Zanor column: Gold Key recipients, The Blaze, and other thoughts

Just thought I’d empty out my reporter’s notebook while gearing up for the second-best basketball tournament of all-time: this week’s Big East extravaganza at Madison Square Garden. Of course, the best hoop tourney on the planet is the Boston Amateur Basketball Club’s (BABC) annual “Boston Shootout” …

Gold Key Awards

The Connecticut Sports Media Alliance will honor four championship coaches and a pioneering sportscaster as the 2024 recipients of the Gold Key Award at the annual dinner in October.

The honorees are former Daniel Hand and Yale University football coach Larry Ciotti, longtime Windham High School wrestling and football coach Brian Crudden, retired Pomperaug High School field hockey coach Linda Dirga, award-winning sportscaster George Grande and Wesleyan University women’s basketball coach Kate Mullen.

Ciotti founded the Daniel Hand High School football program in 1970 and led the Tigers to Class M state championships in 1976, 1977, 1982 and 1984. He compiled a 141-41-2 record.

Ciotti was a full-time assistant football coach at Yale University from 1991 to 2008, and 2012 to 2015. He was inducted into the Connecticut High School Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 1993. He was the recipient of the Walter Camp Football Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011.

Crudden was the Windham High School wrestling coach from 1977-1998, and the Whippets football coach from 1985-2015. His wrestling squads won the 1992 New England High School Wrestling Championship, Class L titles in 1983, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993 and 1994, and a Class M crown in 1985.

Crudden guided the Whippets football team to two state championship game appearances. He earned 543 career victories, including 371 in wrestling, and was elected to the Connecticut High School Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2014.

Dirga was the Pomperaug High School field hockey coach from 1985-2010, winning state championships in four different decades: Class M in 1989, 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2000, and Class L in 2002, 2003 and 2010. Her teams were state runner-up seven times, won 19 conference championships and had a 43-game winning streak in 2002-2003.

Dirga was the National High School Athletic Coaches Association field hockey coach of the year in 2007. A founding member of Connecticut Field Hockey Hall of Fame in 1999, she has been inducted into five halls of fame, including National High School Athletic Coaches Association in 2011 and National Field Hockey Coaches Association in 2012.

Grande, who grew up in Hamden, played baseball for four years at the University of Southern California, winning a national championship in 1968. He became a sportscaster, interning with Hall of Famer Vin Scully, and worked at various stations around the country, including WNHC and WTNH in New Haven.

Grande was the first anchor for ESPN Sportscenter in 1979, then became sports director. From 1980 to 2010, he emceed the Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony and weekend events in Cooperstown, N.Y.  He broadcast baseball games for the New York Yankees and St. Louis Cardinals before a 30-year stint with the Cincinnati Reds.

Mullen coached women’s basketball at Westfield State College from 1981 to 1985 and Elms College from 1985 to 1992, before taking over the program at Wesleyan University in 1992. She has amassed 496 victories as a college coach, earning NESCAC Coach of the Year honors in 2002-03.

Mullen led the Cardinals to consecutive NCAA Div. III tournament appearances, reaching the Sweet 16 in 2005. She was inducted into the Enfield Athletic Hall of Fame in 2007, and the Connecticut Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 2011. She also serves as the associate athletic director at Wesleyan.

The 82nd Gold Key Dinner is Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024 at the Aqua Turf Club in the Plantsville section of Southington. Tickets are $75, and are available by contacting CSMA president Tim Jensen of Patch Media Corp. at 860-394-5091 or tim.jensen@patch.com. Proceeds support the Bo Kolinsky Memorial Sports Media Scholarship, a $3,000 annual award named in memory of the noted high school sports editor of the Hartford Courant and past CSMA president, who passed away in 2003 at age 49.

Golf fundraiser

Ledyard High School Athletics will hold their 16th Annual golf outing on July 1, 2024 at Lake of Isles. This year the school is joining forces with the Buriak Family and will split the proceeds from the tournament to support the Matt Buriak Scholarship at Ledyard High School.

“For those that may not have known Matt, he was a talented athlete, artist, student and just an overall wonderful person who we tragically lost in 2009,” Ledyard athletic director Jim Buonocore said. “We want to honor Matt and ensure the scholarship in his name will continue on and positively impact LHS graduates for years to come.”

The cost is $170 per person and $680 per foursome. It includes a meal on the course, greens fees, cart, practice facility, gifts, and prizes. Raffle prizes will be available to view prior to play. Ledyard is also looking for tee sponsorships and raffle donations. Make checks payable to: LHS Athletics c/o Jim Buonocore, 24 Gallup Hill Road, Ledyard, CT 06339. For more information, please email Jim Buonocore at jbuonocore@ledyard.net.

More: Norwich Free Academy's magical girls basketball run ends in Class LL quarterfinals

Trivia time

Who was the first member of the 1980 Olympic hockey team to ink a pro contract?

Fair or foul?

Look no further than your Griswold Wolverines versus the Amity Spartans as exhibit No. 1 in the undeniable truth that the state boys basketball tournament still needs some fixin’.  The Wolverines gave the old ‘college try’ in losing to the Spartans, 66-51, in the opening round of the CIAC Division III tournament last week.

Amity (the state's 29th-biggest school with 696 boys) versus Griswold (the 125th-largest out of 180 schools with 265 boys) would never happen if you were picking sides in the schoolyard, so why does it happen every year in the state tournament? It’s because of the tournament committee’s past success formula that blindly moves teams up a division while telling lies. Yup, the committee wants us to believe that the 2023 Wolverines, which had seven seniors with loads of varsity experience and made a run to the state semifinals, is the same team as the 2024 Wolverines, which was rebuilding with a bunch of sophomores who had no varsity experience.

A Greenwich versus Wheeler matchup is just around the corner.

I’m still waiting for the 2014 and 2015 Valley Regional boys basketball teams, and the 2017 Westbrook boys basketball team to receive their state championship rings. Those rings were stolen when Valley had to play Sacred Heart-Waterbury in back-to-back Class S finals, and Westbrook went up against Trinity Catholic-Stamford in a Class S final.

More: Zanor column: It's 'Run to the Sun' time for boys basketball

Trivia answer

Jim Craig, who led Boston University to an NCAA championship in 1978, was signed by the Atlanta Flames after his 1980 Olympic goaltending heroics.

On a side note, my favorite scene in the movie Miracle was when Herb Brooks (Kurt Russell) goes to Craig’s (Eddie Cahill) dorm room to ask why he didn’t take the team’s psychology test. When Craig opens the door, the J. Geils Band’s ‘Must of Got Lost’ is playing on the stereo.

STUCK IN THE 70s

I love Caitlin Clark. And Diana, Maya, and Breanna were amazing players who piled up a bunch of national championship banners in Storrs. But any GOAT talk for women’s college basketball begins with The Blaze.

Carol Blazejowski, the sharpshooting dynamo out of Elizabeth, New Jersey, played for Montclair State and averaged 34.0 points per game in 1977 and 38.6 in 1978.

The Blaze scored 40 points against UCLA in the 1978 national semifinals. The year before she dropped 52 points on Queens College in the first-ever women’s doubleheader at Madison Square Garden.

Sports Illustrated called The Blaze, “the most relentlessly exciting performer in the history of women’s basketball.”

Jimmy Zanor is a sportswriter for the Norwich Bulletin and can be reached at jzanor@norwichbulletin.com. Follow him on Twitter@jzanorNB.

This article originally appeared on The Bulletin: Connecticut Sports Media Alliance announces Gold Key recipients.