Connect with us

Canton

Veteran football coach Mike Guy hired to lead grid squad in Canton

New Canton High coach Mike Guy, right, spent two years on the Lewis Mills coaching staff.

New Canton High coach Mike Guy, right, spent two years on the Lewis Mills coaching staff.

CANTON, Feb. 3 – Veteran high school coach Michael Guy has been hired as the next head football coach at Canton High.

Guy, the longtime head coach at Housatonic Valley from 1975 through 2003, was hired earlier this week, Canton athletic coordinator Craig DeAngelis confirmed. Guy replaces Chris Currier, who resigned in December following a 0-10 campaign.

“He will be very good for the program,” DeAngelis said. “He is a very detailed, well organized coach. He will help us going forward.”

Guy has plenty of experience coaching football at small schools. He coached for over a quarter century at Housatonic, won 104 games, two league championships and took the Mountaineers to the 1990 Class S championship game.

Since leaving Housatonic, he worked as an assistant or volunteer coach at Torrington (2004-09), Berkshire School in Sheffield, Mass., (2010), Wolcott Tech (2011), Lewis Mills (2012-13) and St. Paul (2014-15) for the past two seasons.

It may have been 13 years since he was a head coach but Guy, a retired physical education/health teacher, is looking forward to the opportunity to lead the Warriors. “It is an opportunity do some things I want to do from a coaching standpoint. To be in charge and put my own personal stamp on the program,” he said. “I think this was an opportunity that I couldn’t pass up.

“You get to have an impact on the whole program (as a head coach),” he said. “You’re in this business to work with kids.”

Guy is impressed with the support from the administration, parents and the community.

“Obviously the parents are behind the program,” he said. “There is an excellent booster club there. Obviously the community is behind the program with the field that they have built there. The turnout of kids this year was good. It’s an opportunity to build on that.”

Guy will meet with the players next week. He is still in the midst of assembling his staff. Once, Guy and his staff evaluate the skills of the players on the team then they’ll formulate their philosophy for the upcoming campaign.

He would like to practice in the spring to begin the assessment process.

Guy will be the 13th head coach in team history and the fifth since the Canton program was resurrected in 2007 after being disbanded in 1964.

Mike Guy was the head coach at Housatonic Valley from 1975 through 2003.

Mike Guy was the head coach at Housatonic Valley from 1975 through 2003.

Paul Phillippon had great success here in Canton from 2012-14, winning 24 games in three seasons and leading the Warriors to the 2014 Pequot Uncas Division championship and the school’s first-ever berth in the Class S playoffs. Canton won a school record 10 games in 2014.

But with the graduation of a majority of the team and injuries, the Warriors had a rough time in 2015 under Currier, a first-year head coach. By the end of the season, Canton was playing too many freshmen and sophomores to be competitive at the varsity level.

The Warriors are members of the Pequot Conference’s Western Division where they will be playing Gilbert/Northwestern, Lewis Mills, Nonnewaug, Granby and the SMSA/University co-op out of Hartford.

“It’s a challenge,” Guy said. “You can only do so many repairs around the house. Coaching football – even as an assistant – isn’t a part-time job. You can’t sit back. You have to be prepared to go into the game.”

NOTES: Guy did play college football at Southern Connecticut State University. … At Housatonic, he had a career record of 104-163-7. He led the Mountaineers to the Bi-Valley championship in 1985 and the Pequot Conference crown in 1990 with a perfect 10-0 record in the regular season. Housatonic lost in the Class S championship game to Derby in 1990, 41-7. … Guy had several jobs as an assistant coach. Nearly every season, he was the kicking coach. He spent some time as an offensive coordinator under Dan Dunaj at Torrington High. He was also a defensive coordinator, safety coach and running backs coach. … Guy was one of five candidates interviewed by the committee to hire the coach, DeAngelis said.

Gerry deSimas, Jr., is the editor and founder of The Collinsville Press. He is an award-winning writer and has been covering sports in Connecticut and New England for more than 30 years.

Click to comment

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply

More in Canton