It appears that the FCIAC is destined for another strong football season considering New Canaan and Greenwich are ranked 1-2 to lead a contingent of four FCIAC teams ranked among the top five in the GameTimeCT 2025 Preseason Top 10 High School Football Poll.
St. Joseph is ranked No. 4, Darien is No. 5, and half of the preseason Top 10 state poll consists of FCIAC teams as Staples is No. 10.
The season for FCIAC teams begins with Brien McMahon being the only conference team having its season-opening game Thursday night when the Senators host Southington at Jack Casagrande Field at 6 p.m.
All 16 FCIAC teams have their opening games against non-league opponents, with the first of them being that Thursday night McMahon game and the other 15 games during the weekend.
Eleven FCIAC teams will kick off their respective seasons Friday night and four more have their openers Saturday.
Friday’s schedule of three games with 6 o’clock kickoffs involving conference teams includes Fairfield Ludlowe hosting Notre Dame-West Haven at Taft Field, Greenwich hosting Fairfield Prep at Cardinal Stadium, and Danbury playing at Hamden High School.
In Friday’s five games involving FCIAC teams which begin at 6:30 p.m., Ridgefield travels to play Platt, Staples plays at Glastonbury, Fairfield Warde visits Simsbury, Trumbull travels to Norwich Free Academy, and Wilton hosts Bethel at Tom Fujitani Field.
New Canaan, Darien and Norwalk are the three FCIAC teams who have Friday night opening games with 7 o’clock kickoffs. New Canaan travels to Newtown while Darien hosts Naugatuck.
Norwalk’s Bears are hosting East Hartford at Jack Casagrande Field, their current home field at Brien McMahon High School for the next several years due to the construction of the future Norwalk High School building on the site of the school’s previous Sam Testa Field.
Saturday’s slate of four games has all four FCIAC teams at home for their season openers.
Bridgeport Central hosts Wilbur Cross at Kennedy Stadium at 11 a.m., followed by Stamford hosting Warren Harding for a noon kickoff on Andy Robustelli Field at Boyle Stadium, St. Joseph hosting Daniel Hand at 1:30 p.m., and Westhill hosting Crosby at J. Walter Kennedy Stadium in Stamford at 2 p.m.
Top-ranked New Canaan, No. 2 Greenwich, and No. 4 St. Joseph are all defending state champions in their respective classifications.
New Canaan, the recipient of 15 of the 23 first-place votes in the GameTimeCT preseason poll, won its third consecutive state championship with a 35-21 victory over Darien in the 2024 Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference Class L Football Playoffs final and finished the season with a 12-1 record.
Coach Lou Marinelli’s top-ranked Rams accumulated 652 polling points and close behind them was Greenwich, which got four first-place votes and was just 14 points behind New Canaan with 638 points.
Coach Anthony Morello’s Greenwich Cardinals shut out West Haven, 14-0, to win the program’s second CIAC Class LL state championship in the previous three seasons. They finished with an 11-2 record last year.
Polling points are accumulated on a 30-28-26-24-22-20-18-16-14-12-11-10-9-8-7 basis. The 23 voting members of the media rank their respective top 15 teams in order. Teams received 30 points for a first-place vote, 28 for a second-place vote, etc., and on down to seven points for a 15th-place vote.
Defending Class SS state champion Killingly (13-0 last season) is ranked No. 3. The Trailblazers were voted No. 1 by three voters as one of the four teams which got at least one first-place vote. They were 103 points behind Greenwich with 535 polling points.
The FCIAC came close to having the top three ranked teams as No. 4 St. Joseph was just three points behind Killingly with 532 points.
St. Joseph finished 10-3 last year after beating two higher-seeded teams to capture their Class M state championship, culminating with a thrilling 21-20 victory over second-seeded Brookfield. Coach Joe DellaVecchia’s fourth-seeded Cadets had four interceptions on defense when they advanced to the final with 17-10 victory over No. 1 seed Daniel Hand.
Darien, which was 133 points behind St. Joseph with 399 polling points, is ranked No. 5 as the fourth FCIAC team ranked among the top five. The Blue Wave finished 10-3 last year after its 35-21 semifinal victory over Notre Dame-West Haven and then its 35-21 loss to New Canaan in the championship game in a rematch of the 2023 Class L final which New Canaan won by a 28-21 margin.
The four non-league teams ranked 6-though-9 in this year’s preseason poll are last year’s Class MM runner-up Windsor (12-1), which got 369 polling points and the other first-place, No. 7 Brookfield (12-1), No. 8 Fairfield Prep (10-2), and defending Class M champion Masuk (10-3).
Staples, now under the guidance of new head coach Matty Jacowleff, is ranked No. 10 as the fifth FCIAC team in the Top 10. Former head coach Adam Behrends guided the Wreckers to the state Class LL semifinals, where they finished with a 10-2 record after its loss to a Greenwich team which won its semifinal and championship games by the identical shutout scores of 14-0.
Wilton, which finished 5-5 last year, received the 26th most polling points with 22 points and was the only FCIAC team among the 21 teams statewide in the Others Receiving Votes category.