Wesport High football players left teamless by school closure, while their coach is left heartbroken

Two years ago, after 40 years coaching elsewhere, Dan Stanley returned to the site of his first job coaching high school football. Then 72, the Westport High team he inherited didn’t look much like the one he’d coached in 1964; like the coach himself, the school he knew had long ago fled to the suburbs. But he coached them anyway, and in two seasons had them atop the Interscholastic League.

Now, as high school football practice starts up across the region, Stanley is spending his days trying to explain to those league-winning kids why they won’t be playing football this fall — not at Westport, and not anywhere else. “They counted on me,” the coach tells Plog.