Chaplin high schooler at Lyman Memorial High
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Christian Gonnelli shoots Monday during practice at Lyman Memorial
High School.
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By MARC ALLARD
mal...@norwichbulletin.com
Posted Dec 12, 2011 @ 10:35 PM
LEBANON —
It didn’t happen overnight, in fact, it took a couple of years before
Christian and Ajay Gonnelli were able to enter Lyman Memorial High
School as students — not athletes — just students.
“People think we came because of sports, that’s not true,” Christian
Gonnelli said following basketball practice with his new teammates on
Monday afternoon.
Lyman second-year coach Chris Fabry put it this way: If Christian
Gonnelli — who scored 17.4 points per game in his first two seasons at
Windham Tech and has 731 career points going into his junior campaign
— wanted to go to a school just for basketball, why would he choose
Lyman?
“The competition they are going to face is pretty brutal and we
haven’t been real successful,” Fabry said.
The Gonnellis have always wanted to go to Lyman Memorial, but they are
Chaplin residents. When they graduated from the eighth grade at Parish
Hill Middle School, their first choice was to go to Lyman for its
vocational-agriculture program. Instead, after an interview process to
get into the program, they were put on a waiting list.
“We didn’t sell it well enough. We didn’t give enough reason to want
to go to Lyman,” Ajay Gonnelli said.
Their parents weren’t keen on having their sons go to Parish Hill,
either, which left the second choice — Windham Tech.
Christian Gonnelli exploded onto the scene for the Mighty Tigers as he
quickly integrated into coach Jeff Belanger’s Fun-n-Gun style. The
forward averaged 12.3 points per game, including 48 3-pointers as a
freshman. Ajay Gonnelli, who stands out more on the soccer field and
golf course than on the basketball court, took longer to adjust. He
scored just 50 points in his inaugural campaign, averaging just over
two points a game.
Both players increased those numbers dramatically as sophomores.
Christian Gonnelli was named to the All-Bulletin squad for his
contribution to the Windham Tech team, which posted a 12-11 record,
and Ajay Gonnelli suddenly found his offensive groove. He scored 11
points per game last season with 42 3-pointers, just behind
Christian’s 51 treys. As happy as they were with Windham Tech’s
athletics, academics was another issue.
“It was an extremely tough decision, there’s definitely pros and cons
to both schools, but we just thought academically Lyman was a little
better than Windham Tech,” Ajay Gonnelli said. “Windham Tech is a
great school, I think. I had a lot of fun there — sports are fine —
but our future academically is very important and we think Lyman will
prepare us a little better for after high school.”
At the same time the Gonnellis were weighing their decision to change
schools this past summer, the state threatened to cancel all athletics
at the state’s technical schools. Ajay Gonnelli said it wasn’t the
factor that finalized the decision, but it played a role.
While the Gonnellis were exploring their future, Fabry was cussing his
out. After a 5-15 season last year in which his Bulldogs scored only
42 1/2 points a game, Fabry said he consistently told his assistants
that all the program needed was “a shooter.” But when he watched from
the stands during the summer league season, he saw no evidence of
that. In fact, he saw only four of his players on the court and the
team they were playing on didn’t win a single game. The writing was on
the wall.
“I was ticked off,” Fabry said. “They were honest with me. They told
me ‘Coach, I play baseball every day’ or ‘I play soccer every day.’
It’s a damn baseball/soccer town and I yell at my brother (Lyman boys
soccer coach Ryan Fabry) about it all the time.”
Then he heard rumors that the Gonnellis might be coming, rumors that
weren’t confirmed until athletic director Scott Elliott officially
informed him shortly before the school year began. “Christmas came
early” Fabry said.
“I sought them out on the second day (of the school year). I knew Ajay
because he played for my brother, and Christian stops by my room about
two to three times a day,” Fabry said.
The Gonnellis sacrificed and are continuing to sacrifice to make the
switch.
Ajay Gonnelli had to sit out the first eight games of the soccer
season because of the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference
transfer rule (transfers must sit out half of the first athletic
season that they played for their former school if they don’t transfer
to the school of their residence) and now Christian — although he is
practicing with the team — has to sit the first 10 games of the
basketball season.
“I try not to think about it, because it’s sad,” Christian Gonnelli
said.
His brother already delivered some advice for handling the down time.
“I told him ‘Work hard in practice and then try to go and get some
intense pick-up games somewhere, because you can’t play,’ ” Ajay
Gonnelli said. “Just keep working hard, do whatever you can to be
ready, because it’s really hard to get back into the swing of things.”
Because he sat out the beginning of the soccer season, Ajay Gonnelli
is eligible to play for the Bulldogs at the start of the basketball
season, but still has to find out whether he will be able to play golf
in the spring. Lyman doesn’t have a golf team, which means Ajay
Gonnelli might ask Parish Hill if he can play for the Pirates.
“It’s very nice,” Lyman senior Keith Chamberlain said of the two new
additions. “They came for the education and to get ready for college,
but they’re definitely going to be an asset for the team, and Chris is
going to help the baseball team in the spring. Hopefully, we’ll have a
couple of good sport seasons here.”
That’s something Lyman hasn’t been able to say about boys basketball
in some time. It hasn’t had an above-.500 season since it joined the
Eastern Connecticut Conference for the 2006-07 season, posting a 25-75
record in the last five years.
“We’ve been waiting for a (winning season) for quite a while now, and
it would be really nice,” senior Joe Olearnick said. “In my freshman
year, we came close (9-11), so it would be nice to have a winning
season in my senior year.”
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