​North Branford football coach Anthony Salvati speaks to his team after North Branford defeated Haddam-Killingworth 57-6 at Colafati Field in North Branford Thursday, Sept. 24, 2026. (Joe Morelli / Hearst Connecticut Media)
NORTH BRANFORD – The North Branford football team returned several skill players from a team that hosted a CIAC Class S quarterfinal-round playoff game last year.Add in a spark plug like Cole Blotney, a touchdown scoring threat from anywhere on the field and it’s creating a Thunderbirds’ offense that is going to be hard to stop.Blotney had a kick return for a touchdown and caught a TD pass from quarterback Matteo Anderson to help North Branford blitz Haddam-Killingworth 57-6 at Colafati Field Thursday night.Blotney, a transfer from the Hopkins School in New Haven, played youth football in North Branford before attending Hopkins. North Branford coach Anthony Salvati called Blotney “electric, he’s that playmaker out there that we didn’t have last year.” Blotney is pretty happy at his new school.”I wasn’t as happy as I should have been (at Hopkins), and, you know, I’ve been thinking about it for years, but  it finally got to a point, I decided to put the foot down and come back,” Blotney said. “Now I’m here, trying to do whatever I can.”After Haddam-Killingwirth scored on its opening drive, Blotney took the kickoff and went 70 yards for the touchdown. A hold during the run negated the score, but the Thunderbirds scored two plays later.And it never stopped from there: 57 unanswered points in this battle of 2-0 Pequot Conference rivals. North Branford ran just eight plays from scrimmage in the first half and led 36-6 at halftime.”I think that thumping we took (from) Sheehan (in the S playoffs, 42-0), really motivated us in the off-season,” Salvati said. “We hit the weight room hard, every day. In the weight room we were harping ‘42-0, 42-0.’ We almost got T-shirts made.”Jack Sigel rushed for 124 yards and three touchdowns on just seven carries for North Branford.”Our playbook is really big. We can just run pretty much anything we wanted today. That’s what we did,” Sigel said.  Anderson threw for two touchdowns and rushed for another.”Props to North Branford, they are probably the best team in the league,” Haddam-Killingworth coach Tyler Wilcox said. “In a matter of 3 minutes, we were down three scores. … We thought we had a pretty good kickoff team squared away for this week and did what we wanted to do from the scouting report but (Blotney) took advantage of it. He got outside on us. We lost contain, we didn’t stay in our lanes a few times and they burned us on a lot of kickoff returns that we haven’t given up all year so far.”North Branford scored 49 points in each of its first two games. Its closest game was 30 points, winning on the road at Seymour last week.”I think we can play with anyone in Class S. We’ve just got to stay healthy,” Salvati said.Player of the GameCole Blotney, North Branford: Had a kickoff re