New London Coach Named Tops in Connecticut by CSWA

Girls basketball coach Holly Misto of New London and boys lacrosse coach Jeff Brameier of Darien have been named recipients of the Doc McInerney High School Coach of the Year Award by the Connecticut Sports Writers’ Alliance.

Misto led the Whalers to a 26-2 record and the Class LL championship in 2016-17, defeating top-ranked Trumbull 42-36 for the title March 18 at the Mohegan Sun Arena. New London was ranked first in the final GameTimeCT/New Haven Register Top 10 poll. Misto, now in her fourth season at New London, is 246-66 (.788) in 12 seasons overall prior to this year, and 73-8 with two state championship appearances with the Whalers. She is a 1983 graduate of Westerly (R.I.) High School, where she was a former three-sport athlete, and a member of the Westerly Athletic Hall of Fame. She coached for nine seasons at Westerly, where she won the 2010 Division II state championship.

Brameier has been head coach of the varsity boys lacrosse team at Darien since its inception in 1984. In the spring of 2017, the team went 23-0, won its fourth consecutive Fairfield County Interscholastic Athletic Conference and its fourth straight Class L state title, and finished the season ranked No. 1 in the nation in the Under Armour/Inside Lacrosse national rankings. The Blue Wave have won 55 straight games. In his 34 years at the helm, Brameier has posted a record of 572-132, the seventh highest victory total for a high school coach in the country. He has guided the program to 16 FCIAC championships since 1992, and 13 state titles since 1997.

The award is named in honor of Francis ''Doc'' McInerney, sports editor of the Waterbury Republican in the 1960s and a past president of the Alliance.

Misto and Brameier will be honored at the 77th annual Gold Key Dinner at the Aqua Turf Club in Southington on Sunday, April 29, 2018. Gold Key Award recipients will be PGA golf professional Dennis Coscina, former Granby Memorial High School field hockey coach Dot Johnson, New Canaan High School football coach Lou Marinelli, newly-retired UConn women’s soccer coach Len Tsantiris and Olympic ice hockey gold medalist Gretchen Ulion-Silverman.

Tickets to the Gold Key Dinner are $75 apiece, and may be reserved by contacting CSWA President Tim Jensen of Patch Media Corp. at tim.jensen@patch.com or 860-394-5091, or Vice President Rich Gregory of the Danbury News-Times at rgregory@newstimes.com or 203-705-8625.

Proceeds from the event benefit the Bo Kolinsky Journalism Scholarship, named after a longtime Hartford Courant sportswriter and past CSWA president who died unexpectedly in 2003.

Photo credit: Sean D. Elliot/The Day