Lou Marinelli: Ram Tough And A True Coaching Legend

New Canaan football has been so good for so long, it's easy to forget just how bad a program it was before Lou Marinelli arrived in the town affectionately known as "the next station to heaven."

From 1977 to 1980, the Rams were in football hell, the doormats of the FCIAC and perhaps the worst program in the state. For three consecutive years, the team did not win a single game. Not one. 0-29-2 during a 31-game stretch. Unorganized and without any leadership, the Rams always seemed to be on the wrong end of a 48-6 game.

That all changed when Marinelli was hired by then athletic director Vin Iovino in 1981. Before coming to New Canaan, Iovino competed against Marinelli when he was the head coach at Fox Lane and Marinelli was leading the football program at Yorktown Heights.

In the first game of his first season in New Canaan, Marinelli led the Rams to a monumental upset of Stamford's Rippowam High School, the defending state champions. New Canaan finished 4-5 that season, the only losing one in the 30 years Marinelli has been on the Rams' sideline. But that will go down as one of his best coaching jobs, akin to squeezing blood out of a rock. I was on that team, one that was always the least talented one each time it took the field. But under Marinelli and his coaching staff, we were always the best prepared team on the field. We always knew what our opponents were going to do and when they were going to do it. Trouble was, when you've never won before, you don't always grasp the magic formula and make things happen right away.

With a few wins under their belts, the Rams made things happen the very next year, winning the state championship. New Canaan went from doormats to dominance in just two years. The rest, as they say, is history. The Rams are a juggernaut in high school football, year in and year out. Under Marinelli, New Canaan has won , including .

Marinelli is the best hire New Canaan High School has made in the last half-century and he built the Rams into a winner the right way. Oh, sure there have been some blips along the way. Not everyone was happy when Turner Baty came in from seemingly out of nowhere, took over the starting quarterback position, helped win a state championship, and then left after one semester. But that's life, things are not always fair and predictable. If Marinelli had to do things over again, he may have handled that situation differently, but hindsight, as we know, is always 20/20.

As someone who played for Marinelli, I can tell you that winning is not the most important thing to him. He's not the kind of coach who counts his victories hoping to achieve all-time this or all-time that status. What matters to Marinelli is preparing his team and putting them into position to win every time out. Ask any one of the hundreds of former players who suited up for Marinelli, and they will all tell you how they learned the importance of preparation, hard work, commitment and dedication from him. Marinelli not only got us ready for football, but more importantly, for life in the real world, as well.

Marinelli is not a screamer, a shouter, or a "I'm the boss and you're not" type of coach. Have you ever seen Marinelli panic or get flustered? That never happens. In that first game back in 1981, Rippowam returned the opening kickoff 95 yards for a touchdown. Marinelli never blinked, but when he caught the eye of Iovino on the sideline moments after the score, he jokingly said, "Yeah, thanks for bringing me here." Marinelli smiled, went back to work, then led the Rams to one of the greatest victories in New Canaan football history.

There are many more victories to come, but people like Lou Marinelli don't come along very often.