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| Bishop Feehan High School athletics are about to head into an era of independence. |
When I was a mere 7 years old, freshly attending the late and lamented Dominican Academy elementary school in Plainville, my parents brought me to the open house for the brand-new Bishop Feehan High School in Attleboro. I remember walking with them into the gymnasium and thinking that this was the largest building I had ever seen in my young life.
Those of you that know Feehan, which still exists today in the same tidy footprint along Holcott Drive, are well aware that Feehan's gymnasium is actually one of the smallest in our area. Therein lies a great explanation of the concept of situational perspective.
But in many ways, Bishop Feehan is among the giants of parochial education in this commonwealth. With a current enrollment of 1,086 students, Feehan is definitely the healthiest of the remaining Catholic schools in southeastern Massachusetts -- a region that has seen the demise of several schools over the 50 years in which I've been involved in covering local sports, including Taunton's Coyle and Cassidy High School, Fall River's Bishop Connolly High School and Kingston's Sacred Heart High School in recent years, and others absolutely no one would remember.
But maybe Feehan is too healthy for its own good.
Once again, Feehan is a school in search of a home athletic league. Starting with the spring 2026-27 season, Feehan will leave the Catholic Central League to operate as an independent. The Attleboro school will maintain membership in the CCL in boys' and girls' hockey, boys' and girls' golf and cheer, and will hope to maintain many of the relationships in other sports that have developed since joining the league in the 2020-21 campaign. But otherwise, the welcome mat will be open to any schools wishing to add Feehan as a non-league opponent to their schedules -- and that may not be as easy as it sounds.
In a meeting Wednesday of the MIAA Board of Directors in Franklin, Bishop Feehan was granted an opportunity to make that effort a little easier. The school was granted exclusionary status beginning with the 2026-27 season -- which means schools can add Feehan to bump up their schedules a notch.
MIAA Rule 34.1.3 notes that "member schools may exceed the maximum number of season competitions by two ... when scheduling contests with the approved exclusion schools. Excluded schools are only allowed to play the maximum number of seasonal competitions and may compete against each other. All game exclusion contests will count in tournament qualification and ranking/seeding system."
That's not as sweet a deal as it used to be; when the exclusionary status was first established, schools that added exclusion schools didn't have to count those games toward tournament qualification. So you could add a big school to your schedule, take a beating, but it didn't hurt your seeding and the kids could not only benefit from the challenge, they could also have the stats from an extra game or two. But now, you can play 22 basketball games if you so choose, but those extra games will affect your power ranking.
Feehan is now one of 17 exclusion schools. They hold that status for two years, and will have to re-apply to the MIAA every two years.
Reasons for Feehan's departure from the CCL are varied, depending upon who's doing the talking.
"It was approved by our league unanimously to give us relief because they're double the size of all the schools in our league, and we were finding that the games weren't competitive, especially at the JV and freshman levels," Arlington Catholic athletic director Dan Shine told the Boston Globe after the MIAA meeting Wednesday.
But when asked by the Boston Herald if he felt his school had been divorced by the CCL because of its size and health, Feehan AD Christian Schatz tried to downplay any notions that a schism had erupted in the CCL.
"We want to keep that relationship up, and we are going to," Schatz said of the membership in four sports and cheer. "This decision really checks all the boxes for us. We wanted to be able to choose the best option for all of our athletes and families. Keeping the relationship with the CCL while allowing some of our programs on the independent side and out of league schedules was something that seems to the best option overall."
There is definitely truth to Feehan's growing domination of the CCL. The second-largest school in the CCL is Archbishop Williams of Braintree at 568 students, 518 fewer than Feehan. Following behind in order are Bishop Stang of Dartmouth (554), St. Mary's of Lynn (526), Arlington Catholic (499), Cardinal Spellman of Brockton (479), Bishop Fenwick of Peabody (458) and Cathedral of Boston (276), which is rarely subjected to full league schedules because of the disparate size.
Feehan's enrollment has steadily increased in recent years, while almost all of the aforementioned schools' numbers have shrunk. Feehan also has a very successful approach to fundraising, which has resulted in expansion and renovation of the McGrath Stadium/Beach Field complex and construction of a practice gym and extensive fitness facility, as well as significant improvements to the academic footprint.
I also had been told by a very good source that the expense and time of travel, and unsatisfactory competition at the sub-varsity levels, played significant roles in Feehan's decision. Feehan has already been adding a lot of local schools' junior varsity and freshman/froshmore teams to its schedules because the competition just wasn't there in the CCL.
But has Feehan's bullish approach to growth been a curse as well as a blessing? Feehan has clearly outgrown its fellow regional Catholics, but the Shamrocks still aren't a good fit for the natural next level up, the Catholic Conference, which is the home of the last bastions of single-sex education that crank out powerhouse athletic teams year after year, season after season.
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| One of Feehan's finest, Katie Nelson (2). |
(Blogger's note: Feehan football players might quibble with that supposition given their recent three-touchdown win over BC High. I'd gently remind them of the result of their opener against Xaverian to add perspective.)
If you go to the MIAA website and seek enrollment figures that are easily understandable, good luck to you. For purposes of divisional alignment, the MIAA actually doubles the number for the single-sex schools -- what it calls "modifiers" -- to reflect the supposed level of competition as opposed to co-ed schools or publics. Vocational schools are modified as well, but to place them in lower divisions. That's been in effect for some time, and it was basically adopted here as it is in some other states because public schools were howling about how unfair it was to be facing private schools that could draw their athletes from wide geographical areas. Personally, I've always thought that was discriminatory, particularly against Catholic education, but no one has ever challenged the practice.
And as for the female athletes, there is a girls' version of the Catholic Conference, and it contains Malden Catholic, Fontbonne Academy, Ursuline Academy and Notre Dame Academy of Hingham. Obviously, Feehan girls' basketball coach Amy Dolores would have her work cut out for her to create a challenging schedule for her three-time state Division 1 finalists with just those schools as her foundation.
In many ways, all of the machinations are not unusual for Bishop Feehan. Since its founding in 1961, Feehan has never really had a comfortable and equitable league affiliation.
Its first association was with the Bristol County League, whose members included Durfee, New Bedford, Attleboro, Taunton, North Attleboro, Bishop Stang and what was then called New Bedford Vocational. That lasted for about a decade, but in the early 1970s, a mega-league called the Southeastern Massachusetts Conference was formed, promising divisional play based upon enrollments and equitable competition between foes of like size and mission.
More than 35 schools leaped at the opportunity to build a better mousetrap at first. But cracks in the SMC's armor appeared quickly. Yearly realignments were annoying to athletic directors trying to plot their schedules for the future. Many schools didn't like where they were placed, claiming that regional rivalries suffered. And some were suspicious of the more successful Catholics like Feehan and Coyle, or felt out of place among the larger schools like Attleboro, Taunton and Dartmouth. Gradually, schools started to drift away in search of a less chaotic environment.
Finally, in 1986, the SMC imploded. With its promises unfulfilled, many of its divisions broke away to form their own leagues, including the South Coast Conference, the Patriot League and altered versions of the South Shore League and the Cape & Islands League that took in SMC stragglers near their regions.
And then there was the League for Little (and Big) Wanderers, the schools that nobody wanted. Attleboro, Feehan, Coyle-Cassidy, Somerset, Dartmouth, Bishop Stang and Martha's Vineyard joined together in an unholy alliance called the Eastern Athletic Conference that somehow lasted 34 years -- large schools playing below their capabilities, small schools trying to compete with the big boys, and everyone hating the successful Catholics.
Gradually, schools found other options, dropping off one-by-one -- until, at the end of 2020, Feehan and Stang put the last nail in the EAC's coffin by joining the Catholic Central League. Coyle-Cassidy was the last remaining EAC member at that point -- and it never played in another league, the Taunton school sadly closing its doors before the 2020-21 school year.
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| Feehan will seek new visitors to its gym. |
This could open the door for Feehan to reach out to schools from the region's most successful league, the Hockomock League, its communities including many whose athletes are drawn away to Bishop Feehan on a steady basis.
I have stood almost alone for the last 50 years as having advocated for Bishop Feehan to join the Hockomock League. And for almost every minute of that time, I've been met with vehement objections from old-school athletic directors and coaches who do not want a Catholic school in their midst.
They can recruit, claim the nay-sayers. They can take away our best athletes! We can't compete with their promises and how they can draw athletes from so many towns!
Well, they have a point. Bishop Feehan does have a large reach, even larger than before with the demise of Coyle-Cassidy. They even pluck some talented athletes out of Rhode Island, which is Christian charity at its finest.
A look at the current football roster lends credence to those arguments. There are 17 athletes from North Attleboro, six from Attleboro, six from Easton (Oliver Ames HS), three from Foxboro, two from Mansfield, two from Plainville and one apiece from Canton, Norfolk and Wrentham. I don't doubt that Mike Strachan looks at that number and wonders how some of those could have been incorporated into his North Attleboro roster, but at the same time, I don't see KP's Brian Lee (four athletes), Mansfield's Mike Redding (two) and Foxboro's Jack Martinelli (three) sweating much over their departures, given the success of their own programs.
Obviously, North Attleboro is stung in almost all sports. Attleboro and Mansfield lose far fewer than they once did. And while Norton may seem to have a gripe, many of those young men might have ended up at Coyle-Cassidy before Feehan.
And to be honest, many of our local public schools offer better facilities than Feehan can. Attleboro has a gleaming new high school. Mansfield has maintained its school well and has recently upgraded almost all of its facilities. And the first shovels will go into the ground in June for a new North Attleboro High School that will serve academics and athletics equally well.
Having lived all my life around here, and maybe missing out on a Feehan education because the nuns at Dominican Academy thought I was too rambunctious to be a good little Catholic boy, I still had a terrific relationship with Feehan over my 40-plus years at The Sun Chronicle, and I still do. Yes, there have been a few blips and hiccups where Feehan had to be reminded of its athletic/academic mission and not fall into the habits that may characterize some other parochial schools in the state, but I believe Feehan conducts itself with honor even while having to attract students from many communities for its many benefits -- and remain solvent at the same time.
I still think Feehan would make a good member of the Hockomock League. It would be outstanding in some sports, and not as good in others. It wouldn't be a constant champion up and down the board, but at the same time, it also wouldn't have to take sabbaticals from some league sports because it couldn't handle the competition, as some league members have had to do. I see it as a living validation of that old Klingon proverb: "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer." Want to promote your own programs? Beat the teams from Feehan.
But I just don't see it happening. The Hockomock's expansion of about 15 years ago resulted in a pretty good 12-team mix, although I still think the league should have served the smaller schools in the league a little better than it did by bringing in huge schools Taunton and Attleboro and Central Mass. power Milford. If somehow the hesitance of adding a Catholic school could be overcome, and I'm not sure it could, the Hockomock might feel equally inclined to add another school to maintain the balance, and 14 schools might be too many -- especially in a time when the MIAA has reduced schedule limits in some sports, making a 19-game regular season unworkable in divisional play.
Of course, I can think of one or two current members that might be better served to walk away from the Hockomock these days -- but I'll keep the identities of those to myself.
I wish Feehan a lot of luck as it embarks upon this chapter in its athletic odyssey. Hopefully, I'll still be around, calling some of the Shamrocks' games, for several more years before I turn off my headset and microphone. It's my fervent wish that Feehan will have a suitable home league and won't always have to go it alone -- but at the very least, I hope going independent will make it possible for Feehan to play a lot more games against the schools in its immediate neighborhood.
I just covered a Feehan homecoming, and who knows? Maybe this can be a homecoming of another sort.
MARK FARINELLA might have attended Bishop Feehan if the principal of Dominican Academy hadn't threatened his parents with sending him to a Catholic boys' school in Sharon that served as something of a correctional facility. Contact him at theownersbox2020@gmail.com.
This post was edited with new information and clarifications at 9 a.m. Oct. 9, 2025.
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