The Owner's Box ... After Dark, Ep. 55.

Glasses and a stylish leather patch.

Just two days and a new episode, you ask?

Well, there's a reason. From the accompanying photo, you can see a significant change in my appearance. It's because I suffered a minor injury to my left eye, and as stated elsewhere on this blog, it has forced me to the announcing sidelines for the time being. 

I was scheduled to do three games on North TV over the next few days, but the current distortion in my left eye's field of vision makes it impossible to follow the action in a fast-moving game such as lacrosse. 

But I hope to be back behind the microphone in two weeks for a baseball game -- I think I can call baseball out of one eye, but we'll find out -- and I'm pretty sure that I'll have the full use of my eye come the fall and winter sports seasons of 2024-25.

The new After Dark episode provides a full explanation of my situation. Again, the prognosis is good -- I just didn't want anyone I know to be shocked if they run into me (or, if I accidentally bump into them from a lack of depth perception) over the next few weeks.

Please watch the episode -- and while you're at it, go back and watch Episode 54 again. You'll never know that I conducted those two on-camera interviews like I was watching "Dancing with the Stars" in my left eye all along.

The Owner's Box ... After Dark, Ep. 54

 

Lisa Downs, left, joined me on the resumption of my video podcast. What a surprise!

It took me almost 2½ full years to do it, and maybe if I had been a little more curious about what was actually stored inside my computer, I could have shaved a considerable amount of time off that, but we've finally finished my first video podcast (knows with pride as "The Owner's Box ... After Dark") since it unwittingly winked off the interwebs in September 2021.

This is Episode 54, and it's almost 73 minutes long (don't worry, future ones will be shorter). The first third of it features me making excuses for the lengthy disappearance of the format, while the second and third segments are devoted almost completely to high school basketball -- first a review of the seasons of the King Philip boys and girls and the Mansfield boys and girls, including some nifty highlight video, then a long and loving look at the Division 3 state championship girls' basketball team from Foxboro High.

Joining me as guests in the episode are my broadcast partner on North TV and Mansfield Cable Access, Alex Salachi, and a frequent and welcome guest on all my podcasts, Foxboro coach Lisa Downs. 

Clink on the link below to view the podcast, and I promise, there will be more to come!

It was a very good year, with more to come.

Foxboro High's Izzy Chamberlin, left, chats with an old man with a microphone.

When I got home from Lowell on Saturday night, I checked my smartphone even before getting out of the car to see if my friends at Foxboro Cable Access had posted my post-game interview with members of the Foxboro High School girls' basketball team, which had just won the Division 3 state title a couple of hours earlier.

They did, posting that as well as a highlight reel -- and the first highlight made me smile.

It was of Foxboro senior Isabelle "Izzy" Chamberlin grabbing a rebound off a teammate's miss and putting the ball into the basket for the Warriors' first points of the game. And why, you may ask, was that so important? 

It was because the official scorer working the game for the MIAA missed Izzy's putback, and instead credited the basket to her teammate, Cam Collins. The scorer may have been the only person in the 7,800-seat Tsongas Center to have seen it that way, but the "official" record of the game will not credit Izzy for that basket. 

Fortunately, a phalanx of reporters saw the basket as it unfolded, and the "official" account will be widely ignored in most accounts of Foxboro's 66-43 victory over Norwell.

The reason why it meant so much to me, however, is because as someone that watched almost every Foxboro game for the past two seasons and did the play-by-play call for most of the Warriors' playoff games, I did not want to see Chamberlin get cheated out of any accomplishment. Izzy is the classic under-heralded (but not unappreciated) member of a successful team that doesn't often get the big ink or the long video interviews, but without her hard work, the team would not be anywhere as near as successful. Even though her name was misspelled in the official program ("Chamberlain" instead of Chamberlin), Izzy is one of those players that deserves her due any way and any time she can get it.

As is usually the case in situations like this, I was more concerned about it than Izzy was. I told her in our post-game interview of how her basket was unfortunately missed by the scorer, and her response was entirely predictable. 

"It's all right," she said. "It was my last game, so ... it's all right."

She knew what she had done. She knew what her teammates had done, too. It was one part of the whole package that has led Foxboro to two straight championship seasons and four since 2018.

Chamberlin and fellow seniors Collins, Erin Foley and Mackenzie Burton have been part of the program for almost a quarter of their young lives. They grew up watching head coach Lisa Downs lead other teams to state championships, and as Chamberlin said, there was an ethereal quality to knowing it was over.

"It's really surreal," she said. "All along, growing up, we've been watching Coach Downs coach and then we (seniors) came in and we watched them in state championship games, and ever since we got here it's been surreal because I've always wanted to do this."

Downs played at FHS as Lisa Garland in the 1980s, then coached at Foxboro with Paul Mahoney and Dan Damish before leaving to raise three boys. She returned to the program in 2006 with Sarah Behn as head coach, and had two separate stints on the staff before Behn left to take the UMass-Lowell job. 

Downs was the logical replacement upon Behn's departure, having been an all-star player at FHS, a defensive whiz at Southeastern Massachusetts University, a former Foxboro assistant and also the chief executive of Foxboro Youth Basketball for a while. She's had the post since 2012 and has made the most of it, winning the state Division 2 titles in 2018, 2020 and 2023 -- and then running roughshod over Division 3, where Foxboro was placed this year because of an enrollment-based realignment.

In her 13 seasons, not only has Downs, now 55, won 230 games (most of any Foxboro girls' coach), but she's also the longest-tenured coach in the program's post-Title IX history. She has built a dynasty with multiple groups of players and her as the only thread connecting them all -- something that can't be claimed by the "other" dynasty in town, the football one that relied upon one player to keep it all together over 20 years.

Collins holds the trophy.

Tradition means a lot to Downs, and to her athletes by association. It's why Collins, a senior guard that has been the most reliable and consistent player in the area (maybe even the state) over the past two seasons, completely dominated the second half when what started as a Foxboro rout grew a little too close for comfort by halftime when the Clippers outscored the Warriors 20-14 in the second quarter.

Collins scored 19 of her game-high 25 points in the second half to put the Norwell counter-attack in the history books. Even from the highest reaches of the Tsongas Center, from where we were broadcasting, we could see the steely-eyed resolve on her face as she called for the ball time after time down the stretch.

It wasn't necessarily a conscious thing, Collins said.

"I guess I was just doing it," she said, "My teammates are always there supporting me, so I guess when I had momentum in the second half, they just gave me the ball and I was able to perform."

Downs is no fool. When she saw that look in her star guard's eyes, she let Collins do her thing.

"I know when she wants the ball, and she wanted the ball tonight," Downs said. "Whether she was going to be scoring or she was going to be looking for someone, she wanted to make sure that the ball was going to be touching her hands. When she wants it, I let her have it because she's a senior, and she's not going to do anything crazy out there."

Erin Foley is another hard-working senior whose contributions don't always show up on the scoreboard but are invaluable -- including, for instance, the eight assists she he had in last year's Division 2 title game against Dracut. 

This year, Foley ran into some early foul trouble, but after a few brief moments on the sidelines, she returned to play with no noticeable lessening of her defensive intensity.

Confidence is not a problem for the young Ms. Foley, who will continue her outstanding soccer career next year at Stonehill College.

"I knew we were going to win, so I just wanted to have fun out there," she said. "We never lose. We're not doing to go down. Even if we let up a few points here and there in that little run, it doesn't matter because no team is going to beat us now."

If you think that's cocky, well, former Patriots' coach Bill Parcells had a good explanation for that.

"Confidence is demonstrated ability," the Tuna would say frequently. Foley has demonstrated her ability innumerable times over her four-year career.

Kenzie Burton knows the value of teammates.

Maybe some of the best comments, however, came from Burton. She's a senior that battled long and hard to get on the court despite a multitude of knee problems, and she was able to score only eight career points over that time. But while relegated to a support role, the support and encouragement she lent to all of the players proved to be an invaluable resource for them -- and also a source of great joy for her.

"Of course, I would have loved to contribute," she said. "But honestly, watching them play ... I'm so lucky to be able to do that. Cam, Erin and Izzy, I played with them since kindergarten, and they're the best team I've ever seen. I'm going to miss it so much, but I'm going to be able to tell everyone how awesome it was to be a part of this team ... I feel I'm the luckiest person in the world to have a front-row seat to that."

I was also pretty lucky to have a front-row seat (or back row, depending upon the broadcast location) for this year's basketball, too.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to broadcast a Bishop Feehan girls' game this year, but I definitely want to tip my cap to Coach Amy Dolores and her Shamrocks for bringing home their second state title since 2016. Maddy Steel, Julia Webster, Charlotte Adams-Lopez and their teammates proved a lot to me in their 48-40 victory over Wachusett for the Division 1 crown. 

Wachusett played both Foxboro and Feehan in the Comcast Tournament up in Woburn at the end of February, and I charted the Feehan-Wachusett semifinal. Feehan had no answers at all for Wachusett's bigs or its talented, Annapolis-bound point guard, Mary Gibbons, and the Shamrocks lost 76-45. But Dolores hit the films and her team executed the corrections on Friday night, and the result was a state championship.

I also saw some good basketball played by the King Philip boys and girls, and another outstanding season by the Mansfield boys. And I have a lot of hope going forward for a very young Mansfield girls' team that reached the Division 2 Sweet 16 this year. A pretty solid freshman class joined the varsity and grew steadily as competitors over the course of the season, and I'm eager to see what the future will hold for my hometown Hornets.

Lots of high fives in the huddle.

But, of course, it all comes back to Foxboro for me. Whether it was the first wave of championship teams headed by athletes such as Dianne Cavanaugh, Sandy White and Ellen Corliss, to the late '80s terrific troika of Sarah Behn, Holly Grinnell and Jody Reilly, to the 1995 D3 title team that won in double overtime over Lee (and I have not yet forgotten Jamie Kelley's miracle three-pointer to earn the second OT), the blue-and-gold thread has had a consistent run of success for much of my adult life.

Even as I am clearly in the late autumn of my years, I am still wildly entertained and enthralled by Foxboro girls' basketball. And if you think the Warriors are going to fold up their tents and go away with the graduation of this year's seniors, think again. 

Collins' 1,296 career points may depart for Rider University, but Kailey Sullivan will be back to add to her three-year total of 1,288. Towering center Addie Ruter, who scored 17 points against Norwell, will also return. So will Ava Hill, Adrianna Porazzo, Alaysia Drummonds, Brynn Allen, Camila Burton, Reese Hassman, Keagan Maguire and Kylie Sampson -- all battle-tested, and all feeding off the strength and confidence that comes from being part of a dynasty. The cupboard will not be bare. 

This was, as Frank Sinatra might sing, a very good year. I don't think I've seen the last of those.

(BLOGGER'S NOTE: All photographs in this post were screen grabs from the Foxboro Cable Access post-game interview post on YouTube.)

I really love this time of year.

Trevor Foley lived up to the hype.

For the first time in this basketball tournament season, I have run into a scheduling conundrum.

I've been calling the games for the boys' and girls' basketball teams from King Philip Regional High School and Mansfield High School, as well as the girls' basketball team from Foxboro High (for Foxboro Cable Access). In the first round, both KP and Mansfield played same-site doubleheaders, so both North TV (for KP) and Mansfield Cable Access took the "two birds with one stone" approach, and Alex Salachi and I were able to lend our announcing skills to all four of those games.

The KP boys and girls won their preliminary-round games (the KP boys in a last-second thriller over Braintree), as did the Mansfield teams later in the week, and we were off to a rousing start.

KP went on the road after their prelims, so those two home games ended our North TV season. And the Mansfield girls had to travel 100 miles to the west to Northampton High for their Round of 16 game, which I did attend but we did not televise. They lost by four points, but that team is very young and will be a force next season.

To this point, there had been no conflicts with my work for Mansfield or Foxboro because the MIAA had done a very good job of keeping the Division 2 boys' games and the Division 3 girls' games on different nights. But unfortunately, that has come to a screeching halt in the quarterfinal rounds.

This Friday night, the top-seeded Foxboro girls will play host to No. 9 Pentucket at 6 p.m. 

Meanwhile, the No. 5 Mansfield boys will travel to No. 4 Somerset Berkley Regional, opening tap scheduled for 6:30.

Because my longest-standing commitment is to Mansfield Cable Access since I became a cable TV announcer in 2018, I will be heading to Somerset to announce that game. But I will be crossing my fingers and toes not only for the Hornets to win, but also for the Foxboro girls to continue their tournament quest to the semifinal round as well. And then, if past practice can serve as a guide, maybe the fact that the teams are in different divisions will prompt the MIAA to schedule their games on different nights next week.

If there ever was a time when I wish I could clone myself, and do both games at the same time, this is it.

I really enjoy watching both teams. 

Cam Collins has led the attack.

Foxboro, of course, has been on a mission during their scorched-earth path through the Division 3 field. They scored 75 points on a 4-20 Bellingham team that really had no business being in the tournament, then put up 95 on a Wilmington team that was supposed to be a lot better. And no, the starters weren't in all the time. A full contingent of substitutes played a lot in the second quarter of both games, and then drove home from midway in the third quarter to the finish.

It's clear to me that Cam Collins, Erin Foley, Kailey Sullivan, Izzy Chamberlin, Addie Ruter and the rest of the Warriors are totally focused upon one goal. They wanted to defend their Division 2 title of last year, but were dropped down to Division 3 because of their enrollment, and now they want to make a statement about that decision.

Meanwhile in my hometown, things were going swimmingly for the Hornets through their first week, but then they learned that starting senior guard Davon Sanders -- who had been having a monster season, averaging 19 points a game and having several performances in the high-20s -- would be out last night against Burlington with an illness. 

Stepping up to the plate were senior forward Trevor Foley with a career-high 31 points and 15 rebounds, and junior guard Nate Creedon, whose 18 points were just one off his career high (and that was set in the first game of this season). The rest of the Hornets showed great resolve and determination to play outstanding defense and limit one of the best players in the state, Burlington's Cedric Rodriguez, to 13 points.

I have a feeling both teams will keep advancing. And if they do, I know I could do both title games if they get to the finals, because there are no scheduling conflicts there. But I need to remember, you can take only one step at a time in tournament season.

That's why I love it so.