East Haven was defeated by Branford 48-14 on Thanksgiving morning in their annual rivalry game. The loss concluded East Haven’s season with an overall record of 2-9. With the win, Branford finished the year with a record of 6-5 and qualified for the Class M Playoffs.

Yellowjackets senior quarterback and captain Dominic Salato threw for 186 yards, including an 80-yard touchdown in the fourth quarter, connecting with sophomore Rocco D’Amato to open the scoring for the Yellowjackets. Senior Tenzin Kyaptenpa hauled in the two-point-conversion.

Salato would avoid the Branford blitz and add a 25-yard TD pass to sophomore Dante Rodriguez minutes later. The catch was Rodriguez’s 10th touchdown on the year.

The Yellowjackets forced and recovered two fumbles on defense. The second fumble recovery set up the 25-yard strike from Salato to Rodriguez. East Haven needed to rely on their quarterback’s arm as it was slow going in the running game, only recording -2 total yards on the ground.

This season, the Yellowjackets won games early in the year vs. Bethel (28-27) and Bassick (50-0.) The team faced a difficult schedule and put up respectable numbers in each game this year, never going down without a fight. This attitude was evident in the fourth quarter on Thanksgiving when they tacked on two quick scores, refusing to be shut out.

“We basically played four playoff teams,” Head Coach Scott Benoit said. “The schedule was tough but that’s the nature of the beast; it goes in cycles, those teams are hot right now. We have had a tough schedule.”

East Haven was led all season long by their quarterback and captain. Salato totaled nearly 1,000 yards passing on the season and 12 total touchdowns. The senior brought a jovial attitude to the locker room win or lose, along with a strong arm that allowed East Haven coaches to open up the playbook when the running game was not working.

“We’ve thrown the ball more this year than we ever have since I’ve been at East Haven,” said Coach Benoit. “[Dom is] a big part of it….he’ll be a big loss, with our short numbers, our backup QB is also our starting fullback.”

Depth up and down the roster has been an issue for the East Haven program in recent years. This season, the Yellowjackets were able to field a larger team and Coach Benoit feels they are building a foundation to grow on into the future.

“We certainly improved,” said Coach Benoit. “Last year we were pretty much trying to field a team, that was pretty much the extent of it, this year we certainly improved, something to build upon for sure.”

On the ground, the Yellowjackets were led by sophomores Rocco D’Amato and Nick Bilides who each racked up more than 500 yards rushing on the season. Sophomore Dante Rodriguez led the team in receiving. All three will be vital to the Yellowjackets offense as they enter their junior seasons.

East Haven started eight sophomores for much of the season and featured freshmen throughout the game on Thanksgiving. Coach Benoit looks forward to those players stepping into larger roles as the program looks ahead to next season. The experience they’ve gained this year will be vital, regardless of the win/loss record in 2022.

“Our young guys got a lot of experiences,” Coach Benoit said. “We had freshmen playing the entire game yesterday, freshmen and sophomores, experience-wise we can take a lot from that.”

After the game, Coach Benoit stressed to his team how important it would be to put in the work in the off-season, especially in a small town like East Haven. “East Haven is a unique situation,” Benoit said. “The athletic pool is so small – every kid plays every sport. We won’t reconvene as a team until June. Makes it difficult, our opponents have a much larger athletic pool, they’re in the weight room all spring, we don’t get started with that until June.”

Coach Benoit is proud of how this group of seniors improved during their time together. He views the lost 2020 season as a missed opportunity to solidify both individual and team football skills at a key point in this class’s development.

“I think what they did was they improved, and I can’t overstate this because it’s fact, but losing that 2020 season, where they would have gotten to play on a very good team, it hurt them, they missed an entire year of football, there’s a lot of guys on the team that would have played in 2020. Had we had a 2020 season we’re talking about a whole different ballgame.”

This year’s East Haven roster consisted of: Senior captains Dom Salato and Jason Toth, additional seniors Garret Benson, Niyel Cornelius, Dom Plano, Liam Hay, Mateo Caputo, Chris Devlin, Nicholas Maione, Gio Caputo, Mekhi Morrison and Tenzin Kyaptenpa. Juniors Sergio Ramirez, Jeremiah Phetsarath-DeJesus, Rich Ackom-Brew and Antonio Consiglio. Sophomores Nick Bilides, Rocco D’Amato, Alex Dombrowski, Aiden Loehmann, Dante Rodriguez, Joe Allen, Daniel Lares, Zander Molster, Richard Jones, Chase Horton, and Dareon Streater. Freshmen Josh Hutchinson, Nick Viscuso, Anthony Lacen, Trew Kitson, Aiden Esposito, Justin Riveri, Kevin Clancy, William Mensah, and Domenico D’Ambrosio.