CROMWELL — In any kind of weather, Rob Levesque shows up for practice and games in shorts.
“It’s like toast out here,” he tells his Southington High players.
“That’s his superstition,” senior Beckett Colby says. “When he wears shorts, we win. Oh, yeah — cold is just a mentality.”
“It’s really just setting the tone,” senior Ahmed Mamoon says. “You know it’s going to be a cold game, you look over and see your coach is in shorts, it changes your mindset. He’s out here, battling the cold, coaching his football team, ‘why can’t I do that?’ This year, that connection we’ve built with him, is just extraordinary.”
Levesque grew up in nearby Berlin, playing for tough-as-nails Al Pellegrinelli. When he took over for Mike Drury at Southington High in 2024, there were big shoes and shorts to fill, and big-as-always expectations to meet. It’s that way in Southington, a perennial Class LL playoff program. But for Levesque, who had been defensive coordinator from 2017-2023, his first year a head coach was a challenge, a young team struggling to a 3-7 record.
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“We knew last year was just a down year, it wasn’t anything that … it wasn’t Southington, to be honest,” Mamoon said. “And the way we practiced, the way we run practice, the way we lift, we wanted this year to be something representative of what this town is.”
The grass-roots-up support in the town never wavered, Levesque noted. As he grew in the job, his players, a year older, bigger, stronger and wiser, rallied and rededicated and Southington has roared back. The Blue Knights (9-3), after a series of impressive late-season victories, knocked off Glastonbury in the quarterfinals, and Norwich Free Academy in the semis to reach the Class LL championship game for the ninth time in school history, the first time since 2014. Southington will play Greenwich and try for its fourth state title on Saturday at Willowbrook Park in New Britain at 7 p.m.
“Good group of kids, and kids play the game,” Levesque said. “Very dedicated group. They weren’t happy with it last year. Most of them played, we were really young last year, still kind of young. There’s no making up for experience. The more games you play, the more you figure out what kind of player you want to be. These guys have tunnel vision.”
As the Blue Knights were finding themselves, they lost to Glastonbury, St. Joseph-Trumbull and New Britain, all playoff teams, during the first five games of season, but players consider a come-from-behind victory Oct. 4 over Hall-West Hartford, Jacoby Roman and Ben Beaulieu connecting for a winning score in the final minute, to be a turning point.
“In the fourth quarter of the Hall game, that was definitely a turning point,” Mamoon said. “We all got together, it was a close game, we all knew we had to clutch up this game, and it showed the grit the team had, the connection we had made during the off-season.”
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The Knights have now won seven in a row, two coming against teams who will also be playing for state championships on Saturday. Their signature win, of sorts, was over Class MM finalist Windsor, 28-7, on Nov. 7. In their Thanksgiving rivalry game, they defeated Cheshire, Class L finalist, 31-0. These games drove home the coach’s point that Southington has some control over its ultimate destination.
“They know it’s about us,” Levesque said. “Our message is we’re capable of making mistakes and losing games, and we’re capable of winning games.”
Levesque played for Pelligrinelli, who also coached multiple sports at Berlin in the late 1990s, went to Plymouth State and later returned as an assistant coach to help the Redcoats win three state championships before moving to Southington’s staff. He has coached track, lacrosse and wrestling, as well as football, during his coaching career in Connecticut.
“I learned humility,” Levesque said, of his first season as Southington’s head coach. “There are a lot of things you have to do, administratively, that you take for granted. But one thing I doubled down on was the mental aspect of the game and coaching that part up, trying to think about creating young men and not just winning football games, and see how that translates into winning and success. We had a down year, but we turned it around.”
He tweaked the practice format and instituted a “character code.”
“Some things I wanted to do in how we want to do things, carry ourselves and be the best football players, but also be the best people and students we could be,” Levesque said. “And they’re buying into it in our image we want to uphold in our community in the state.”
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Pelligrinelli, who coached Berlin High from 1976-2003 and won or shared 15 conference titles, and reached eight state finals, is now retired and living in Boca Raton, where it’s almost always like toast out there. He wrote a letter of recommendation for Levesque and they keep in touch.
“The things he wrote and said about me motivated me a little bit,” Levesque said. “Him and Jim Day at Berlin, my wrestling coaches, great, Hall-of-Fame guys, great role models. There are things I find myself saying now that I remember from a long time ago. I get made fun of for wearing shorts on the field, but whenever it was cold, Coach Pelligrinelli would say ‘it’s like toast out here.’ None of us knew what that meant. It’s like toast out here. And we talk to the kids about opportunities knocking, ‘are you going to answer the door or not?’ I’ve said that numerous times. And it fits the situation.”
Beaulieu, a sophomore who was thrust into the starting lineup during the season, rushed for 247 yards and three TDs in the victory over Windsor, three more scores against Cheshire. In the semifinals, he rushed for another 140 yards and two touchdowns, while quarterback Luke Prozo threw for 218 yards and three TDs as Levesque donned his coach’s shorts on the most frigid night of the season for the 42-7 win over NFA.
Now the opportunity to win a state championship to go with the banners hung in 1998, 2013 and 14, knocks for the Blue Knights. Always formidable Greenwich (10-2), ranked sixth in the state, has prevailed its tough schedule of Fairfield County programs, including a victory over Fairfield Prep in the semifinals.
“The key is outlasting them,” Colby said. “The better conditioned we are, the more film we watch, the stronger we are, that’s No. 1, and it started right after last season.”
