How Fairfield Warde's 'Underdogs' Won FCIAC In A Challenging Year

FAIRFIELD, CT — In a season that fell on the heels of a hard year, Fairfield Warde High School’s baseball team brought home the FCIAC championship.

Along with the struggles and sense of loss that everyone faced with the coronavirus pandemic, student John Heitzman noted the devastating experience of losing classmate Kevin Kuczo to suicide in February.

“Everyone’s been through a lot this year, (so) I think it was really great to bring that championship back to our school,” said Heitzman, an outgoing junior who made first team all-state as an outfielder.

Despite losing to what has become an arch rival — Greenwich High School — in the final game of the regular season, the team still managed to finish 20 and 4.

Ironically, the Mustangs then beat the Cardinals 9-0 in the FCIAC tournament, ultimately taking the county championship. But after winning the first two rounds in the state tourney, Warde played Greenwich yet again in the quarterfinals and lost.

Still, no one is complaining, especially not Coach Brett Conner, who was named FCIAC Coach of the Year.

“It was a great year,” he said, with 10 of the Mustang varsity players being put on the all-FCIAC team.

Conner gives great praise to his players, whose season was canceled last year, but who still came out to play.

“Their practices were a thing of beauty,” he said. “They worked really hard.”

Perhaps more importantly, he said the players were very centered on helping one another, and lending their expertise to upcoming athletes as well.

“The expectations were not high,” admitted co-captain Declan O’Hara, with the coaches and senior players merely hoping to finish around .500 for the season. “We were definitely the underdogs.”

“We didn’t have all the off-season workout that we normally would,” he said, noting that because of the pandemic gap created in spring 2020, he was the only returning varsity player from 2019.

But younger players stepped up, spreading energy and enthusiasm, he said, and helping surpass expectations for the entire team.

“The young guys that came up were very, very hungry to win … and while the seniors brought a lot of energy and intensity, so did the young people,” he said.

Conner, who runs a baseball camp during the summer months, said that after six years in his role at Warde, the team is starting to net the results of working with younger players.

“We put a major premium on making sure we’re available for the youth players who are coming up through the system,” he said, with varsity players getting involved in coaching and mentoring.

Conner said building those relationships of trust go a long way in putting a team together, even before they begin working on the fundamentals of play.

“For us to do that, I think it really means a lot to the town and to the parents,” Heitzman said. “We’re helping them out so that one day they can be in our shoes, and they can succeed on the baseball field.”

He attributed a lot of this season’s success to their coach, as well as to their focus on helping one another.

“The culture was just unmatched,” he said. “It was great. At the end of the season we described it as that it wasn’t just a team, it was more of a brotherhood.”