Where Mansfield styles began.

Sannie's clothing store in Mansfield in 1975, 40 years after its founding.

My most recent post on this blog elicited a fairly good response from its readers, at least as far as I can tell from the number of looks it got according to the little meter that appears on the left-hand side of the browser version. That was heartening, given that I post a lot less frequently than I used to.

The meter doesn't give me the demographics of the reading audience, but I have to believe they're usually in the 40-70 range, age-wise -- especially when the posts refer to something that hasn't been a part of the Mansfield landscape for more than 30 years.

My last post, if you didn't read it, was about my having to retire a well-worn pair of pants, and how that reminded me of a little two-line classified ad that used to run in the weekly Mansfield News (itself no longer in existence) touting the quality of the pants sold at my father's downtown clothing store.

Over the many years I've been involved in local journalism, I've had the infrequent occasion to mention that store, which closed in 1992, in opinion pieces or other retrospective pieces. The store was named "Sannie's," after the eldest brother of the four sons born to Carmelo and Gandolfa Farinella, formerly of Palermo, Sicily. My uncle, Santino (yes, like Sonny Corleone), left the family bakery and founded the clothing store on North Main Street in 1935, and was gradually joined in the venture by brothers Frank, Tony (my father) and Charlie.

The Wasserman Block in 1955, two years before Sannie's expanded.

Originally just a single storefront in a building originally built in the 1800s as a livery stable, Sannie's gradually expanded to take over a whole series of stores in what was then called the Wasserman Block. First came a small adjacent shop for ladies' wear, then in 1957, a major expansion encompassing the entire Wasserman Block, which was gutted and rebuilt as one large storefront connected to the original building. The store was expanded or reconfigured several more times in the decades that followed, including the purchase of an adjacent bicycle shop that was repurposed as "Sannie's Little World," devoted to infants' and toddlers' wear and other related products.

Inside the pre-1957 Sannie's display area.

The store did a hell of a business for many years -- so well, in fact, that I live comfortably off an inheritance that sustained my mother for 14 years after her husband's death in 2001, and so far, another eight for me after her passing. Sannie's probably would have survived longer than it did if not for changing business conditions brought about by the opening of a local megamall (Emerald Square in North Attleboro) in 1989, and the advancing age of the surviving founding family members.

Strange it is, indeed, to see Emerald Square on the verge of collapse here in 2023 because of the advent and popularity of online shopping.

I guess the secret of Sannie's success during its heyday was that it provided a ready-made clientele what it needed the most -- the basics, every-day goods that met a family's daily needs, not far from home and in a pleasant shopping environment, and at reasonable prices. Sannie's was where you shopped for school clothes, or a good pair of jeans, or underwear or socks, or casual wear for all ages made by companies you knew and trusted.

The four Farinella brothers (Charlie, Frank, Sannie, Tony) in 1958.

The secret to that was some shrewd buying tactics by my father and his brothers. They would scour the wholesalers for big-brand closeouts, styles that were discontinued or about to be, and they'd load up on them and sell them for very attractive prices -- often much less than the big-name retailers such as Jordan Marsh or Filene's. You want Levi's? You could go to the big stores and pay a lot for them, or you could go to Sannie's and not notice the few stitches that weren't in the same place as the newer products and come away with a great pair of jeans and a few extra bucks still in your pocket.

These weren't damaged goods, either. This wasn't a Building 19 or Ocean State Job Lot. These jeans didn't fall off a freight train and then get shipped to an outlet store for quick sale, and let the buyer beware. I wore Izod Lacoste polo shirts from Sannie's that were every bit as good as what was on sale at Jordan Marsh, even if they were no longer current offerings from the manufacturer. Nobody knew the difference.

Hence was the genesis of one of the opportunities for my peers to tease me in my youth, however.

Not long after the opening of the store and the purchase of the original three-story building at 310 North Main Street, my uncle Sannie decided to buy a big neon sign for the store. It was a tall, vertical sign -- an estimated 18 feet in height, maybe a little more -- that spelled out the store's name one letter at a time from top to bottom. At the base of the sign were the words "Wearing Apparel" in neon script, and there was still room enough for one more line of print without the neon, so the brothers chose "Where Mansfield Styles Begin" as the slogan.

At the time of my entering high school in 1968, Mansfield was a town of barely 5,000 residents, and the "Where Mansfield Styles Begin" slogan became somewhat of a joke. The comedians would add, "... and End" to the phrase. Others would note that Mansfield had no style at all (although their mothers would dress them in Sannie's clothing from head to toe). So the saying on the sign was eventually changed to "Your Brand Name Store," which was inoffensive and accurate.

That sign shined brightly in the town for nearly 50 years, even more prominently when it was hoisted onto a pole anchored at the farthest north corner of the expanded store. Indeed, it could be seen from miles away under the right circumstances. On Route 106 heading east from Plainville to Mansfield, there was a higher-elevation point right at the Foxboro town line where at night, you could see the lights of the sign in the distance, probably about two miles away. It was like a welcome-home beacon to me on long nights spent at the newspaper in my early years of employment.

Sadly, a few years ago someone told me that they discovered the rusted remains of that sign in a landfill on Cape Cod. How it got there, no one knows. I had always hoped it would have gone to a neon graveyard like the ones in Las Vegas, but no such luck.

The expanded Sannie's in 1975. The famous ramp is at far right.

Of course, people my age (now teetering upon 70) remember the store quite well. Even my friends with 1970s or 1980s birthdates have memories of the store -- most of them of running up and down the ramp that joined the original building and its higher foundation to the reconstructed Wasserman Block area. As a child, it probably seemed like Mount Everest, but it was good, clean fun -- unless they somehow commandeered a shopping cart and made the downhill run on wheels. My father made many sprints from his office at the back of the store to the base of the ramp to catch would-be Evel Knievels before they collided with display tables or other shoppers.

Portrait of the author as a young man.

I have many fond memories of Sannie's -- not just as a young tyke, but also in my young adult years when I lived next door to it, in an old white house at 8-10 Thomas St. that had been built in the late 1800s by one of the original magnates of the Attleboro jewelry industry, a man named Doliver Spaulding. That giant three-story structure was moved intact in the late 1990s to a new location on Pratt Street, but it served as my home for 14 years under the family's ownership. I parked my car in the store lot at night and often stopped by to chat with my father or to flirt with the store's young female part-time help.

By the way, that old house is on the state's registry of historic buildings -- but unfortunately, not as recognition for my long residence within it.

As close as I was to Sannie's and as fond as I am of my memories of it, I own a distinction not shared by any of my first cousins. Of all of the offspring of the four Farinella brothers, I believe I am the only one among them who never worked at the store in any capacity. When I became of age to look for part-time employment in high school, and with an interest in writing already evident, I got a job writing sports for the local weekly paper.

As I was an only child, I think my father was a little disappointed at first that I had no interest in working at the store. But after he read the first article I wrote for the Mansfield News in the fall of 1968, any disappointment he may have felt quickly disappeared. He was my biggest fan until the day he died, which was on June 9, 2001.

As the photo at the bottom of this post illustrates, Sannie's is now just a fading memory to Mansfieldians. My Uncle Frank retired early due to health issues, then Uncle Sannie died of cancer in 1980. My father and his much-younger brother Charlie continued to labor on for 12 more years, and Charlie's son James came on board toward the end, but times had changed and shoppers were dazzled by the shiny new things opening elsewhere. What had been a staple of Mansfield shoppers for almost seven decades was now an afterthought. The decision was made in April 1992 to close the doors and to sell off everything -- even the shopping carts, one of which sits in my backyard shed.

Demolition of the block begins in 2019.

Upon the store's closing, the property was purchased by a local developer and converted into a mini-mall of sorts, with the spacious interior converted into multiple stores and a diner -- the latter of which seemed to have ventilation problems that caused its patrons' clothing to smell like bacon for hours afterward. Then the entire corner of the block was sold to another developer, and the whole area was leveled in 2019 to make way for a giant apartment complex. We have a lot of those in Mansfield these days, many near the train station along the main Boston-Providence corridor, with more to come. "Location, location, location," as they say.

It does make me wonder what might have happened if my father and his brothers had gone through with plans to purchase a parcel of land at the intersection of US 1 and Route 152 in Plainville before they bought the Wasserman Block, and had moved their store there instead. For a latter-day reference, the lot is where the huge Lowe's is now. Would my family have moved as well? Would I have gone to King Philip Regional High? Would I be even more of a "homer" on my KP sports broadcasts than I already am?

One can only speculate about lives not lived. But every time I drive down North Main Street and see that huge apartment complex at the corner instead of the yellow cinder-block façade of the family store, I wonder. Those thoughts also engage when I pull into my driveway, as I managed to save one of those cinder blocks from the wrecking ball in 2019, placing it upon a retaining wall next to my front door.

Yes, we all got good laughs out of "Where Mansfield Styles Begin" and "Pants That Wear." But my family got a good life from it as well, and that's worthy of a lot of respect. I don't mind singing its praise more than 30 years since it became simply another part of Mansfield history.

The new apartment/retail complex where Sannie's once stood.

Pants that wore!

I'm the guy on the right, and the pants I'm wearing are the stuff of legend.

If you're a resident of Mansfield, Mass., and you're old enough to remember the original weekly newspaper called the Mansfield News, you may recall that among the classified ads, there ran a simple two-line advertisement for a clothing store that read as such:

PANTS THAT WEAR

SANNIES

The ad had been placed in the local weekly from 1936 through the closing of the clothing store in 1991, without change -- even ignoring the typographical error that failed to establish the correct name of the store. It was actually "Sannie's" (please note the apostrophe), so named for the store's founder and my uncle, Santino Farinella. He and his brothers -- Frank, Tony (my dad) and Charlie -- left the bakery business that was founded by their father and went into the clothing and dry goods business, expanding the store from a single storefront in a converted livery stable to a fully-modern department store covering a significant portion of North Main Street at the intersection of Route 106 over the course of nearly 60 years until changing business conditions and attrition of the ownership finally signaled the end of the line.

Sannie, Charlie and Tony Farinella at Sannie's in 1975.

I mention the store and my family ties to it not because of its relevance to this post. It's actually not that relevant, although Sannie's remains relevant to me personally, as the inheritance that sustains me into my old age is directly tied to the thousands (maybe millions) of customers the store attracted over seven decades because it provided them with basic necessities at affordable prices. No, this mention is related more to the marketing scheme that kept that two-line classified ad running in the newspaper long after the newspaper forgot to bill the store for it.

Yesterday, I had to retire a pair of pants. No, I didn't buy them at Sannie's (although I think I still may have a few items of clothing that date back to the early 1990s). But they definitely lived up to the "pants that wear" slogan that was part of the Sannie's legend.

I'm fourth from the left in front, and those are the pants.

They were gray slacks, cotton-polyester blend, 50-inch waist and 30-inch inseam (because I'm chunky), branded "GS" by the retail concern that now calls itself "Destination XL," although I believe it was called "Casual Male" when I bought them. And for the life of me, I can't remember when that was. Cuffs were in when I bought them, if that's a hint. I have photographs of me wearing them as far back as 2010, but they look well-worn already.

I do recall that I bought three pairs of pants on the day that I bought these, and it might have been at the Casual Male store in Dedham, in the strip mall across the street from a Best Buy that used to be the famous Lechmere Sales department store. I bought the same size and style in brown and black, but over the years I wore the gray ones more. They were a match for just about all of the polo shirts I wore, and they were a little more comfortable and forgiving of my belly than the other two.

Over the years, the gray pants showed their age. They became uneven in color, showing it more around seams, the zipper and the belt loops. The fabric became thinner in texture in areas of greatest stress (mostly my butt), growing dangerously close to transparent. And the pockets were becoming frayed and were close to ripping.

But dammit, they still wore well. They were still the go-to pants I needed for casual use, even though I had purchased two new pairs (one black and one Navy blue) about a year ago -- no cuffs, but the same measurements, can you believe it? -- for more formal use. I wasn't planning upon retiring the Old Grays or their brethren just yet.

Thursday morning, I awoke and decided I'd visit my favorite diner for breakfast. I jumped out of bed, asked Alexa for the outdoor temperature to determine the proper weight and weave for the polo shirt of the day, then pulled on the Old Grays. I opted for a lunch menu instead, enjoyed my hot open-faced turkey sandwich, then eventually returned home for an afternoon of contemplating life and nature in my sunny backyard.

It was when I sat down in my brand new Coleman camping chair that I felt something amiss. My right pants leg was a little tighter than normal because I had pulled on a flexible knee brace beforehand to bolster that aching joint, but upon reaching down to make the necessary adjustment, I realized that the entire inseam above the knee had simply blown out.

The threads that held the pants leg together were so stressed and strained from literally decades of service, they had nothing left to give. The end came quickly and mercifully.

I got up, went inside and changed into shorts, and realized sadly that there would be no future life for these pants. Unlike the many polo shirts I have donated to charitable organizations over the years, these were too damaged and too worn out to be of use to anyone else. I folded them, put them in a wastebasket and saluted them for their service.

The two other pairs from that joint purchase are hanging in there, although the black pants have a small separation in the outer seam that may prove catastrophic at some point. The brown pants are in much better condition and may survive even longer.

But the Old Grays were the best of the lot, and now they are gone. If ever a pair of pants was worthy of the two-line slogan of my father's clothing store, those certainly were. They were truly pants that wore.

Another reason to love girls' basketball, and the art of the interview.

Charlie Rose wannabe (left) interviews the state Division 2 champions.

Recently, I had the opportunity to do something I've always wanted to do. And fortunately, it was right in my wheelhouse, topic-wise, so there were few opportunities for me to screw it up.

I sat down inside the downtown studio of Foxboro Cable Access at the beginning of the month to interview Foxboro High girls' basketball coach Lisa Downs and four of her athletes in the wake of their state Division 2 championship, won last month at the Tsongas Center in Lowell by way of a 73-53 victory over Dracut High. It was for FCA's long-running local talk show, "Around Foxborough," and they asked me to be the guest host because I did the announcing chores for the title game and a few others, I'm known to have some interviewing skills, and I have a a long-standing friendship with Lisa, dating back to her playing days at Foxboro High in the mid-1980s when she was Lisa Garland.

Like I said, that was almost a no-fail situation for me. All I asked in return was that they try to keep the camera off me because Lisa and her athletes were a lot nicer to look at than the elderly whale sitting at one end of the table. Indeed, I was likely to make Brendan Fraser look skinny in his Oscar-winning role by comparison.

But this was also a chance for me to emulate one of my interviewing heroes from back in the day.

Before he got into a lot of trouble at CBS for being too randy with the female employees, Charlie Rose had a long-running interview show at PBS that was really one of the best such shows ever. Rose's laid-back style and thoughtful questions got the best out of his thousands of interview subjects, who hailed from all walks of life.

With a dark background behind him and nothing more than a simple oak roundtable (which Rose himself purchased) between him and the guest, the environment of Rose's shows encouraged an intimate connection between him and his subject. It was very good television -- and a great example to follow for anyone that aspired to be an interviewer of merit.

Unfortunately, while he was hosting CBS This Morning with Norah O'Donnell and Gayle King back in 2017, Rose suddenly faced a host of sexual harassment allegations from almost a 20-year span at the network and other affiliations. It was apparently a shock to Rose's co-hosts, especially future CBS Evening News anchor O'Donnell, who had great chemistry with the veteran interviewer and displayed deep personal disappointment while delivering a statement upon Rose's suspension from the show once the allegations came to light.

That effectively ended Rose's long career. But in my opinion, it does not diminish the quality of the many interviews he conducted over so many years, nor does it lessen one's desire to emulate his skill.

So imagine my inner joy when I walked into the FCA studio and found a black cloth backdrop behind where I was sitting. It was my chance to channel my inner Charlie Rose -- just without the sexual harassment part.

I think I did a pretty good job with the interview, but it helps to know the subject matter as well as I did. The real stars, however, were Coach Downs and her athletes -- Cam Collins, Maddie Maher, Erin Foley and Izzy Chamberlin -- as they recapped the joys of the season-long quest for the title and the happy by-play that took place along the way. You may particularly enjoy the story, recapped by Erin Foley, of why they chose to buy a hot pink suit for their coach to wear during one of their tournament games.

Here's a link to the interview, thanks to Foxboro Cable Access. And please, pay no attention to the big fellow seated to the left of the table. The coach and her athletes were the real stars of the day.

Once again, the case for Bill Parcells.

Bill Parcells is on the ballot again.

I have been a member of the New England Patriots Hall of Fame Nomination Committee for 17 years now. I have attended all but one of the annual meetings; the only time I was prevented from attending was when I was trapped at the office of The Sun Chronicle, putting the final touches on a 16-page broadsheet supplement containing all of the winter-season all-star teams, and I simply didn't have the time to get away.

And when I look around, I'm shocked to realize that I am one of a dying breed (no pun intended) of original members of the committee. Indeed, five of the original 27 members from the 2007 meeting have passed on. At this year's meeting earlier this month, only 11 of the originals were still in attendance.

But younger reporters from 2007 have become veterans by 2023, and we all have one thing in common.

Apparently, we all want Bill Parcells to be a member of the Patriots Hall of Fame.

The former head coach from 1993-96, Parcells has been on the three-name ballot chosen by the committee in 2011, 2012, 2014, 2020 and now again in 2023. In his four previous appearances, he was beaten out by Drew Bledsoe, Troy Brown, Ty Law and Richard Seymour, so it's tough to say he was unfairly denied membership by inferior candidates. 

This year, from about maybe 10 names put into the hat, the committee selected Parcells, Logan Mankins and Mike Vrabel -- the latter, while certainly a deserving candidate, has failed to earn the red jacket in six straight ballot appearances prior to this year.

For sure, we've all heard the admonitions. "Parcells was trying to get out of town the whole week before Super Bowl XXXI," the refrain goes. "He bailed on the team! He didn't even fly home with his team! And he went to the Jets and then he stole Curtis Martin!"

That is repeated so often, on chat-room message boards, in podcasts and on sports-talk radio, that Patriots' media relations czar Stacey James has to remind us every year at the beginning of the meeting that we should not refrain from voting for someone just because we don't think he can win. It should be merit-based and nothing else.

I'm not supposed to write specifics about the discussions, but I will tell you that Parcells was nominated early in the meeting. I spoke during the discussion because at least half of the committee members weren't involved in the coverage or management of the team when interim owner James Busch Orthwein hired Parcells as head coach prior to the 1993 season.

Remember, my coverage of the team dated back to Chuck Fairbanks' tenure. Experience and history should serve for something, I thought. 

So I asked my fellow committee members to forget the .500-ish record of the team during his tenure here, to forget the events of the week of Super Bowl XXXI in New Orleans and his controversial departure, and anything that transpired after that.

I asked them to either remember or envision what the New England Patriots were in the months prior to the Tuna's arrival. They were, in a word, a mess.

Victor Kiam liked the razor, but ruined the Patriots.

Owner Victor Kiam, the driving force (and TV spokesman) behind the Remington electric razor company, was teetering on the brink of total bankruptcy in the wake of his thoroughly inept stewardship of the team. He had tried unsuccessfully to sell the team to Reebok chairman Paul Fireman and had brought in a financial advisor named Fran Murray who was supposed to smooth the course toward new ownership, only to have that devolve into a steaming heap of failure.

At the same time, a new stadium (then to be called the Trans World Dome) was under construction in St. Louis, which had just lost the Cardinals franchise to Phoenix. A group of investors, desperate to get the NFL back in St. Louis, convinced the NFL to name one of their own as the interim owner of the Patriots with the intention of moving them to the banks of the Mississippi.

Hence came Orthwein, heir to the Anheuser-Busch beer fortune. A reserved and thoughtful man that was uncomfortable in the presence of the aggressive New England media, Orthwein had one job -- to smooth over the chaos that the Patriots had become and to prepare them for their transformation into the St. Louis Stallions within a year's time. Indeed, once the NFL put Orthwein in charge, the folks back in St. Louis started cranking our souvenir memorabilia for the Stallions -- some of which can be seen today on display inside the Patriots Hall of Fame.

James Busch Orthwein

Orthwein's first job was to find a head coach. Dick MacPherson, an affable soul that had gained football fame through his many successful years as head coach at Syracuse University, had just been fired after two roller-coaster seasons with the Patriots -- the last of which included a raging case of diverticulitis that forced him to miss several games.

There wasn't a nicer guy to be found than Coach Mac, and he did manage to get his first team to a 6-10 record. His on-field enthusiasm was the genesis for a series of car commercials in which the catch phrase "No hugging!" poked good-natured fun at his penchant for emotional displays. But in the NFL, he was clearly overmatched and undersupported by his front office.

Here's where Orthwein did something that should almost rate his own membership in the Patriots Hall of Fame.

Parcells had left his post as head coach of the New York Giants as a result of heart problems in 1990, not long after the Giants beat the Bills in Super Bowl XXV. His "retirement" included time in the NBC television booth and brief flirtations with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Green Bay Packers. But in 1992, Orthwein offered him the job to resurrect a 2-14 team not only on the field, but off it as well. Although he was not to officially carry the title of general manager, Parcells had the task of straightening out the corporate structure of the team from soup to nuts, and to get it functioning as well as his championship teams in New York had -- no doubt, with the goal in mind of having a smooth-running operation ready to hit the ground running when the transfer to St. Louis was made.

Parcells' moves were swift. He cleared the roster of deadheads and malcontents, and anyone he thought would not adapt willingly to a much more structured and disciplined football operation. So it was also with a bloated front office filled with warring factions from the Sullivan and Kiam ownership eras. The chain of command became uncluttered and straightforward -- it was truly Bill's way, or the highway.

Meanwhile, Patriots' fans that were in denial about the looming St. Louis threat reacted positively and hopefully to having a "real" head coach for the Patriots. They set a franchise record for season-ticket sales in the first few days following Parcells' hiring, and suddenly a stadium that had trouble attracting 15,000 fans at some points in the recent past was going to be close to full going forward.

The Parcells presser was like a football classroom.

Parcells found assistant coaches that mirrored his philosophy. He stocked the roster with former Giants that still had something left to give (mostly leadership), or players that fit a specific mold that included toughness, intelligence and commitment to detail. And with the No. 1 pick in the draft, he got Drew Bledsoe -- and say what you want about him in the wake of Tom Brady's career, Bledsoe was clearly the best QB the Patriot ever had to that point. 

The first year was a struggle, but all the parts seemed to come together toward the last third of the season when the Patriots ripped off four straight wins. The last of those was an overtime victory over Miami at Foxboro Stadium before more than 55,000 fans, the crowd swelled by the knowledge that it might be the last pro football game ever played in the Boston area.

As I told my fellow committee members, I remembered standing in the parking lot behind the press box side of the stadium as I headed to my car, my post-game interviews having been conducted. But I soon realized that a majority of those 55,000 fans had stayed in the stadium, cheering and chanting and basically pleading Orthwein not to take this suddenly interesting team away from them. It was surreal, and the first real evidence that with the right pieces in place, Boston and New England could become prime pro football territory.

That was the impact of Bill Parcells. Yes, he got them to the playoffs the next year (where the Patriots lost to the Bill Belichick-coached Cleveland Browns in the first round), and then two years after that, had them in the Super Bowl.

Yes, it ended badly. Yes, he left in a huff, looking to shop for his own groceries. But let's not think about that for a second.

Back at that season-ending game against Miami, the cheering fans had reason to fear that the Patriots might indeed be headed out of town. But what they didn't know was that in the months leading up to that, Orthwein and his lawyers learned to their horror that the 20-year-old lease that bound the Patriots to play at Foxboro Stadium was almost impossible to break without having to pay a seven-figure penalty, maybe even more. Whatever the final total would have been, it was something that Orthwein and his St. Louis partners were both unwilling and unable to accept.

Orthwein gives Kraft the keys in 1994.

At that point, Orthwein moved swiftly toward Plan B -- to find local ownership for the Patriots and hope the NFL would reward him and his native city in an upcoming round of expansion. Waiting in the wings was Robert Kraft, who already had part-ownership of the stadium after being awarded it in a sealed-bid bankruptcy auction. A long-time season-ticket holder who ran a very successful paper products empire, Kraft bit the bullet and offered the sum of $168 million for the team. By late January 1994, the team was his -- and stability was finally on the horizon.

For years, Kraft complained that he "overpaid" for the Patriots. But now that he's worth more than $5 billion -- and Dan Snyder's pending sale of the Washington Commanders may set the next sale price for a franchise at $7 billion -- Kraft has very little to complain about.

But would the team had been as attractive if Parcells had not been the head coach? I'd guess probably not.

Over the years, the canyon that opened between Kraft and Parcells appears to have become unbreachable. Even though both men, now in their early 80s, have expressed regrets over how things unfolded at the end, fans have elevated the schism to mythical proportions. It's as if Parcells guided a Soviet invasion force to the beaches of Cape Cod and burned down everything in their path all the way to East Rutherford, N.J.

Especially the "He didn't fly home with the team!!!" part. A lot of coaches often travel on their own. I know from personal experience that Bill Belichick was not on the team plane after Super Bowls 36, 38, 39, 49 and 51 because he stayed behind to accept the Lombardi Trophy from Roger Goodell at the day-after MVP pressers.

OK, different circumstance, I know. I also know that Parcells liked to drive that big, black Cadillac sedan of his to and from the games at the Meadowlands every year because the drive relaxed him -- just as he would lock his office at the stadium after each season ended and point that Caddy toward Jupiter, Fla. Making a big deal out of Parcells' travel habits is sheer nonsense. The truth is that two powerful men that were extremely comfortable in leadership positions had far too much trouble finding common ground for them to continue working together.

It happens. I wish they could have found that common ground and not have subjected us to Pete Carroll for three years thereafter, but that's history and it can't be rewritten.

Still, for all that Parcells accomplished and despite what he couldn't, he did lay the groundwork for the Patriots' successful future. Belichick lost his job in Cleveland just before the Browns moved to Baltimore to become the Ravens, but Parcells brought his former long-time assistant to the Patriots' staff in 1996 as the secondary coach (and de facto defensive coordinator). Not only did that benefit the team on the field immediately, it also brought Kraft and Belichick together to forge a friendship that would culminate in Belichick's hiring as the head coach in 2000.

Those that hate Parcells for his departure will probably not be swayed. But their vitriol is polluting the minds of younger fans, early 30s and younger, who cannot remember from personal experience what the Patriots were before they became a dynasty. I see it as my job to bring historical fact to this argument.

So please, fans, go to Patriots.com and vote for Bill Parcells to be in the Patriots Hall of Fame, and we can all move on. If you don't do it, we'll keep putting him on the ballot year after year after year -- or maybe, eventually, old farts like me will finally convince Kraft to put Parcells in the Patriots Hall of Fame as a "contributor" -- an honor that the owner rightfully bestowed upon long-time assistant coach Dante Scarnecchia at our last meeting.

Please, just do it. Parcells is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. It makes no sense that he's not in this team's hall of fame as well.

DISCLAIMER: At this point, I have to admit that I did not put Parcells in the top position on my ballot this year. The three-name ballot assigns five points to the top spot, three points to the second and one point to the third individual, and the total number of points determines the ranking that results in three finalists.

I had actually put wide receiver Wes Welker's name in nomination and spoke to how I believe he took the slot receiver position and redefined it for himself and everyone else that followed. Discussion about him was very positive, so I assumed that I had done my job and put forth a worthy candidate.

On my ballot, I put down offensive guard Logan Mankins as my first choice (as I had the previous year; he was a true warrior, strong and silent in the Gary Cooper mold, and one of the best linemen they ever had).Welker was my second choice, and then I stopped and pondered the words of Stacey James about how I shouldn't make my choices because of the alleged electability of the candidate. 

So, Bill Parcells made it to my ballot again.

I just wish you fans will think about it as much as I did. Even a few seconds of thought is better than none at all.

To Warrior or not to Warrior? That's not the question!

Foxboro's uniforms have changed, but the logo has been there for decades.

There are a couple of sayings that I was told by veterans of the newspaper industry when I was first striking out on my own, and I remember them to this day.

The first was from an editor at my first post-college newspaper that thought I should inject a little life into my developing writing style. "Never confuse a good story with facts," she said. I think she was only half-joking. A few weeks later, she was bartending for a living at a watering hole near the newspaper's office and we were briefly dating.

The other was from a grizzled old editor who had been in his job for way too long and was just counting the days before his retirement or death, whichever came first. "Never underestimate the stupidity of the American reading public," he said. That should have been the epitaph on his gravestone. 

Recently, I've been reminded that both sayings have a measure of validity, depending upon context. 

Foxboro High School's current sports logo,
presently used primarily for the football team.

There's a tempest in a teapot brewing in the neighboring town of Foxborough (I'll call it "Foxboro" for the remainder of this piece because it's more recognizable that way) over the high school's sports nickname and mascot.

Foxboro High, a proud member of the 12-school Hockomock League (and founding member as well) calls its athletic teams "the Warriors." Yes, that's Native American imagery and that's partially what this is all about. And for about 40 years or so, Foxboro teams have used a facsimile of the logo of the NFL team previously known as the Washington Redskins (Foxboro's version pictured at right) as their official symbol.

Foxboro is not alone at having usurped a pro team's logo -- with a few minor alterations of coloration to differentiate it from the trademarked logo that is usually guarded from unauthorized use. Locally, Franklin High School's Panthers formerly used the Carolina Panthers' logo until the school decided to come up with something unique that it could call its own. Elsewhere in Massachusetts, Everett High School uses a style very similar to the San Francisco 49ers' logo with the obvious exception of a big "E" where the Niners' interlocked "SF" would be.

Generally, NFL teams look the other way when high schools want to use a trademarked logo. Even if NFL Properties, the league's marketing arm, catches a whiff of such use, usually the worst that happens is that the league sends the offending school a letter asking it to affirm that it will not use the logo in any sort of advertising. I'm not sure if that happened in Foxboro's case, but it's clearly been a case of "no harm, no foul" for four decades.

Even my own alma mater, Mansfield High, (nicknamed the Green Hornets after the 1940s radio serial), has adopted Georgia Tech's Yellowjacket symbol (in green and white, of course). It looks great in the center of the basketball court. North Reading High, also the Hornets, hasn't even bothered to change the colors of the Georgia Tech art.

The U.S. Buffalo Nickel (1936)

But now, Foxboro is coping with the latest wave of Native American objections to school mascots with native connotations. At a recent school committee meeting, the members decided to seek public input about the logo, which as you can see, depicts the side profile of a native warrior inside a circle, with two feathers protruding from the side of the sphere nearest the back of the native's head. I'm not sure if anyone remembers the Buffalo Nickel prior to Thomas Jefferson's five-cent piece at the bottom of your pocket, but the profile is very similar (the buffalo is on the back).

As best as I can tell, it was more of a preemptive action than a reaction to any immediate challenge to the logo. And the school committee members all said they would prefer to find a way to keep "Warriors" by simply disassociating it from Native American imagery. 

But for the fourth straight legislative session, a bill has been filed in the state legislature that would ban the use of Native American-themed nicknames, logos or mascots in any Massachusetts school. Once looked upon derisively as doomed legislation filed on behalf of crackpots or zealots, the latest filing is starting to legitimately scare people. 

In 2020, there were 41 Massachusetts high schools that used nicknames or logos that hearkened back to the original residents of the commonwealth. Now there are just 23, and more are starting to take action themselves before the state orders it.

Schools with longstanding nicknames such as Natick (Redmen), Barnstable (Red Raiders), Nashoba Regional (Chieftains), Taconic Regional (Braves), Algonquin Regional (Tomahawks), Winchester (Sachems), North Brookfield (Indians), Athol (Red Raiders), Hanover (Indians) and Turners Falls (Indians) ditched their native imagery for tame and inoffensive monickers. Even nearby Walpole eliminated "Rebels" as the school nickname in a battle over Confederate imagery (brought to the frozen North in 1968 by southerner John Lee when he became the football coach) and chose "Timberwolves" for the future.

There have been some notable holdouts. Tewksbury has fought long and hard to turn back those that would take "Redmen" away. Braintree refuses to consider an alternative to "Wamps." Wakefield retained the Warriors name as well as a mascot after a non-binding referendum in town indicated support for the existing images (although not overwhelming in nature). The town of Dartmouth claims to have received the blessings of local Native Americans to keep "Indians." And there are lots of Raiders and Warriors laying low, hoping to fly beneath the radar during this round of purging.

One wonders if the members of the Foxboro school board regret bringing up the matter of the logo in the first place.

After all, for quite some time, the school has been gradually weaning itself from the former logo of the Redskins -- the final version of which was adopted by the team in 1983 and adorned their helmets until they became the Washington Football Team and then the Commanders. Foxboro didn't start wearing it on the football helmets until the mid-1980s. Gradually it started to make its appearance as embroidered patches on other sports' uniforms, but that practice has been mostly discontinued in recent years.

Indeed, the committee members probably could have kept their traps shut, quietly "retired" the Redskins logo with no fanfare, ordered a bunch of decals with stylized "F" symbols already in use around the school, then designated someone to slap two of those on each football helmet before the start of practice, and no one would have been all the wiser.

But the second this issue became public, panic set in. Townspeople and outsiders alike suddenly leaped to the erroneous conclusion that the committee was out to replace "Warriors" as well, and the torrent of ill-informed opinions overflowed the levees and poured into the town hall like a tsunami.

The Sun Chronicle's Foxboro correspondent (and former publisher before the new ownership took over in 2018), Jeff Peterson, called the school committee meeting in which public comment was offered a "pep rally" for the old name and logo. I watched the replay on Foxboro Cable Access and that was an accurate description. Speaker after speaker decried political correctness and touted how the name and logo expressed respect and admiration for the first residents of their town -- although nobody recognized that the English settlers and their descendants eventually sent the natives running in the opposite direction, often at gunpoint, and they didn't stop until the dawn of the 20th century.

One woman, who said she was of Native American ancestry, said she was not at all offended by the town's use of the nickname and the imagery. I'm sure there are plenty of individuals in the United States with some native ancestry in their DNA that don't share the outrage of others. 

There was one high school girl that spoke of the image within the logo as racist in nature -- and while I took her description as being a little overstated, she delivered her dissent with courage and the audience treated her respectfully, as it should have. I don't believe the image on the logo is an offensive caricature or designed to depict the warrior as sub-human or inferior, but I do believe that there are a lot of Native Americans who are offended by what white people think is inoffensive. 

There were some expressions of emotion that I thought were a little over the top. After all, this was a school logo being discussed, and not a school shooting, or some equally horrible event that would have warranted deep sorrow. I understood their emotions, but I hope they've had a chance to reflect back upon their comments and understand why they might be perceived as excessive.

The bottom line of the meeting, however, was that most of the speakers simply could not separate the logo issue from the nickname issue -- and there was no nickname issue. Nobody wants to change "Warriors."

Dylan Gordan would not be less of a Warrior
without the logo on the side of his helmet.

Point of information -- Foxboro was one of the last teams in this corner of southeastern Massachusetts to choose a mascot. From the 1910s, when high school sports assumed close to their current form in this area, and through the 1940s, most schools were referred to simply by their colors. Foxboro, of course, was the Blue and Gold. Suddenly, and I'm not sure why, local towns started to adopt nicknames. Just after the end of World War II, Attleboro adopted "Bombardiers" to honor the brave aviators that helped the Allies attain victory. North Attleboro adopted "Rocketeers" to be a little more futuristic but also maintain a rhyming tie with the city to the south. And in Mansfield, a vote of students in 1947 chose "Green Hornets" after the popular radio serial of the era.

I'm not entirely sure when Foxboro chose "Warriors." My initial research indicates somewhere between 1948 and 1952, the latter being when I first noticed references to "Foxboro Warriors" in the local media of the time that's archived on the Internet. Perhaps when I have some time, I will run over to the Boyden Library and see if they still have old editions of the Foxboro Reporter preserved on microfiche or other media.

In the meantime, I made the usual and characteristic mistake of engaging with those commenting on The Sun Chronicle's Facebook page, expressing their outrage over taking away the logo or changing the nickname, or blasting columns written by editorial writers or columnists who expressed their opinions on the matter.

Yes, the Blue Ribbon Daily's editorial writer (don't know who) really messed up when he or she suggested that the town should pick "Patriots" as a new nickname. That's the LAST nickname I would choose. The town has been adamant about retaining its own identity since the football team made Foxboro its home in 1971, especially since owners Billy Sullivan, Victor Kiam and Robert Kraft took turns treating it like the dirt beneath their feet on several occasions. Besides, there were Warriors here before Patriots.

More recently, columnist and old friend Bill Gouveia opined that perhaps the town should see the writing on the wall and change the logo while preserving the name. That's very sensible and something I've been preaching for a while now, but the comments have been fast and (for the most part) furious. Again, nobody seems to read a column before reacting to it -- and thus, a lot of people totally missed the several times when Bill said in plain English that he thinks Warriors can be preserved.

I've tried to chip in with historical perspective and facts, but not unexpectedly, I've have been met with the usual accusations of being "woke," or a flaming "lib," or the like. One bright light said that Bill Gouveia was my "fluffer." Just think of the process of how baby thoroughbred horses are created, and you might get the idea. Or look it up. 

Another rather handsome chap said he uses The Sun Chronicle as his toilet paper. I told him that must be very painful -- and very expensive, given the cost of newsprint these days. 

And a few souls thought I had no right to comment upon a Foxboro matter, as I was not a resident. I did, however, live in the town for 12 years and I have covered its sports in one form or another over parts of seven decades. I have a stake. Probably more than they do.

Above all else, I noticed that the angriest respondents weren't from Foxboro. Some, not even remotely close. Their lives must be woefully lacking in companionship if they have to troll a small daily newspaper in Attleboro to fulfill their daily quota of expressed outrage over something -- even if they really had no idea what they're bitching and moaning about.

Look, I understand that no one is intentionally trying to hurt anyone else by the use of the logo. Practically everywhere you go in this state (including the state name), there's something that dates back to the original inhabitants. Hockomock League. Neponset Reservoir. Merrimack River. Cotuit. Mashpee. Nantucket. Chicopee. And I could go on and on. Even Gay Head on the Vineyard became Aquinnah in retrospect, which was a good choice. 

But there is a sense of inevitability about this movement. Given the overwhelming number of high school teams, college teams and now even the pros that are ditching potentially offensive imagery and nicknames, Foxboro is not destined to become the last stand against political correctness and "woke" culture.

It's time to try the art of compromise. Give up something to save something more important before the state rams it down your throat and you lose both.

I'll admit, I would like to see the logo go, too. Any association with the Washington Redskins and the sleazeball that runs that team under a new name should be purged. The logo could have been given a Viking funeral (no pun intended) on the Neponset Reservoir in the dark of night, and this entire controversy could have been avoided. 

But I'd definitely keep "Warriors." 

Just last week, I was fortunate enough to call on Foxboro cable TV the state championship game of Division 2 girls' basketball on behalf of a group of very talented young women that embody all that's good about the name. They were fearless. They were relentless. They were confident and drew strength from their "family" unit. And yes, the Foxboro girls beat Dracut by 20 points for their third state crown since 2018.

Their uniforms say only "Foxboro" on them. Not even the "ugh" at the end of the word that is supposed to be the official name of the town. There's no logo. They don't need one.

They are Foxboro. They are Warriors. And they don't need somebody else's logo to convince them or anyone else of that.

Indeed, it never gets old.

Foxboro coach Lisa Downs sports "the pink suit" that her athletes bought for her.

"It never gets old." 

I heard that from over my right shoulder, and I turned toward the sound to see who had said it.

"It never gets old," repeated the cameraman from Foxboro Cable Access who had joined me Saturday at court level inside the Tsongas Center in Lowell to perform post-game interviews with members of the Foxboro High School girls' basketball team following their 73-53 win over Dracut High School for the state Division 2 basketball championship.

Of course, the folks in Foxboro are old hand at this. The Warriors (and I won't join the nickname debate in this missive) have brought three titles home to the town they call "the Gem of Norfolk County" since 2018, although they've only been able to celebrate two of them because the middle one, in 2020, was shared with another team. The start of the panic over COVID-19 prevented a title game and a likely celebration.

Still, truer words were never spoken. I may be getting old, but watching a bunch of high school athletes come home with a title after a rugged season that can include as many as 28 games is always a supremely enjoyable thing. And that's probably why, after the 60-mile drive home from Lowell, I parked near the Foxboro Common and waited for the team buses to return, complete with escorts from the police and fire departments, and take a couple of laps around while a healthy throng of basketball fans cheered every orbit.

I've been fortunate in my many years as a local sportswriter and now a play-by-play announcer for cable TV to have seen and covered quite a few state championships -- especially in recent years.

Alyssa Gutauskas, NAHS '87

My first came in 1987, when a lovable assemblage of players from North Attleboro took home the Division 2 title by beating Athol High, 70-61, at the Worcester Centrum. This close-knit group was spearheaded by center Alyssa Gutauskas, shooting forward Heidi Deppisch, shooting guard Stephanie Cooper and point guard Rachael Routhier, and those young women cried tears of joy after accomplishing the goal which they worked so hard and so long to attain.

In 1991, a new group of Rocketeers led by Boston University-bound Julie Schmidt and Wheaton-bound Dee Robichaud would work their particular gifts to peak levels, and they defeated Southwick (led by future UConn star Rebecca Lobo) by a 59-32 score. Local girls' basketball was indeed alive in thriving in our corner of the commonwealth.

The 1995 Foxboro girls, then coached by Dan Damish, were a young and scrappy team that ignored the pundits' lack of respect for their pedigree. That team battled tooth-and-nail with an overconfident Lee team which had almost pulled out the victory with time ticking away in the first overtime at the Worcester Centrum. But diminutive Foxboro point guard Jamie Kelley threw up a prayer of a three-pointer at the buzzer and it touched nothing but net to tie the score. Foxboro dominated the second extra session and prevailed 65-62 to take home the Division 3 crown.

There were frustrations along the way before I would see my next championship. Foxboro's girls would reach the state D3 title game two more times (1997 and 2003) only to be frustrated by Lee each time. Seekonk, led by the incomparable Kim Lynch, lost the D3 title to Lee in 1990 and was bumped up to D2 in 1992, only to lose to Oxford. And I was denied the opportunity to see the Attleboro boys win the D1 crown in 1998, beating Milford at what's now the DCU Center, because the newspaper for which I worked thought it was more important for me to be doing page layouts back in the Attleboro office.

I'm still angry about that.

A long drought followed. We had several teams advance to the state semifinals only to be frustrated in their quests for statewide glory. The biggest tease of all came in 2013, when the boys' basketball team from my alma mater, Mansfield High, advanced to the Centrum and their first Division 1 state title game in the school's history -- only to run into a team stocked with talent, Putnam Voke of Springfield. The Hornets extended Putnam to overtime, and if only Rocky DeAndrade had been maybe 5 feet closer to the rim on his game-ending desperation three-pointer, they might still be playing today. Putnam won, 50-47.

Lauren Manis won a title at Feehan.

Things were looking up when the terrific tandem of guard Katie Nelson and forward Lauren Manis brought home from Springfield (the birthplace of the game, of course) a Division 1 title for Bishop Feehan with a victory over Natick in 2016. And two years later, back in Springfield again, I enjoyed one of the biggest thrills of my life when I got to write about the Foxboro girls' Division 2 victory over Hopkinton in the morning, and the Mansfield High boys' Division 1 triumph over Hockomock League rival Franklin in the evening. Given that I was in the last five months of my sportswriting career (although I didn't know it at the time), I felt justified in elevating those two games to the pinnacle of the Mount Rushmore of important events I had covered in my lifetime.

The job is different now, and so are the tools of the trade. I use microphones and headsets now instead of notepads and pens. I prefer to be way up in the stands or in designated broadcast locations than down on the floor at the press table. And my main focus is upon my voice instead of my writing skills.

But the thrill is the same. And this year, I was hoping for thrice the satisfaction.

One out of three wasn't bad, as it turned out.

Three of the teams I embrace as "local," and for which my current employers provide cable TV coverage of their athletic teams, advanced to state title games this year. The Mansfield boys, Bishop Feehan girls and Foxboro girls all reached their respective big games, and I would have a hand in covering two out of the three.

Most of the time in a winter season, I serve as the primary play-by-play voice of Mansfield boys' and girls' basketball for Mansfield Cable Access. Most of my time this year, however, was spoken for by North Attleborough Community Television (North TV), where I assumed the responsibility of calling games in several sports played by teams from North Attleboro, Bishop Feehan, King Philip and Tri-County. For the last three years I've just called games at KP for them, but when a full-time employee left late last year, it was "next man up," and that was me. And because of a long friendship with Foxboro girls' coach Lisa Downs, I've always been welcome to step into the announcer's seat for a few of the Warriors' games on Foxboro Cable Access.

I drew the assignments of announcing the Mansfield boys' game against Malden Catholic, on Friday night at the Tsongas Center in Lowell, and the Foxboro girls' game against Dracut on Saturday. And had I been asked, despite the recent strain upon my 69-year-old vocal cords that has practically rendered me silent since then (and who'd believe that??), I would have done the Feehan game on Friday night as well.

I won't bore you with the details of the title games, as there is plenty of reading material out there on the World Wide Web about those. Friday's games were both losses, Mansfield losing by 18 to Malden Catholic and Feehan by seven to Andover. I will say, however, how proud I am of Mansfield getting to a state final despite losing two valuable starters to injuries in the course of the tournament. And the Shamrocks, trailing Andover by double digits early in the second half, battled it back to a one-possession game in the final minutes before running out of time. That was a very good effort as well.

But the Saturday game was something special.

I don't get to announce too many Foxboro games because of the demands made upon me by all of the other schools. But when I do, I guess you could say it is because of personal favors performed by Foxboro coach Lisa Downs for me, and by me for her.

Foxboro's Lisa Garland in 1983.

As the former Lisa Garland always reminds her team and their families when it's time for the yearly break-up banquet, she and I have known each other for a long time -- a VERY long time, more than 40 years (although I certainly show the wear and tear of those years a lot more). I covered her games as a high school athlete, when she was a tall and talented forward for Nancy Woicik's Foxboro Warriors at the beginning of what would become an amazing run of success for the girls' teams from that school. She scored 607 career points, topped out at 14 points a game in a season in which she graced our all-star team at my former newspaper, and she showed a penchant for defense that she would exploit to its fullest as a player at Southeastern Massachusetts University (now UMass-Dartmouth), where she would be named defensive player of the year twice during her career.

After SMU, she made her way back to Foxboro basketball as an assistant on Dan Damish's staff. She also planned to start a family with her husband (a Mansfield fellow, natch) and almost appeared ready to start it during the 1995 state championship game against Lee at the then-Worcester Centrum (as she was the proverbially "pregnant-out-to-here" at the time).

Lisa and Jeff were blessed with three boys over the years, and as they grew older, she once again got the itch to coach. She coached both boys and girls in the Foxboro youth leagues before accepting a job as an assistant coach on the FHS staff of former teammate Sarah Behn in 2006. She then rose to the top job when Behn left to coach at UMass-Lowell.

She's been in that job for 12 full seasons now, and the results speak for themselves. At the top of her many accomplishments are three state Division 2 championships -- in 2018, 2020 and the third arriving a little more than a week ago. 

Yes, the 2020 title was a shared one, presented to both Foxboro and Taconic Regional of Pittsfield because they won their respective state semifinals and would have met for the championship if not for the intervention of the COVID-19 panic. But take it from me, if they had met for the title, Foxboro would have won the game by 30 points. Taconic has since dropped to Division 5 in the new statewide alignment, which leads me to believe that the school did not belong in Division 2 three years ago and would have suffered a suitable and just fate.

It's hard for me to be totally objective where Lisa Downs is concerned. She and I have become good friends over the years. She has been the most frequent guest on my currently-on-hiatus podcast, "The Owner's Box," having reached five appearances before computer problems sidelined the production temporarily.

No, I didn't get her a five-timers jacket like the Saturday Night Live skit. We joked about that, though.

And no, I don't openly root for her or her teams during games (I try not to do that for any team I cover, even for my alma mater the next town over, although it is difficult sometimes), but were I just another fan in the stands, I surely would. I respect not only what she has accomplished, but also how she has accomplished it.

Downs reacts during the title game.

Downs is a tough and demanding coach, no doubt about it. She drills her players to be smart, precise and totally respectful of the team concept. She is intense, almost fanatical in her preparation, and she's not afraid to stomp her feet or let out a yelp when an official's call is clearly blown. I half-jokingly call her a throwback to another era -- of the coaches I grew up watching in the 1960s and 1970s like North Attleboro's Ken Pickering, Mansfield's John Dunn, Oliver Ames' Val Muscato and others, whose sideline reactions were sometimes more entertaining than the games themselves.

But for all that energy and emotion that's on display, Downs never takes it to excess. The most important thing for her is to be protective of her players. She is totally committed to putting them in positions where they can succeed, and to teach them how to be accountable for their own performances and accountable to their teammates.

And she has never forgotten that the game is supposed to be fun. Her enjoyment of the game is displayed on the sideline far more often than any moments of displeasure with the trends of a game in progress. Her teammates see that in her every day in practice. And every now and then, a little snippet of video sneaks out of the inner sanctum and you can see Lisa and her "silly girls," as she sometimes calls this current team, singing and celebrating on the team bus on the way home from another victory.

On top of all that, basketball is not the only passion in Lisa's life. She is the office manager and the registrar at the Sage School in Foxboro, which offers challenging and nourishing education for gifted children from pre-kindergarten through Grade 8. She also has continued the work of her late mother by devoting herself to the Foxboro Discretionary Fund and the Foxboro Food Pantry, as a former director and still remaining very involved in their missions to help needy families in her hometown.

I've talked many times in the past about what I felt was the importance of having young women return to girls' basketball as coaches. It's taken more than a half-century after Richard Nixon signed Title IX into law for people to catch on to that, and now half of the Hockomock League's 12 coaches are women -- although that number has actually declined a little in recent years because a couple of coaches moved on. Sports are still a meritocracy, you know. If a better job comes along, you take it. And if you're not doing the job, you lose it. Reproductive organs should not play into those decisions in a perfect world.

I have also always said that athletes of either gender will respect a coach of either gender if that coach proves worthy of that respect. You need look no farther than Norwood, where former Braintree girls' coach Kristen McDonnell brought the Mustang boys to a state Division 2 title game last year. She's now back to coaching girls, at Norwood where she is a guidance counselor, but were I in a position to hire a boys' coach and she was available, I'd offer it to her without hesitation.

However, because young women are often made to take an athletic back seat despite federal law that demands otherwise, I do think it's important for them to have strong female role models to underscore the fact that there should be no limitations to what they can expect to achieve -- either on a playing field or in life. Lisa Downs has been the gold standard for that locally.

So that's why I try to work in a telecast or two for the Warriors amid my busy schedule. And that's why, after she gets my email telling her I might be available, she puts me at the top of the list of volunteers that might otherwise be doing the call. Fortunately, I haven't pissed off too many people for cutting in line like that.

Lest you think this is just one big gush over Foxboro's coach, I want to make sure I get my two cents in about all of the outstanding athletes that played in three state title games up in Lowell. After all, when all is said and done, it's still their game and no one else's.

Eddie McCoy led Mansfield's attack.

Of course, I was closest to Mansfield this season because I did more games of their boys and girls than I did of any other team. I would be remiss if I did not tip my cap to Hornet senior Abby Wager for leading the charge of her team to second place in the Davenport Division of the Hockomock (behind Foxboro) and then into a tough Division 1 tournament matchup on the road against Newton North -- a game in which she became only the third Mansfield girl in history to reach 1,000 career points.

The Hornet boys were well on their way to another great season when trouble arose at the start of the Division 2 tournament -- first losing starting point guard Devon Sanders with a broken leg, then losing outstanding rebounder Trevor Foley to a broken foot. These injuries occurred early in the Hornets' five-game run to the state title game, but not until they faced the other-worldly shooting of Malden Catholic were they deterred from their mission.

Junior Eddie McCoy absolutely lit it up in the tournament, while veterans such as Caden Colby and Chris Hill stepped up their games. And senior forward JT Veiking and sophomore Nate Creedon were asked to assume much larger roles and they did so willingly. This was a courageous team that had confidence in itself and left every ounce of its effort on the court.

Mary Daley was dynamic defensively.

I had the pleasure of calling a couple of Bishop Feehan's games for North TV, and I really enjoyed what I saw. Coach Amy Dolores assembled a very good mix of youngsters and veterans, and they navigated a tough Division 1 tournament field to get to the final. 

Samantha Reale, Julia Webster, Maddy Steel, Charlotte Adams-Lopez and Mary Daley combined to average 50 of Feehan's 63 points a game, and while faced with a superior opponent in top-seed Andover, the Shamrocks made it a one-possession game in the waning minutes before falling to a seven-point defeat. Several of the Shamrocks will return next year, and Coach Dolores has a good thing going on Holcott Drive, so maybe more good things are in store.

Last but not least, I really enjoyed watching this Foxboro team this year. My first exposure to them in person was in a dominating non-league game against Hingham, and we did one of their games against King Philip on North TV, but I feel like I knew them as if I had been there for every game thanks to the folks at Foxboro Cable Access and their frequent telecasts.

The Warriors already had a great nucleus of players in returning juniors Cam Collins -- possibly one of the most consistent players I've ever seen in that she rarely deviated by more than a basket on either side of her 17-point average -- and Erin Foley, equally capable of popping in a three or taking a charge, and a budding sophomore star in Kailey Sullivan. Junior Izzy Chamberlin was a solid rebounder and fully committed to the team concept, and all that was needed was one more cog in the machine -- and the Warriors got it in a "big" way.

Addie Ruter was a towering presence for FHS.

Addie Ruter, standing 6-foot-3 as a sophomore, came in with a well-developed set of skills and a great foundation in fundamentals. Slender and very athletic, Ruter proved that she knew that a 6-3 girl should play like 6-3, and not 5-3. She kept the ball out of everyone's reach. She moved quickly and purposefully without wasted motion. And her mid-range shot was even more of a weapon than her in-the-paint forays, because it left opposing teams feeling hopeless in their efforts to defend her.

Those five, and reserves Ava Hill and Kylie Sampson among others, proved an unbeatable combination. Having a future State Coaches Hall of Fame member on the sideline directing them certainly didn't hurt the cause, either.

Simply stated, Dracut never had a chance. And the best part of it all -- most of the Foxboro roster, including their top eight players this year, returns next year.

What a season. And what a joy it was to cover it -- even if I am in a different role than I was for more than 50 years. It's the kind of stuff I wish I could cover for another 50 years.

Thanks to the athletes, the coaches, my fellow announcers, everyone at the cable systems where I work, and to all of the viewers that invited me into their homes to keep telling them stories, although in a different manner than I used to. You all made an old man very happy.

It's true. It never gets old.