second halves of the conference season to snatch a final FCIAC playoff berth while Danbury is 2-6 and in 14th place.
In addition to Norwalk’s 14-1 victory at Staples on April 23 helping the Bears with the potential tiebreaker advantage relating to the FCIAC tournament’s higher seedings, it also impressed the GameTimeCT media voters enough that the Bears zoomed up six spots from No. 8 to No. 2 and just behind top-ranked Amity in the following state poll released on April 28.
One week later Norwalk took the No. 1 ranking in the current state poll and flip-flopped the positions with No. 2 Amity via the combination of the Bears improving to 12-0 with four victories last week from April 28-May 2 and Amity losing to Xavier, 12-4, on April 28.
Amity is a defending state champion. The Spartans defeated Staples, 9-1, in the 2024 Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference Class LL Baseball Tournament final.
Fairfield Warde won at Danbury, 11-10, on May 2 to conclude a 3-0 week when the potent Mustangs scored a combined 29 runs and improved to 8-2 overall to maintain their No. 3 ranking. They are now 9-2 overall.
Brookfield is ranked fourth and followed by fellow South-West Conference member Joel Barlow at No. 5.
Berlin dropped two spots from the previous week to No. 6.
Staples dropped down one spot to No. 7 as the Wreckers had a 3-1 record from April 28-May 2. They improved to 8-3 overall when Noah Saed fired a shutout and struck out eight batters to lead them to a 5-0 victory at home over Wilton on May 2, and they were 9-3 after Wednesday’s win.
Southington, Lyman Hall, and Bethel are ranked 8-through-10, respectively.
Bethel and Norwalk were the only two undefeated teams in the Top 10 when the voting took place and Bethel improved to 12-0 on May 7 with a 16-0 win at Bunnell.
Trumbull, Darien and Stamford are the three FCIAC teams who received votes in the current GameTimeCT Top 10 Baseball Poll.
Brien McMahon was only the second team this year to score as many as four runs against Norwalk in its 4-2 victory, as the other team was Westhill in Norwalk’s 9-4 victory at Cubeta Stadium last Friday. Norwalk had a 12-1 overall record going into its May 8 home game against Danbury.
The Bears have recorded three shutouts, and they allowed two runs or less in the other eight games in their first 11 victories behind the great starting pitching of senior Chase DePalma, junior Jaxon Ermo and freshman Gavin Chakar, and the stellar defense behind them.
McFarland, Conner and Mitchell have guided their respective teams to a state championship a combined five times in the seven seasons from 2017-2023 in which one of their teams won the Class LL state title.
McFarland’s 2017 Staples Wreckers denied Amity a fifth consecutive Class LL state crown with a 5-1 victory and two years later Staples won the 2019 Class LL title with a 3-0 victory over Southington.
The 2021 CIAC Class LL Baseball Tournament was quite the microcosm of just how strong and deep the FCIAC was four years ago when Mitchell’s Norwalk Bears were seeded 24th and they defeated 19th-seed Westhill, 1-0, in the Class LL final. The conference had six of the eight quarterfinal teams and all four semifinal teams that year.
Conner’s Fairfield Warde Mustangs won the Class LL state championship in 2022 with a 7-5 victory over Southington and they defended it in 2023 with a 2-1 victory over Staples in 10 innings.
The Mustangs won FCIAC titles prior to those state championships and in 2023 Fairfield Warde became the first school in conference history to win three consecutive FCIAC championships.
Last year coach Phil Pacelli’s third-seeded Trumbull Eagles won the FCIAC championship with a 7-1 victory over fifth-seeded Wilton, which nipped No. 1 seed Fairfield Warde, 5-4, in the semifinals. Trumbull advanced to the final with a 3-0 victory over No. 7 Staples.
All four quarterfinal winners won by shutouts. Trumbull defeated Darien, 3-0. After a scoreless seven innings, coach Tim Eagen’s Wilton Warriors scored eight runs in the eighth inning of their 8-0 victory over No. 4 Norwalk. Staples advanced to the semifinals with a 15-0 victory over No. 2 Greenwich. Fairfield Warde shut out No. 8 seed Brien McMahon, 11-0.
This year’s FCIAC tournament quarterfinals are scheduled for May 23 at the home fields of the four higher-seeded teams.
The semifinal round and championship game will be played at Cubeta Stadium in Stamford. The semifinal doubleheader is scheduled to begin at 4 o’clock on May 27, and the championship game is scheduled for May 29 at 6:30 p.m.