Aggressive. Dedicated. Determined. These were some of the accolades that best described 2000 Branford Sports Hall of Fame inductee Fran Raiola, who was a three sport athlete in Branford and most remembered for his hard work in the classroom and on the athletic ball field.<\/p>\n
Born in New Haven on May 6, 1929, Fran was a three sport athlete while attending Branford High School.\u00a0 In his freshman year (1944), he was a member of the Class \u201cB\u201d Champion baseball team as a left fielder and later as a third baseman, and played on the same team as fellow inductee Ken Erickson (1997).<\/p>\n
In 1945, he played football as an offensive and defensive end for the Hornets varsity squad and played with another Hall of Fame member Bill Hinchey (1991 ) and coached by another Hall of Famer, Warren Sampson (1992) .\u00a0 As a catcher for the baseball team, Fran led the Hornets to a runner-up spot in the competitive Housatonic League race, on a team which won six of its first eight games according to the Milestone yearbook.<\/p>\n
The Branford High School Hornets\u2019 basketball squad in 1946-47, made a clean sweep by taking both the Housatonic League Championship and the State Class \u201cB\u201d title.\u00a0\u00a0 The state title\u00a0 was taken after four tough games in the Yale Gym, the final verdict over Stonington, 44-31.\u00a0 Along with fellow inductees, Bill Mischler (1993), Jim Murphy (1995), Tony Proto (1998), Charlie Lake (1999), Fran and the other members of this squad were widely recognized as being one of the best Branford teams in many years.<\/p>\n
As a senior, tonight\u2019s inductee was considered a smart playmaker, that also played good defense, for the Hornet basketball team, which went undefeated in the regular season and won the Class \u201cB\u201d Tournament again, defeating Wilcox Tech in the finals, 33-31.<\/p>\n
After graduation, \u00a0he spent a few years playing football for the Branford Laurels and baseball for the Branford Town Team.\u00a0 Fran spent approximately two years (1950-52) active duty with the Branford National Guard, part of which was in Camp Pickett, Virginia and Augsburg, Germany.<\/p>\n
He retired in 1979 from the State of Connecticut, Mansfield State Training School as a Shift Supervisor. In retirement, he is active as Event Staff member for the Norwich Navigators and in the Fall, Winter, and Spring with the University of Connecticut sports teams.<\/p>\n
Fran lives with his wife, Ursula, in Mansfield Center, Connecticut and is the father to three sons, Robert, Daniel, and Fran Jr., grandfather to six and great-grandfather to one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":541,"template":"","acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/branfordsportshalloffame.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/inductee\/540"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/branfordsportshalloffame.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/inductee"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/branfordsportshalloffame.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/inductee"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/branfordsportshalloffame.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/branfordsportshalloffame.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}