Another Staples High School football season has begun.
As is traditional, the Wreckers are gunning for their 5th state championship.
The first came in 1975. That’s around the time Fred Cantor took this photo:
(Photo/Fred Cantor)
Much has changed since then.
The stands have been enlarged. There’s a new press box. The track is no longer cinder. The area behind the gym (right side of photo, with parking lot) was “modernized” between 1978-81, when a fieldhouse and swimming pool were added.
Thanks to lights, Staples now plays football games on Friday nights, not Saturday afternoons.
The field itself finally has a name. It honors Paul Lane — coach of that 1975 state championship squad.
But much has not changed. A new fall season still brings excitement, fun — and the belief that anything is possible.
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Today, “06880” introduces a new addition to our “Friday Flashback.” Each week (hopefully!) we’ll include a “50 Years Ago This Week” tidbit at the end. (Okay, maybe it will be “25 Years Ago…” or some other number.)
Thanks to Carl Addison Swanson for the idea. And big props to Fred Cantor: Staples Class of 1971 graduate and amateur historian, who loves digging into newspaper archives.
So … 50 Years Ago This Week:
Tennessee Williams, Sandy Dennis, and Dave Brubeck were among the prominent names featured in an ad for the new Connecticut Center for Continuing Education at the Westport Country Playhouse.
The Center promised “over 100 courses” during the Playhouse’s “nine-month ‘intermission.’”
(Whether you’ve been here 50 years or 50 days, if you like “06880,” please consider a tax-deductible contribution. Click here — and thank you!)
I would love in particular to hear from anyone who took the course taught by Tennessee Williams. Thanks.
Linda Franco Doyle and I took a marvelous film course taught by Joanne Woodward in 1974 at the Playhouse. She hosted several prominent movie directors speaking to us in class throughout the course. Years later UCLA created courses based upon the same educational format of utilizing celebrity professionals to teach or speak as guests in classes called “UCLA Extension”. I enrolled my daughter, and she successfully graduated and immediately was hired to work in television casting. I am forever grateful to Joanne Woodward and the Westport Playhouse for giving me the opportunity to see the value in this educational format!
We went to the game last night against Ridgefield. From a very community spirited Saturday afternoon game of which most of the town turned out in the Wonder Years, to now, I felt like I was attending a rock concert. Big screen coverage (at the wrong end of the field) to blasting music during time outs to rowdy students. Not a good experience. Plus a cheap shot on a Ridgefield “fair catch,” of which the Wrecker hit the receiver regardless and then all cheered did not endear me to the coaching staff which seemed to condone the “dirty”play. P.S. Why the Friday nights under the lights? Texas does it because it is too hot in September/October but switch to day game once the temperatures drop and playoffs begin. “Sneaker football,” here as one former coach called it.
The man who views the world at age 50, the same as he did at age 20, wasted 30 years of his life.
Change is inevitable. Growth is optional. Shaw.