FOOTBALL: Wolcott Tech assistant coach Jennifer Stango gets ready for her second season with the Wildcats

By Peter Wallace, Register Citizen

 TORRINGTON -- What’s good about playing football?

“The contact,” beams Jennifer Stango, immediately gaining credibility in her position as an assistant football coach at Wolcott Tech High School in Torrington.

Stango, a 2005 graduate of Post University (Waterbury), has played in a national women’s league for nine years, the past two with the Connecticut Wreckers in Danbury.

At 5-feet-3, she’s a linebacker and a running back.

Recovered from an ACL tear last year, Stango knows contact.

“I don’t want to hear that ‘He’s bigger than me,’” she says in her coaches role with some of Wolcott Tech’s smaller cornerbacks and receivers. “Get down low; the low man wins.”

Stango, a social studies teacher at Waterbury’s Kaynor Tech in her day job, played soccer, basketball and softball at Sacred Heart High School and at Post. A former coach recruited her for a women’s football team in Hartford; later, she switched to another team in Danbury before the Wreckers were formed two years ago.

“The ball is smaller, but the rules are the same as college,” she says, explaining that there are 50 league teams in North America, including one in Canada. The regular season, running from April through July, has eight games.

 

From the Torrington Register Citizen:

WOLCOTT TECH ADJUSTS TO LIFE AWAY FROM HOME FIELD

TORRINGTON — The Wolcott Tech football team is used to adversity.

The team didn’t play a true home game in its first varsity season, 2008. The Wildcats played at Torrington’s Pop Warner field for its home games, with one final game on Thanksgiving against Lewis Mills’ junior varsity team.

In 2009, the home games were played at Oliver Wolcott Technical High School. There have been points since then where Wolcott Tech has had to move its home games to the road because of poor field conditions. Wildcat athletic director Ray Tanguay is hoping that the new softball field and drainage systems being installed on the athletic complex remedy that issue. The project comes from the State of Connecticut, as can be seen by the giant sign with Gov. Dannel Malloy’s name on it that sits just inside the property fence on Winthrop Street.

“It’s just a waiting game,” Tanguay said in an interview on Wednesday night.

 GILBERT/NORTHWESTERN EYES PLAYOFF BERTH

Gilbert/Northwestern, another team that started Wednesday, has around 45 players, according to head coach Scott Salius. The Yellowjackets went inside The Gilbert School’s gymnasium until the lightning cleared in the evening, then went back out to the practice field behind the school to work.

“There always seems to be something,” Salius said. “Fight against the weather, fight against time, everything else, but first day, we’re just trying to hit them with the very, very, very, very basics, either brand new for the new guys or just a review for the old guys.”

Gilbert/Northwestern doesn’t have time to waste, given it will be facing the same five games that it had to open the 2011 season. The Yellowjackets went 3-2 against Coventry/Windham Tech (loss), Enfield (win), Ellington/Somers (loss), SMSA/University (win) and Avon (win). GN finished 7-3 and was a mere two-point conversion away against Stafford/East Windsor (a 22-21 loss) from a second straight Class M playoff berth. The Yellowjackets went 8-2 in the regular season in 2010 before going 1-1 in the ‘M’ playoffs.

“This year’s kind of pivotal for us,” Salius said. “The future’s looking really good for us.”

Read more here.

Wolcott Tech will leave the Berkshire League and join the Constitution State Conference, starting this fall.

Read more about the switch here from the Torrington Register Citizen.