Branford Sports Hall of Fame Inductees

The Branford Sports Hall of Fame will hold its 28th induction ceremony 5:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 20 at Woodwinds, when 10 outstanding individuals and two championship teams will be honored.

Tickets are $50 and are available at the Branford Parks and Recreation Department at 203-315-2365.

The 2015 inductees are: --Victor V. Amatori Jr. is the face on the sideline, the bench or in the press box covering or keeping stats for local sporting events. A 1986 Branford High School graduate, Amatori went to Southern Connecticut State University, where he worked for four years in its Sports Information Department.

He won the Rob Parker Award for his writing for the campus paper The Southern News. He started his tenure with the Branford Recreation Department as a student after-school program assistant, and became Program Supervisor in 2002.

He was awarded the Branford Elks Lodge’s Distinguished Citizenship Award for Outstanding Meritorious Service. Amatori has been a media relations assistant for the Connecticut Suns of the Women’s National Basketball Association and a game-day statistician for University of Connecticut football.

The late David Bowman was a four-year starter at Southern Connecticut State University, where he routinely scored in the 20s during games and captained the Owls his senior year. Bowman earned four varsity letters and scored nearly 1,000 points with a 16.6 PPG record at Branford High School in the early 1970s.

He was selected to the All-Housatonic and All-State teams his senior year when he was captain. Bowman later served as assistant coach under Jim Rooney of the Guilford state champion girls basketball team. He managed operations for the D.J. King Trucking Company for 25 years. Bowman passed away in 2006 at the age of 51.

--Dan Cudgma a 1984 graduate was a two way starter for coach Rich Cavanaugh on the Hornets football team as a sophomore at linebacker and offensive guard. As a junior he helped the Hornets to the CIAC State Championship game in 1982 losing to Newtown.

He earned All State and All Housatonic. He was co-captain his senior year when the team went 8-2, earning him his second selection to All-State and All-Housatonic teams. Named to the Adidas Honorable Mention All-American team, Cudgma was heavily recruited but ultimately selected the University of Connecticut, where he started his junior and senior seasons.

That club finished 8-3 and won the Yankee Conference He graduated in 1988 with an Economics degree. Cudgma is the co-founder, President and CEO of MotiveMetrics.

--Two-sport standout Eva Esposito excelled in basketball and volleyball at Branford graduating in 1989. A three-year starter in basketball she lead the Hornets to a 17-7 record and the Housatonic League in scoring her senior year, with a school record 561 points.

She finished her career with 1,072 points, two unanimous picks as All Housatonic, a spot on the New Haven Tap-Off Club All-County Team, New Haven Register All-Area Team and Hartford Courant Class L State Team. She was named to the All-Housatonic Volleyball Team 1987 and 1988, the Class M All-State Team in 1988, and was twice her team’s MVP.

She went to the University of Hartford on a full basketball scholarship, graduating in 1993. Her coaching resume in basketball and volleyball includes Wilbur Cross, Albertus Magnus and East Haven, where she led the volleyball team to its first Class L State Championship in 2004.

She was named New Haven Register Coach of the Year. Since 2010 she has been the Branford volleyball coach and her teams have won three Oronoque Division titles. She has taught physical education and health at Eli Whitney Tech for 18 years, and this year was appointed Athletic Coordinator for all sports there.

--A 1966 graduate Ray Falkoff has spent untold hours mentoring hundreds of young athletes in a coaching career that started in 1971. A graduate of American International College, Falkoff has been coach, scout and leader for many basketball and baseball players in New Haven, East Haven and Branford.

He was a volunteer assistant to Lee High School’s Peter Evans and a coach in the Goffe Street Summer League as well as chairman of the former Q House tournament. He was assistant boys basketball coach at Branford when the Hornets won their last Housatonic League Championship, Branford Youth Basketball, and baseball coach to many Little League and traveling teams, including a Branford Sting Youth Baseball Team that won the Cal Ripken Wave Rider 14U Tournament in South Carolina.

--Paula Rembac Miller graduated from Branford in 1992 were she was a standout tennis player for four years. Branford won four consecutive Housatonic League championships, the CIAC Class M State Championship and made the State Finals her sophomore year. She was named All-Housatonic two times, was team MVP and an All-Area player.

At Quinnipiac the Bobcats won the New England-10’s Championship her senior year. She was tennis captain and finished in the top 20 in Division II. After graduating in 1996, Miller became Quinnipiac’s assistant Women’s Tennis Coach, then Associate Head Men’s and Women’s Tennis coach (2012) and Director of Tennis and Women’s Coach (2014).

The Bobcats were five-time conference champions and made the NCAA tournament eight times. In 2010 she and her 1993 teammates were inducted the Quinnipiac Hall of Fame.

This year Miller was named the MAAC Coach of the Year.

--Erika Newell was captain of swimming as well as indoor and outdoor track at Branford graduating in 2001. She was an All-American and All-State swimmer, with four school records in swimming and the school high jump record in track, earning her a spot on the All-State track team.

Newell went to North Carolina State on a swimming scholarship where she was MVP and set a school record in the 100-yard backstroke as a freshman. She transferred to Fordham University and entered the ROTC program.

She became Fordham’s first multi-event winner at the Atlantic 10 Championships and set the Atlantic 10 backstroke record her senior year. She was named Fordham’s outstanding female athlete in 2005 and finished with nine school records. She was induction into the Fordham University Sports Hall of Fame in 2012.

Newell continued her athletic competition, setting records in physical events as a member of the United States Military, where she trained as a Human Intelligence Agent, with several deployments to the Mideast. For the past several years she has worked at the Gulf World Marine Park in Panama City, FL, where she trains bottlenose dolphins on husbandry behaviors.

--Alex Palluzzi and J. Palluzzi share a passion for sports that they have passed on to not only their children, but many of the town’s athletes. They are fixtures at Branford sporting and cultural events, encouraging, supporting and appreciating the efforts of all.

J. Palluzzi, a Southern Connecticut State College grad, played five sports, most notably basketball on the 1954 SCSU undefeated women’s basketball team that beat the University of Connecticut. In her 37-1/2-year teaching career, she taught at Guilford, and Branford schools at every level, before retiring in 2005, when she was inducted into the Education Hall of Fame.

She has been running the Annual Branford Spelling Bee for over 35 years. She and her husband Alex Sr. have supported four athletic sons through their Branford High competitive years.

Alex Sr. coached all four with the Atlantic Wire baseball and basketball teams, one of the most successful teams in the late 1960s to mid-70s.

He also assisted with coaching the undefeated New England championship St. Mary Grammar school basketball team in 1972-73. He retired as foreman of the asphalt division of Tilcon in 1990 after 40 years of work. A Korean War vet, Alex Sr. played baseball in the Army.

He has been an active member of the Branford Lions Club for 30 years, serving on the board and many committees. Alex is a Melvin Jones Fellowship Award winner and also received the Humanitarian Service Award from the Branford and Connecticut Lions, respectively.

--David D. Redden, Head Snowboard Coach at Vermont’s Stratton Mountain School, has been coaching elite snowboard athletes, including Olympian and all-time titleholder Kelly Clark since he was at Mount Snow Academy in the early 2000s.

The Branford High School standout swimmer and soccer player, who was captain of both teams, was perhaps best known for his record-setting performance and three first-place finishes, that gave the Hornets a share of the 1983 Class M State Swimming Championships with Foran High of Milford. He earned Most Outstanding Performer for the event.

He was a two-time All-Stater and All-Housatonic swimming and soccer pick. A competitive snowboarder since 1996, after serving as a guide and manager of whitewater and wilderness adventures for Echo: The Wilderness Company, Redden began a coaching career that has taken him to Stratton, which three times has been named USSA’s Snowboard Club of the Year, with 12 alumni representing it at the Sochi Olympics.

--Larry Vieira played many sports at Jonathan Law High School, but being a hockey goalie was his first love. He walked on to the Division II University of New Haven hockey program, where, in four years (1978-1982), he compiled a save percentage of 88.8, earning a scholarship his last two years.

After graduation, he had a tryout with the Erie Golden Blades of the East Coast Hockey League. He was appointed Head Hockey Coach at Branford at the age of 23 and spent 32 years coaching there and later at Darien and Immaculate High schools, leading all three teams to post-season play.

His Branford teams won three Southern Connecticut Conference Division II tournament championships, made 21 CIAC playoff appearances and won the CIAC Division II State Championship in 1988. From 1987-1989, Branford won 43 straight Division II games.

In 2000 Vieira was named the Connecticut Gatorade High School Coach of the year. Vieira, who has taught at West Haven High for 26 years, has also coached youth hockey and at Manhattanville College, and for seven years has been goalie development director for the Southern Stars. --Also being honored are the 1988 and 1989 state championship field hockey teams of Hall of Fame coach Cathy McGuirk.

The two teams from 1986 to 1989 produced a combined four year record of 64-5-5 and outscored their opponents 264 to 34 and had 53 shutouts. In addition the two clubs won three consecutive Housatonic League Championships. There were eight different players that made All State. Branford Sports Hall of Fame Fame