Biggest Win in 50 Years?

Beating Greenwich is epic poetry.

Remember, until coach Dave Cadelina came along in the late 1990s, Central had gone decades without a winning season. Then came the breakthrough year of 2004. But that group, which starred a pretty good receiver named Kelleray Gill, just didn’t enough horses to beat Greenwich in a competitive FCIAC title game.



There have been other close calls but — as is the case with most teams — the pressure to finish the job becomes too much. Greenwich capitalizes on one or two mistakes and it’s adios muchachos.



And there were a handful of moments like that in this game, moments that typically would have signaled a Greenwich opponent’s late-game meltdown.

This time, Central didn’t blink. On the Hilltoppers’ first drive, they converted a key fourth-down for a touchdown. Later, trailing by one point in the third, they stopped Greenwich on fourth-and-short pass around their 25-yard line and then methodically drove down the field behind Kelleray Gill’s little brother, Christon. The senior capped a bulldozer drive with a diving touchdown and then ran the same play for a 2-point conversion to give Central the lead it would never relinquish.

Meanwhile Central’s defense, which had already stopped one Greenwich drive with Isaiah Flores’ end zone interception, came up huge again in the fourth quarter. It was the play of the game: Christon Gill’s jarring hit on Mike Lefflbine that popped the ball free at the 1-yard line.

When Greenwich finally did score its second TD to pull within one, there was just 3:06 remaining in the game. The extra-point miss, as crushing as it was, would have meant little had the sputtering Cardinals’ offense found a way to score earlier.

Instead, this was Central’s evening. It was a result that has suddenly turned the FCIAC — heck all of Class LL for that matter — on its head. What a way to kickoff the season’s second half.

While the rest of us are scrambling to figure out the implications of such a victory, we know this: it will do wonders for this Central program which can finally count itself one of the lucky few to beat Greenwich.

Hilltopper fans constantly talk about getting over the hump. They’re hoping this finally is the game that pushes them into the elite.

At the very least, this victory saves their 2009 team’s season.

It took some time to cut the footage together (hey, I never took one class in this stuff at ‘Cuse), but here it is… might take some time to process, so be patient.