Ponderous thoughts I was pondering ...

Proposed site of a soccer stadium in Everett, near the Encore casino at left.

Ponderous thoughts I was pondering while continuing to live the leisurely life in retirement (before the telecasts start up again in September) ...

** I read in the Boston Globe today that the Massachusetts legislature has cleared the way for Robert Kraft to build a soccer-specific stadium in Everett adjacent to the Steve Wynn-built Encore casino property -- although they did so in a typically sneaky way that's so commonplace in this state's politics.

According to the Globe story, the lawmakers added language to a wide-ranging, multibillion-dollar economic development bill Thursday evening that would exempt the 43-acre industrial property straddling the Everett and Boston line from a slew of environmental requirements so it could be developed as a “sports, recreation or events center.”

The property, like much of the site upon which the casino and hotel complex was built, has environmental concerns after decades of use by manufacturing that left toxic deposits in the earth bordering the Mystic River. Right now, it's the site of a power plant. An adjacent oil tank farm owned by ExxonMobil is also being considered for further development.

Needless to say, reaction has been immediate and mixed.

Some applaud the Krafts for finally zeroing in on a development plan for the smaller soccer stadium they have sought for their New England Revolution MLS team practically since its founding in 1996. Others decry the development of what would probably be a 30,000-seat venue in an already congested area that's even more challenged by the casino development and would likely be further beset upon if the tank farm is developed for commercial and residential use. And, of course, the plan has been met with objections from those that decry another "wink-wink, nudge-nudge" move by the legislature without the benefit of public discourse.

A quick look at the comments under the story revealed the usual saucy comments about Kraft's visits to an Asian "massage spa" in Jupiter, Fla., as well as outrage over how another entitled billionaire is getting unworthy assistance from his politician buddies on Beacon Hill. And so on, and so on.

This all comes without even an artist's rendition of what a soccer stadium would look like on the site (which is pictured above courtesy of Google Earth) -- although I suspect that the wheels will move quickly if indeed this bill makes it possible for Kraft to realize his dream of getting a soccer stadium built in a metropolitan area filled with potential fans that fit the MLS demographic.

Fewer empty seats in a soccer-specific stadium.

Yes, there are eyebrow-lifting aspects to this plan (if there is a plan). As the stadium would be neighbors to the Wynn-built casino, it would give Kraft the long-desired opportunity to become a quasi-partner with the 80-year-old gaming mogul, although Wynn stepped down from his role as CEO of Wynn Resorts in 2018 amid accusations of sexual misconduct. You may recall that Wynn originally wanted to build a casino complex across the street from Gillette Stadium before meeting with staunch opposition from residents of Foxboro and South Walpole that would have been directly impacted by the development. The NFL also was not pleased at the time by the potential presence of legal gambling across the street from one of its stadiums -- although I'd bet that today, now that the NFL is in bed with gambling sites such as Draft Kings and whatnot, Wynn's plan would be welcomed with open arms.

There's not a lot of public transportation leading to the potential stadium site, either, but that's not our problem down here in the boonies. There's a T station a little less than a mile away from the site, I'm told. When money talks, people walk. In any event, let the folks in Everett take note of what's happened down here if they're expecting the state to fix their traffic woes. There have been two stadiums on US 1 since 1971, each of them seating more than 60,000 people and selling out year after year, and yet it's still one road in and one road out, and one rickety spur railroad line that is about as useful to the area as teats on a bull.

Not discussed at all in this matter is, "what about Foxboro?"

It's my understanding that the town still gets a share of ticket revenue from the sale of Revolution tickets, which is rarely more than 20,000 per game (although that has been trending gradually upward in recent years). But I'm not sure how much of that is affected by the attendance cap that stops revenue collection after a certain number is reached for all revenue-producing events within the stadium.

Currently, the Revs are averaging 18,600 per game, which is starting to approach the pre-pandemic high average of 22,175 in 2016. But that still looks lost in a 66,000-seat facility in which two-thirds of the seats are covered with tarpaulins. And in the scheme of things for MLS as a whole, the Revs are the 14th best draw among all 28 teams, right in the middle of the pack. Even if they bang out a 30,000-seat venue in Everett, they are still likely to reach no higher than fifth or sixth if current numbers can be used as a guide.

Kraft will make the ultimate decision.

I'm sure there is some concern about trading a relatively loyal fan base from south of Boston to the unknown potential of the metropolitan area, and whether losing the Revolution crowds will negatively impact commercial traffic within the Patriot Place development. But I don't have demographic breakdowns of either situation. I'm sure the Krafts do, and they wouldn't have been trying for 20 years to get a soccer-specific stadium built if they didn't think they could take the hit.

It should be noted, too, that this is not a precursor to eventually moving the Patriots away from Foxboro. If it was, the Krafts would not be investing $225 million (just about $100 million less than the original construction price) to renovate the north end zone of Gillette Stadium. It's a significant move because the stadium is now 20 years old -- by some estimates, about half of its anticipated lifespan -- and the improvements indicate an ongoing commitment to Foxboro as home base.

I'll admit, I'm ambivalent to the whole Revolution experience. I've attended one game by choice since 1996, the first game played within Gillette Stadium (then called CMGi Field) in 2002. I don't care one way or another personally -- although I do understand and respect the enjoyment that local fans have derived from their presence. The Revs have been extremely accommodating to local youth soccer organizations that benefitted from the stadium's close proximity. I'm not sure how many of them will follow the team to Everett without the ease of accessibility they enjoyed in the past.

But then again, this project could end up mirroring the vagaries of New England weather. Wait a minute, and it will change.

Still mustard color, but not Heinz.

** Speaking of stadiums, you may have noticed that the naming-rights merry-go-round has finally stopped in Pittsburgh, where Heinz Field is no more. The mustard-yellow seats and the big ketchup bottles will still be there, but the stadium at the confluence of those three rivers will now be known as "Acrisure Stadium," after a Michigan-based insurance company. The Kraft Heinz Company (the former name not belonging to the local Krafts) determined that the cost of extending its deal wasn't worth the exposure it would gain. After all, do we need to be reminded more of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese or Heinz Ketchup? 

So Acrisure will shell out $10 million a year for the next 15 years for its name on the stadium. Heinz, based in Pittsburgh, paid about $2.85 million a year over the 21 years it held naming rights. Fans of the Steelers and the Pitt Panthers, who call Acrisure Stadium home, are livid. Petitions are circulating and outrage is being voiced, but it will all be to no avail. 

Heinz will remain a prominent sponsor within the stadium, but again, money talks. Ketchup walks.

In case you're wondering, Procter & Gamble (owners of Gillette) will own the naming rights of Gillette Stadium at least until 2031, having extended the original deal 15 years beyond its original expiration date of 2016. The Kraft Group reportedly receives $8 million a year for those rights.

** And no, I have never called Gillette Stadium "The Razor." I always thought "Foamy Field" would have been a funnier nickname for the place. 

But on your next visit to training camp, cast a glance at the field house adjacent to the practice field and you will notice yet another new name for it. It's now called the "Socios.com Field House," after a relatively new international company that has created apps that promise users (presumably pro sports fans) will have some sort of special access to the teams they follow, as far as claiming their participation in polls will give then an actual say in a team's decisions for marketing or their "fan experience."

Yeah, right. All I know was that I went to their website and was immediately greeted by the image of Aaron Rodgers holding a cellphone. No, thanks.

** I may have mentioned this in passing some time ago, but it appears that local high school basketball will see a change this coming December.

The National Federation of High Schools, which dictates the rules of play to almost every state in the nation, has recommended the use of a basketball shot clock for all of its state associations, limiting possessions to 35 seconds. Massachusetts currently has a 30-second shot clock and would have to add five seconds to the possession under NFHS rules.

Get used to seeing 35 seconds.

In addition, states have the option to consider resets on offensive rebounds to a lesser amount of time, such as 20 seconds (as is done in the WNBA), so teams cannot use missed shots late in possessions to kill time. It's not clear if Massachusetts will go in that direction, although shorter resets to 15 seconds are now in effect for kick balls or intentionally fisted balls out of bounds with less than 15 seconds showing on the shot clock when play is stopped.

I'm not certain why 35 seconds is the time of choice; 30 seconds works just fine and keeps the game moving. But even more amazing to me is that at the close of last season, Massachusetts was just one of 11 states or districts that required high school shot clocks (the others being California, District of Columbia, Georgia, Iowa, Maryland, New York, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota and Washington). Idaho, Minnesota, Montana and Utah were also about to adopt shot clocks, and Florida, Nebraska and South Carolina have them in place on a limited basis.

Some traditionalists are screaming bloody murder about the change in the game or the cost of adding shot clocks, but given that Massachusetts adopted the clock in 1998-99, I can honestly say that I would never again want to see the game played without one. It's just better basketball -- and it does prepare athletes for playing at the next level.

** One last note of appreciation, as Mansfield High athletic director Mike Redding has turned over the reins of the department to his former assistant, both in football and the department, Tim Selmon. 

As expected, Redding was organized, efficient and very helpful during his tenure, which coincided with the very worst that the COVID-19 pandemic had to offer. And don't fret, Hornet football fans, because Mike's still the football coach. Selmon has been learning the ropes recently as an assistant AD, and I'm sure he'll keep things moving positively as Mansfield enters a new era in the Hockomock League's Davenport Division this fall.

The cause for women's rights celebrates a triumph, then suffers a defeat in just two days.

A decade ago, these young all-star selections were evidence of the success of Title IX.

I will not lie to you. There are times when I look at the direction in which this country is headed, and I fear for its future.

That vantage point was attained even though I am still one of the most protected members of our society -- an aging, white, heterosexual male, one that has enjoyed far more privilege over my 68 years on this earth to the point where I not only didn't understand or fully appreciate what I had, but I also have no idea how to spend what's left in my remaining days. 

Outside of the norms of society, no one has ever told me what I can do with my own body. I can eat, sleep, work, play, fornicate or defecate whenever and wherever I want, save for instances where some of those actions would be totally inappropriate in a social setting. The only time I was told I couldn't play sports was when it was proven that I was not good enough at them to satisfy the requirements of the meritocracy that is competitive athletics. And outside of the legalities surrounding mingling with the opposite sex, there are no laws applicable to my participation in mutually-agreed-upon activities that might result in reproduction.

Yet here we are in the fourth week of June, the Year of Our Lord 2022, and in the past two days, it has been driven home to me just how badly women have it in these United States of America.

Thursday should have been, and hopefully was, a reminder of one of the great moments of triumph for American women. It was the 50th anniversary of the addition of just 37 words to the Education Amendments of 1972 -- a passage called Title IX that opened the doors to millions of women to receive equal access to opportunities in athletics in colleges and high schools.

"No person in the United States," they read, "shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."

Title IX opened the door, all right. Several states, including Massachusetts, followed up with their own statutes underscoring those provisions where state funding was concerned. And the changes those acts wrought were truly culture-changing.

In 1971, the year of my graduation from Mansfield High School, Title IX did not exist. Sports for boys were numerous and coaches had experience in their disciplines. But that was not the case for girls. For the most part, schools offered field hockey, basketball, softball and tennis, and that was it.

Just a year earlier, in fact, Massachusetts changed over from the peculiar six-girl basketball rules that allowed only three players to cross center court, restricted players to just one dribble and a pass, and let the center stand all day in the lane without penalty. At Mansfield High, the long-time female physical education teacher that coached all sports turned over the reins of the girls' basketball team to a young English teacher whose best qualification for the job was that she was single and available for after-school duties.

Jackie Cross, left, plays in a boys-girls exhibition
game at Mansfield High in 1971.

My high school sweetheart, Jacqueline Cross, was the center of that team. She was 5-foot-11, slender but athletic, who had received very little true coaching in the nuances of any kind of basketball, let alone the game that she and her teammates were forced to learn once "boys' rules" were in place.

Despite all that, she loved to play. She certainly drew more than her share of three-second violations during the transition from one set of rules to another, but she adapted and did her best. In hindsight, I look back at her and try to envision what kind of a player she would have been with today's quality of coaching, today's training equipment and the nurturing atmosphere that Title IX brought to women's sports, and I think she would have been a good one -- and that is said with the full knowledge that in my 40-plus years with the local newspaper, I saw a lot of very good players, many going on to excel in college, including one that was one of the best in the nation during her career.

Title IX made that possible. It was a slow start and change didn't happen overnight. Girls didn't start wearing actual basketball uniforms instead of baggy jumpsuits until the mid-'70s. Coaching hires and practice availability didn't improve immediately. Some schools, including Attleboro High, relegated girls' basketball to a small side gymnasium instead of where the boys played. Even Boston College didn't grant its women's team regular access to the Conte Forum on a regular basis until the late 1990s, instead forcing the women to play in an adjacent practice gym.

For most of our local girls, their teams played in the afternoons, before small crowds, while the boys played at night and got all the fanfare. In my role as a high school sports reporter for the weekly Mansfield News, I had to choose between the two because of travel, and the paper wanted only the boys' games covered, so it was that on an afternoon of shooting baskets outside her house, Jackie asked me why I never came to watch her games.

My response: "It's only girls' basketball."

Worst statement I ever made in my life. 

I will never forget the hurt and disappointment in her eyes. And yet it still took about seven or eight more years, in my early years at The Sun Chronicle, for pressure from local coaches to work its way through my thick skull and prompt me to start directing the sports department to provide better coverage for all girls' sports.

It was tough at first. People resisted the change. A lot of male sports fans thought we were taking something away from the coverage of their sports, when in truth we were adding more pages and more column inches of coverage. There was even some reluctance among the management of the paper to devote more resources to covering girls' sports or giving them equal play. And of course, there were the peculiar knuckle-draggers that found the need to personally insult me, accusing me of deviant behavior and attacking my reputation, just because I covered girls' sports and actually enjoyed them.

Former Feehan star Katie Nelson.

But as the saying goes, we persevered. The Sun Chronicle became a better newspaper because of it. And today, while the coverage of women's pro sports is still a distant second fiddle to the men's pro leagues, there isn't a newspaper (among those that remain, that is) that would not offer equal coverage to boys and girls at the high school level.

Consistent to that theme of being ahead of the curve, I wrote my tributes to Title IX 10 years ago, commemorating the 40th anniversary of the legislation. Several stories ran over a four-day period, highlighting the progress made by athletes I interviewed, who ranged in age from 16 to 74. Fortunately, all of those I interviewed are still with us and have witnessed further progress -- although there are still a few instances when I'm irritated that a school hasn't opened all of its bleachers for the girls' game even though Title IX mandates equal access to facilities.

Some glaciers move (or melt) more slowly than others.

In general, Title IX has been a positive thing for America as a whole -- and it's hard to believe that it was signed into law by one of the worst presidents this nation ever had, Richard M. Nixon. Paranoid and vindictive as he was, Nixon was not a stupid man. He respected the rights of all Americans (if not the Constitution that gave him his authority), and thus his signature on the Education Amendments of 1972 may actually represent one of the few high points of his morally corrupt administration.

So, Thursday should have been a day of celebration. That changed abruptly with the cowardly news dump on Friday that the Supreme Court of the United States had voted 6-3 to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion by a 7-2 vote in 1973. We all knew it was coming following that celebrated leak of the draft version of the opinion, but it became official just in time for all of the justices to hotfoot it out of town for what I expect will be a very long hiatus.

I will not get into a theological or moral debate over abortion. I do not consider myself qualified in the slightest to establish the moment when life begins in the womb, or when a fetus would be viable to survive outside it. I don't have the credentials to say the exact moment when a soul enters the vessel, or if there is even such a thing. I tend to subscribe to the theories that mankind has always created "gods" to explain away what they didn't understand.

All I know is that women do not have the same rights as men in a country where it was proclaimed in a document of some note that "all men (and that really should be amended to include women) are created equal."

The Constitution, as written three centuries ago, reflects the society of the times. Men ruled the roost, and they were all one color. Black men and women brought over from Africa could still be sold as slaves. And all women had just one purpose -- to make babies.

Slavery wasn't ended until 1865. Women got the right to vote in 1920. Yet in both instances, vestiges of old prejudices remain and they continue to divide our country. We could have elected a woman president in 2016, and more people voted for her than the ignoramus that won in the Electoral College, but that glass ceiling remains unshattered.

Concentrating solely upon women's issues, because that's what's in the news today, women still don't make the same as men in comparable jobs. Fewer opportunities are presented to them, and workplace harassment continues to be an omnipresent issue facing those that endure it.

As I said at the top of this missive, no one would dare pass legislation that would so severely restrict a man's control over his own body, particularly his reproductive organs -- although I've suggested many times that the Second Amendment remains in place to compensate some men for what they didn't get at birth. In a nutshell: Big gun? Small penis.

Reaction to Friday's ruling was swift.

I can just imagine the howls of protest that would hail from old white men of Republican leaning if Nancy Pelosi, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Elizabeth Warren and other female legislators (hell, let's throw Hillary Clinton in there just to torment the right wing even further) banded together to pass legislation to restrict the number of ejaculations a man could have, or the number of times he could legally have sex, the number of potential partners he could have, and the number of children he could father. Or maybe the Christian right could convince legislators that every ejaculation is an exercise in murdering potential children because from among the millions of sperm that get the chance, only one is needed to fertilize an egg. Oh, the potential humanity!

Yes, it's nonsense. But so is the premise argued by Justice Clarence Thomas that the SCOTUS should review other past decisions that cover contraception or same-sex marriages. I note that he did not include decisions that legalized interracial marriage (as he is a participant in one), but let's face it -- there are a whole lot of ignorant rednecks in certain parts of this country that still haven't accepted that part of normal modern-day society.

Almost 50 years ago, women in America got the chance to have a measure of control over their own bodies. That was taken away in a big way Friday, although some states will be safe havens for legal abortion because their laws and their state Supreme Court decisions have turned Roe v. Wade into state law.

What surely troubles me, and should trouble anyone with a brain, are the states that passed "trigger" laws that wiped out any and all forms of legal abortion once Roe v. Wade was overturned. Some of those states have banned ALL forms, even when the life of the mother is threatened by a failed pregnancy. Or what about a violent rape that results in a pregnancy? The most heinous violation of all, and the victim must be forced to carry her attacker's child to term? The potential for life-long psychological suffering for both mother and child is staggering.

I can't even imagine it, in fact. I'm a man. I can never be forced to make that decision or live with its consequences. And that's why I have always believed that I (or anyone else with a penis) lack the right equipment or life experience to dictate what decisions a woman should be forced to make regarding her own body.

Yes, we have become a nation with more respect for an unborn fetus's existence than for the lives of young schoolchildren that may die in a hail of bullets because the small-dicked gun lobby can't envision life without their AR-15s by their sides.

I am profoundly sorry as I write this. I'm sorry that for women all over this country, triumph one day turned to tragedy the next. I'm sorry that men have given you another reason to look at all of us as "the bad guys" in all this. I'm even sorry for the curious preponderance of women in some parts of the country that allow their warped, fundamentalist religious beliefs to trap them in a web of continued subservience to their male partners. They fail to take responsibility for their own existence because their God tells them that's so -- and in that, they have become traitors to their gender and traitors to a nation, effectively blocking the efforts of our Constitution to offer full and righteous equality to all of its citizens.

If women throughout America would rise up in unison to reject this draconian decision, it would be reversed. I fully believe that. 

One last note -- I was warned earlier today that this was not a day in which any man should be telling women that they NEED to do something, but I disagree. We're not getting the job done, ladies, so you must. My most fervent wish is that you succeed where we have failed.

Remembering an athlete with a big shot and an even bigger heart.

The Sun Chronicle's lead sports page on March 16, 1987.

The years are not kind to the human body, but they are even less kind to the paper upon which your daily newspaper is printed. It yellows quickly and crumbles not long after, unless it is somehow encased in a substance that takes air and moisture out of the equation.

As a former sports journalist, I once wanted to preserve everything I wrote -- as if there was a larger purpose to be served by these words in posterity. But as the years of my career passed and the words increased in numbers from the thousands to the millions and probably billions (if not more), there was no longer enough storage space to save all this flammable newsprint. Indeed, years ago, the wakeup call came when news out of Taunton revealed that a long-time writer for the Taunton Daily Gazette had perished in a fire at his home because he could not find a path out of danger through all the stacks of old newspapers that littered every room.

I probably sent thousands of pounds of newsprint to the recycling bins over the years, including in the days immediately following the decision by new ownership to terminate my employment in August 2018. Bin after bin were filled with the remnants of my career, each of the preserved papers featuring something that I believed to be remarkable and worth preservation before the management made it clear that I was not to linger on the premises. It suddenly became quite easy to throw out so many memories.

But I saved some. And early this morning, when I read the first obituary appearing on The Sun Chronicle's website, I knew I had to leave no stone unturned to find one particular newspaper.

The obituary was of someone I still consider a "young" woman -- certainly a lot younger than I am. Her name upon her passing on Saturday of last week was Heidi Deppisch Robinson. She had turned 53 a little more than a month ago. I knew her best as Heidi Deppisch, a member of an illustrious basketball family in North Attleboro and one of the best players on the North Attleboro High School girls' basketball team that won the MIAA Division 2 state championship on Saturday, March 14, 1987, with a 70-61 victory over Athol High at what was then known as the Worcester Centrum.

Heidi Deppisch, 53

Heidi, a 6-footer that had what they call "inside-outside" skills, was equally as adept at playing in the paint as she was at shooting from 20 feet out or beyond in the days before the three-point circle. On this particular day, she was North Attleboro's leading scorer with 21 points, connecting on nine of 13 shot attempts and three of four free throws. Teammates Stephanie Cooper (20 points) and Alyssa Gutauskas (18) also brought their "A" games, as North mounted a 41-17 lead by halftime and never looked back.

But there was something very special about Heidi's performance that day -- so special that, among the other stories that were written by myself and former colleague Bob Croce on that afternoon for publication in the following Monday's paper (we did not have a Sunday paper at the time), I devoted the space usually reserved for an opinion column to inform our readers of what made Heidi's performance unique.

Here is what that column said under the headline, "Heidi Deppisch's doubts disappeared at game time."

A couple of days before the state Division 2 girls' basketball championship game, Heidi Deppisch asked a reporter an innocent-enough question.

"What's the Centrum like," she said. The reporter offered a brief description of what playing in a large, metropolitan arena was like in contrast to playing in a cozier high school gymnasium, but the explanation didn't fully answer Heidi's question.

"No," she said, "I mean, don't they have chairs and stuff behind the baskets?"

The reporter said yes, there are chairs and stuff.

"So if I shoot an air ball," she said, "it won't go halfway down the other end of the place, will it?"

The question was so typically Heidi Deppisch -- almost apologetic, yet thoroughly honest.

For a large part of the three years she, Stephanie Cooper and Alyssa Gutauskas have directed the fortunes of the North Attleboro High School girls' basketball team, Heidi has been the most anonymous of the three, the one most often overlooked by casual observers. Maybe it's her shy demeanor, or the fact that her strengths -- passing, rebounding, shot-blocking, the occasional outside shot -- aren't always noticed by those who watch only the bouncing ball or the basket.

But Saturday afternoon at Worcester's Centrum, it was impossible not to notice the Rocketeers' 5-foot-11 1/2 forward. Heidi Deppisch was ablaze with glory, calling an end to her high school career with the greatest game she has ever played.

And she picked the right time -- the game for the state championship.

Deppisch scored a career-high 21 points -- on 9-for-13 shooting from the floor and 3-for-4 from the foul line -- to lead her Rocketeers to a 70-61 win over Athol for the Division 2 state title. She was a powerful force from the second she stepped onto the court to the second she stepped off it, and never anything less.

This was also the same girl who, before the game, couldn't buy a warm-up basket.

"I looked over there and Heidi wasn't hitting anything," said Rick Smith, her coach. "So I looked away. (Assistant coach) Debbie Dalton had to come over an nudge me later to tell me she hit a couple."

Any similarities to the shy girl who feared throwing up perpetually-rolling air balls , the nervous one who couldn't find the range in warm-ups, and the dynamo who buried jumper after jumper from the outer reaches of the Centrum were not entirely coincidental. They were one and the same girl -- just different sides of her.

"I was worried," Heidi said upon emerging from the locker room after the game, her eyes reddened from the tears of joy she and her teammates shared. "The court really was different. It was a lot like playing in Franklin, only worse. I wasn't too sure in warm-ups that I could shoot here."

Somewhere between warm-ups and game time, something clicked in Heidi.

"It was the last game," she said. "That's what it was. It was knowing that we'd never play another game together, that there won't be any practice tomorrow, and that was the last game for Mr. Smith, too."

Once the game started, Deppisch hit the first shot she threw at the basket, a 15-footer from the left baseline. She also hit the second, a converted offensive rebound, and the third, another baseline pop.

By that time, she had told all of Athol, all of Worcester and anyone else who cared to listen that this was her game.

"I just got lucky," she said modestly, the sort of answer one would expect. Her coach and teammates thought otherwise.

"Heidi wasn't going to be denied," said Smith, who ended his career as the girls' coach Saturday. "She's sort of an unknown quantity in that people look at our frontcourt, see 5-10, 5-11 and 5-11 and think it's tough, but here's a 5-11 kid who can hurt you from outside, too."

"Heidi played the greatest game of her life today," added Gutauskas, the senior captain and center, who finished with 18 points to bring her own career total to 1,111. "What a way to end it. She was really terrific."

Deppisch scored 11 points in the first half as the Rocketeers rolled for a 41-17 lead over the reeling Western Mass. champions. But in the second half, Athol came back to life.

With tenacious guard Christine Chi creating havoc on defense and forward Lynn Dorrow hitting just about everything she threw at the basket, the Red Raiders cut that 24-point lead to a more manageable 16 entering the fourth quarter.

Suddenly, Deppisch became the "stopper" -- the clutch shooter who put the brakes on surge after surge by the Raiders. She hit a turnaround jumper just outside the lane on a quick pass from Cooper to open the fourth quarter. Then after a run of six more Athol points, she followed a foul shot by Gutauskas with a nothing-but-net jumper from a spot on the court which wasn't too far from the NBA three-point circle.

Athol reduced the margin to 11 points with two more left-handed hook shots by Dorrow. And again, following a free throw by Gutauskas, Cooper spied Deppisch cutting from right to left on the baseline. The pass was there, Heidi released the fall-away, and swish! -- a 13-point lead with 4:06 left.

"That's the best that play has worked all year," Cooper said. "I had no worries when I got the ball to Heidi."

Athol coach Mike King appreciated Deppisch's efforts, too.

"We tried to pack it in the middle more in the second half, and we did play better, " he said. "But it doesn't matter when 13 (Deppisch) can bury three 15-footers from the corner in a row."

The road to Saturday wasn't always a smooth one for Heidi Deppisch. Had she not been fitted for contact lenses this year and overcome the aggravations of adjusting to them, she and her teammates might not be state champions today. 

And she readily admits to uncertainty about her future, particularly in regard to basketball. She may, indeed, never play another game -- which would break the hearts of the collegiate coaches and scouts who saw her light up the Centrum Saturday.

But that was the last thing in her mind when the cheers faded away into the silence of the post-game locker room.

"We came back to the locker room, all of us with tears in our eyes, and people were asking us if we lost," she said, barely holding back more tears. "It was all we could think about, that it was over after all these years. All of a sudden, we started bawling our eyes out." 

Tears of joy, though -- the joy of knowing the rare feeling of being the absolute best at something, and wishing it could continue forever.

It can't, of course. But someday soon, when she no longer feels sadness over leaving behind these joyous times, Heidi Deppisch will be able to remember that on Saturday, she was the best of the best -- and there's no better way to end a high school career.

I'm glad I was able to find this remnant of a more innocent past, because it served to refresh my age-challenged memory and correct a few misrepresentations of fact that developed over the 35 years since that game was played. Indeed, many of Heidi's teammates didn't see her as shy at all. She was somewhat of a jokester and someone that knew how to diffuse tense situations with a quick quip. I needed to be reminded that what I perceived as shyness was just a natural reaction to being interviewed by someone 15 years her senior.

I'm glad that later in our lives, Heidi and I were able to maintain a measure of contact through social media. I'm also glad I never failed to tell her how much I still enjoyed my memories of her basketball career and my appreciation of her skills. And yes, I did poke a little fun at her abiding love for the Dallas Cowboys from time to time. But not too often.

I don't know the particulars of Heidi's passing and will not speculate. All I know is that I feel the same emptiness in my heart today as I did on Sept. 7, 1997, when I learned that Alyssa Gutauskas had passed at just 28 years of age. It hurts even more to know that Heidi's two children will no longer have their loving mother at their sides.

Heidi, Alyssa and all of those '87 Rocketeers are still happy-go-lucky kids in my mind, blazing trails on the basketball court for others to follow and crying those tears of joy in each other's arms outside their Worcester Centrum locker room.

Now the story can be told.

The famed "Little Black Book" owned by Peter Gobis.

The subject of the above photo may eventually be regarded by future archaeologists as one of the most important artifacts ever discovered from the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

It is the famed "little black book" formerly owned by Peter Gobis, who covered sports for The Sun Chronicle from 1973 until just a few months ago. It is 132 pages of paper wedged between two pages of faux leather binders, probably purchased 49 years ago in a downtown Attleboro stationery store that hasn't been in business for more than two decades. Many of the pages are filled with names and numbers of sports figures from not only the many towns covered by the newspaper, but also from all over New England and beyond. If there was a contact Gobis needed for just about anything, there was a 99 percent chance that number was contained within the book.

Understand, Gobis never updated entries in the book. He'd just add new ones. There was plenty of room for his impossible-to-decipher penmanship to pile in the entries, and he knew exactly where all of the new ones were -- if, indeed, he hadn't already committed the numbers to memory. For example, I just randomly opened the book to a page and looked at the first five entries. One was for a commercial concern no longer open. The next four were for individuals no longer involved in sports that would require our need for contacting them. Three of those individuals were deceased.

But at least we knew where to reach them in the afterlife.

Now, you may be asking, "How have you come into possession of this valuable piece of local sports history?" and may be thinking that Gobis would want to keep this keepsake from 49 years of local journalism. But if you are thinking that, you never really knew Peter.

Let's track back to the last week of February at the James Albertini Memorial Gymnasium in Mansfield. I was up in my Mansfield Cable Access broadcast location in the stands behind the scorer's table, preparing for the night's telecast, when Gobis climbed the bleachers with a mission.

"Hey, Farinella, I've got something for you," he said. And wasting no time, he reached into his coat pocket and produced the little black book.

I was stunned, but somehow I had the feeling that once he finally decided to retire -- and this was a decision maybe three years in the making -- he would want to divest himself of any and all reminders of the company he had served for 49 years. So I didn't even question his decision to bequest this artifact to me.

"I will treasure this forever," I said. Gobis laughed, then picked up his clipboard and his magazine and found someplace to watch the game where he wouldn't have to listen to my call.

At the TD Garden for tournament action.

As I said, Peter's decision to retire just before the start of the MIAA winter tournaments was the culmination of a long process. And I have to admit, I'm surprised it took him so long to reach it.

He has already seen his 70th birthday disappear in his rear-view mirror, but his stamina is that of a younger man and he was able to shrug off the sudden staff reduction that happened when I lost my job at the paper on Aug. 27, 2018 -- seven months shy of my own planned retirement.

Gobis and I were among the longest-tenured employees in the building. He started not long after the merger of the Attleboro Sun and the North Attleboro Chronicle at the top of the 1970s, while I came on board early in 1977 after having worked for the Sun as a high school correspondent in the late 1960s. I briefly left the paper in 1987 and returned in 1989, and stayed there until new ownership took over at the beginning of August 2018 and decided 27 days later that I was not essential to the newspaper's future (or bottom line).

Without that ownership change, I'd bet that Gobis might still be there today, attending parts of four or five games every day and cranking out the roundups in machine-like fashion. But he had no help whatsoever and he wasn't getting any younger. The new owners immediately eliminated practically all part-time help in the sports department, they didn't fill an opening when the second full-time writer got another job, and they reduced the sports editor's job to part-time, practically eliminating any chance of getting any help on the telephones that would be ringing off the hook every night.

Of course, I'd still help out Gobis whenever I could. If I was calling a game at King Philip or Mansfield, or even if I was not calling a game but "scouting" for a future broadcast, I'd often shoot him a few lines about what happened in case he hadn't heard from the coaches. You work with a guy for more than 40 years, what else are you going to do? I just didn't want it known publicly because my relationship with my former employers (of only one month, if you consider the ownership change) had soured under a litany of broken promises made by previous owners.

Gobis is two rows behind me at an NCAA presser in the 1980s.

I'm assuming that finally, it just became too much for Peter, to be expected to work 24-7-365 as if he was 40 years younger. So when he finally decided to leave, he didn't waste any time. He gave two weeks' notice and was gone when those were over. He wanted no fanfare, no parties or celebrations, and he didn't write a farewell column as so many columnists have done -- and indeed, within mere hours (as a photo farther down in this column attests), he was on a beach in Florida with his galpal, working on that George Hamilton-class tan of his.

Of course, Gobis' departure did not prevent people from offering tributes to a man that had become a fixture in local sports over the course of a half-century. Even the newspaper acquiesced and asked former editor Mike Kirby to craft a story commemorating Peter's departure, including quotes from yours truly. Kirb started at The Sun Chronicle as a member of the sports department not long after I came on board, and we worked together for a long time, so our conversation lasted more than an hour -- a lot longer than needed for the quotes he was able use in the story.

We covered a lot of territory in that conversation, including a lot of humorous anecdotes that should probably remain between us and those of us that worked together for so long. As it is, Gobis has gotten his fair share of kudos and remembrances since his retirement was announced, all of them well-deserved. His position has been filled and everyone is moving on, which is what happens in all facets of life. 

Yes, it is unusual that Gobis made it nearly to a half-century at one newspaper. And in conjunction with my 42 years there, I think that constitutes an "era," so it's only fitting that the generations of athletes that grew up with either or both of us at their games should remember us fondly. From all indications, they do indeed.

For my part, I'll salute Peter as I believe he'd want to be saluted. I won't go all gushy on him and say I lost a brother or something similarly over the top.

We were co-workers and friends, but not necessarily bosom buddies. We were two people of radically different backgrounds and personalities. He loved pro wrestling and I despised it. I got him back by making sure the office TV was tuned to "Saved By The Bell" reruns (after Elizabeth Berkley's movie debut in "Showgirls") in the afternoons. But we found enough common ground to work together seamlessly, with precious few disputes or disagreements, because we had the shared goal of wanting to provide the best possible sports coverage to the readers of The Sun Chronicle that we possibly could. And to underscore that, the long-time owners from Wisconsin (United Communications Corp. of Kenosha) let us do our thing without heavy-handed corporate interference. Yes, there were in-house disputes, one of which led to my departure in 1987. But two years later, on the verge of starting a Sunday edition that would become a showcase for the next 28 years, the local leadership figured out that their demanded changes in the sports section were going over like a lead balloon and needed to be changed again. They got the band back together, plucking me away from The Patriot Ledger of Quincy, and we put out one hell of a sports section for the next three decades.

As I told Mike Kirby, I always thought I was a hard worker. I was, but sometimes selectively so when it came to projects I embraced as opposed to those for which I had less enthusiasm. But Gobis put me to shame. He trudged on every day without relenting, cranking out the roundups and the features about individuals from a much wider cross-section of sports than I cared about. We both learned and grew as our responsibilities changed over the years, we both had our strengths and weaknesses, but I can say without fear of contradiction that I never respected anyone more in this business than Peter Gobis, and I hope he feels the same way about me.

That's not to say we didn't have our detractors. We surely did. We'd get angry letters every now and then, usually from individuals that claimed we were deliberately sabotaging their kids' chances for a Division 1 college scholarship because we weren't writing enough about them. In 99.9 percent of those cases, the kids couldn't get out of their own way and were barely deserving of a roster spot. The best of those letters (and later, printed versions of emails) went into a drawer in Peter's desk called the "Idiot File." And every few years or so, we'd break out those letters and re-read them for a good laugh. It's from those that I developed a catch-phrase, "Never underestimate the stupidity of the American reading public." 

Of course, I don't believe that about everyone -- although as the years have passed, and the decline of my industry has created a less-informed public, I might have been on to a growing problem before it really blossomed. Still, I wish I had asked Gobis for the contents of the "Idiot File" before the contents of his desk went into the dumpster. It would have been a good reminder of what obstacles we faced along the way of turning our shared goal of a comprehensive local sports section into reality. And some of those letters were just too damned funny.

Gobis on the beach in Florida.

I'm probably more thankful than Peter that our efforts have been remembered in a few places. We're both members of the Attleboro Area Golf Association Hall of Fame and the Attleboro Area Football Hall of Fame, and I can just see Gobis shrugging his shoulders and waving his hand dismissively at the honors. It's not disrespect. That's just Peter; after-the-fact accolades were just a lot less important to him. So if I suggested that Attleboro High School name its football press box at Tozier-Cassidy Field in Peter's honor, I'd be doing so in the same spirit as Brockton High did when it named the Marciano Stadium press box to honor former Brockton Enterprise sports editor Pete Farley, a champion of high school sports coverage for that paper's circulation area (and the father of my North TV broadcast partner, Glen Farley). But I can just hear Gobis saying, "Ah, just send the check instead."

Such a character, that Gobis. 

As I said, Peter was off like a shot to Florida once the retirement papers were filed. But even while on the beaches, he still found time to dash off un-bylined assessments of the Providence Friars' run in the NCAA men's basketball tournament and send them to the Blue Ribbon Daily on the sly. Old habits die hard. He's back now, but I suspect he will soon find that perfect tanning spot somewhere in the southern latitudes and leave his beloved Rhode Island behind.

But he left his mark on these towns, no doubt about it. Just like Bill Belichick, he replaced a guy named Pete Carroll (no kidding!) and did a better job for a lot longer. That's a heck of a legacy, and I was proud and honored to be along for the ride for most of those years.

 

Laney Clement-Holbrook: An appreciation.

Oliver Ames' girls coach Laney Clement-Holbrook has retired. (Boston Herald photo)

Laney Clement-Holbrook was the coach of the Oliver Ames High School girls' basketball team for 47 years, and while she did not coach a team from the circulation area of my former newspaper, I will always consider her one of the individuals most responsible for prodding me to become an advocate for the equalization of coverage of boys' and girls' high school sports.

Ms. Clement-Holbrook, 68, confirmed reports on Wednesday that she had retired from her position, mere days after leading the Tigers to their third state championship under her leadership. There's no better way to retire than going out on top, and she certainly deserved it.

But why, you ask, do I consider her so instrumental in a facet of my career? Let me tell the story.

Many, many years ago, she called the newspaper one day and gave me an earful about what she believed to be unfair coverage of a state tournament game between her team and one of the teams we covered on a regular basis. And she had every right to make that call.

Memories fade a little after time, but I believe the game in question was either in 1978 or 1979, very early in my career as a full-time writer and editor for The Sun Chronicle. It was, I think, between Oliver Ames and Seekonk, and the writer we sent to the game (I didn't cover it) returned to the office thoroughly disgusted with the low-scoring affair and determined to get that point across in the story he would write about it.

It was my responsibility to edit the copy for publication, and had I approached it with a little more maturity and experience under my belt, I would have located the offending passages and edited them out to present a more benign description of the contest. One of our cardinal rules for most of my tenure there was to be fair and forgiving toward high school athletes because they were not pros and were not to be held to standards and expectations of those playing the sport for money. But because I was young and a little overwhelmed by the task of editing other writers' copy on deadline at the time, I let the story go with only basic grammatical corrections.

The next day, after the newspaper hit the stands, I got the phone call from Laney. She was not pleased. She picked out every single passage that was too damning to the athletes or the sport of girls' basketball in general and repeated them over the phone in an equally damning tone -- one that chillingly reminded me of getting chewed out by Sister Mary Rita during a moment of misbehavior in sixth grade at Dominican Academy in Plainville.

I tried to mount a half-hearted defense of the story, saying that we're paid to accurately reflect the events in the games we cover, not to sugarcoat them. But Laney wasn't buying it. Neither was I after a while, although I was loathe to admit it to her. I re-read the story in print during the course of the phone call and realized that there were several ways that I could have rewritten the story to make it reflect the lesser quality of the game without turning it into a complete damnation of girls' basketball as a whole.

So I just basically shut up and let Laney have her say. When she hung up, I figured she was someone who would never speak to me again -- by her choice. Then maybe an hour later, I got a call from the other coach in that game, Seekonk's Dorene Menezes, who made the same points and expressed the same anger. This time, all I could do was grunt "uh-huh" several times out of a sense of resignation, and then ask contritely at the end if she would still call in her scores after every game.

The scoldings did have a positive effect. It reminded me of another incident earlier in my life when I failed to show the proper respect for a female athlete's desire for equal treatment -- my high school sweetheart, at the time the center of the Mansfield High girls' basketball team, who asked me one day why I never covered any of her games for the weekly Mansfield News. 

"It's only girls' basketball," I said. The look of hurt on her face was something I will never forget, although it still took me another five years or so to actually get the point.

Following those phone calls, I made a point to give girls' sports more of an even break in the pages of The Sun Chronicle. It took a while to get everyone on board with the plan, probably because it was essentially doubling our workload to give the same coverage to both genders, but Peter Gobis and I embarked upon the noble crusade by the end of that decade, maybe seven or eight years after Title IX made it federal law preventing discrimination by schools or colleges against women athletes. And the equalization of coverage is one of the things of which I'm proudest -- even if a lot of knuckle-dragging male sports fans rejected our efforts under the mistaken notion that we were taking something away from our coverage of the boys' teams.

Over the years, Laney Clement-Holbrook noticed. She welcomed Sun Chronicle coverage of Oliver Ames even though it wasn't as regular as it was for the 10 schools we did cover on a regular basis. And along the way, Laney and I became friends, with great mutual respect for what the other had accomplished.

Laney won three state titles for OA and shepherded many great athletes through their careers. But it wasn't all sweetness and light for her there.

Occasionally I would hear stories about parental discontent in the ranks, which is not surprising. There are still a lot of parents out there who don't understand that basketball is a team sport and that it's the job of the coach to find the right personnel combinations and win games. Sports are meritocracies. You earn your playing time by what you do every day in games and practice. If you can't start, it's an athlete's responsibility to work harder and either earn more playing time, or find ways to make their teammates better. There are no guarantees of playing time, nor should there ever be. And it's not the job of Mommy or Daddy to storm into the offices of the athletic director and demand a coach's firing because their little Joanie with suspect skills isn't playing as much as the kid pumping 17 points through the bucket in every game.

But Laney persevered. She won 733 games to set a state record for girls' basketball, and was a pioneer and a tireless advocate for the tenets of Title IX. And how she was able to endure the slings and arrows of 47 seasons at the helm is further testimony to her grit. 

I sent her an email yesterday congratulating her on her retirement and telling her that getting away from the daily stress can be like a Fountain of Youth. But I suspect she will remain close to basketball (as I have). It's in her blood. It's part of her. And everyone that watched what she did or participated in her program is better for it.

An overdue tribute to basketball season.

Alex Salachi, left, and I have logged a lot of hours behind the microphones.

Yes, I know. I’ve been lax in updating this site. And that’s not all.

Over the past five months or so, I’ve let a lot of things slide — not the least of which were this site, and my two podcasts, the audio “The Owner’s Box,” and the video “The Owner’s Box After Dark.” Plans are in place to stick a firecracker up my ass and to re-inspire myself to attend to these creative pursuits.

But I was busy. Honestly I was.

If you don’t believe me, and are not a fan of the Mansfield High, King Philip Regional High or Foxboro High winter sports teams, all you need to do is look at the video archives of Foxboro Cable Access, Mansfield Cable Access or North TV, and you will find me there.

In all, I probably was the play-by-play announcer for roughly 35 games in basketball and hockey for those three schools (and add in a few from Bishop Feehan and North Attleboro) from December through March 8, when my schedule was exhausted after one of the best games I’ve ever seen and called.

No doubt about it, I had a blast this year, my fourth as a high school play-by-play announcer. It reinforced my opinion that this would have been my career calling had I not spent almost 50 years as a sportswriter, and it also made me appreciate even more the people with whom I share the “broadcast booth,” so to speak.

Yes, we have no booths at this level. I get to work in the Macktaz Field press box when I’m doing King Philip football, soccer or field hockey in the fall, but for basketball, we’re either at a table at courtside or as far up in the stands as we can be in other places. And for hockey, it’s wherever we will be the coldest.

No problem. It’s how one learns. No one in either of my professions should ever start in a cushy press box where information is fed to you between the free meals. The best way to learn is either by following teams from field level, keeping one’s own statistics regardless of weather conditions, or being surrounded by cheering or jeering fans, trying to maintain your composure and concentration while surrounded by chaos.

The teams I covered this year achieved varying levels of success. 

At KP, a coaching change for the girls’ basketball team seemed to have a positive result as the Warriors qualified for the tournament on the last day of the regular season and managed to make it two games deep in the new statewide Division 1 tournament.

The boys didn’t fare as well. Early struggles with COVID-19 infections disrupted the starting lineup on a regular basis over the first half of the season, and the chemistry and cohesiveness the Warriors needed never really developed. Still, there were some outstanding individual performers, and enough of them will return next season to give KP reason for optimism in a reconfigured Kelley-Rex Division of the Hockomock League.

I was able to return to Foxboro girls’ basketball telecasts this year after a year’s absence, and I enjoyed watching veteran coach Lisa Downs mold a young team into a winning unit over the course of the season.

Most of the games I did were of the Mansfield boys and girls, two established winning programs that did not disappoint. 

The girls were a little streaky, having to mesh returning veterans with newcomers or returnees taking on new roles, but they still made it to the Division 1 tournament and defeated Worcester’s Doherty High in the first round before losing a nailbiter at Woburn in the Round of 32. With standouts Abby Wager and Kara Santos returning next season, I expect good things in Heather McPherson’s third season as head coach.

The more games, the merrier, I always say.

The boys, meanwhile, made a strong bit to maintain the excellence established over the past two decades under Mike Vaughan’s leadership. Losing Matty Boen’s 27-point average was a hit the team had to absorb, but senior guard Matt Hyland stepped up as a consistent scorer and on-court leader, and Chris Hill, Anthony Sacchetti, Trevor Foley and Andrew Slaney developed the classic Mansfield chemistry over the course of the season.

The Hornets finished 20-5 overall (19-5 for MIAA purposes because their game against Cranston West was considered an “endowment game” for charitable purposes). And for them, this new statewide tournament actually took on the look of one with an entirely new set of postseason opponents.

Dropped to Division 2 because of Mansfield’s shrinking enrollment, the Hornets faced some unfamiliar foes during their tourney quest. First up was Middleboro, which was clearly unaccustomed to playing at the pace the Hornets maintained over their 13-year tenure in Division 1. But Shepherd Hill Regional High of Dudley proved up to the task in the Round of 16, giving the Hornets all they could handle with a strong defensive effort before Mansfield clinched the win on the last possession of the game.

That brought the surprise team of the tournament, seventh-seeded Norwood, to the Albertini Gym in the Round of Eight. As I told anyone that would listen as the tournament began, this was the matchup I wanted to see. The Mustangs are coached by one of the brightest talents in the profession in this state, Kristen McDonnell, who has clearly proved that her knowledge of the game and her motivational skills know no gender boundaries. And of course, Mansfield’s Vaughan has repeatedly proven himself worthy of his status as a state coaches hall of fame member.

The game was a double-overtime classic, 57-51 in Norwood’s favor, with more twists and turns than I could recount here without you having to continue reading this post into next week. Perhaps one of the strangest twists came with 10 seconds remaining in regulation time, when Hyland drove to the basket and beat his defenders to put up what looked like the game-winning shot with 1.8 seconds left — only to have the ball stick between the rim and the backboard, turning it over to Norwood on the alternating possession. That sent the game into its first overtime, and a second was required to finally send the Mustangs to the Final Four.

I spent the entire game standing on the top row of the bleachers behind the scorer’s table, holding on to the auxiliary basket for dear life so I could get the best view I could amid the overflow crowd. That’s not any easy thing for me to do at 68 years of age and with a left knee that would prefer to be immobilized in a prone position. But Alex Salachi and I persevered for the duration — and without patting myself on the back, I can say without hesitation that it was one of the best calls of a game that we have ever done.

Kristen McDonnell broke barriers.

Norwood went on to eliminate Burlington, but then ran into the best team that money can buy in Division 2, Malden Catholic, which pinned a 50-point loss on the Mustangs. I have never been one to want to segregate the Catholic schools of the MIAA into their own tournament, but when your team in Malden has a starting center from Stoughton and a talented guard from Quincy leading the way, one has to wonder how this sort of abusive recruiting is allowed to continue. It’s not like Bishop Feehan, which has a somewhat more contained regional appeal. This level of abuse makes life a lot more difficult for the smaller Catholic schools that follow the rules and should not have to suffer because of the behavior of others.

And that’s why, if I had to pick a state coach of the year, it would be McDonnell. In her third season with the Norwood boys, she motivated a smallish and not overly deep team to take on all comers, maintain their poise and follow their coach’s teachings, and reach a state title game. Norwood has every reason to be proud of its boys’ team, as well as the state-finalist girls coached by former Feehan standout Amy Lepley Quinn.

I did enjoy the statewide tournament, but there must be tweaks made to the rating system to give more weight to a team’s record. One reason for the change to power ratings was because the old “Sullivan Rule” allowed schools to qualify with miserable records if they defeated teams that were in the same tournament division as theirs. The membership wanted losing teams purged from the ledger, but under the power ratings, there were at least three or four teams in each division with sub-.500 records in the top 32. It was even worse in the hockey tournament.

Of course, accommodations were made and all teams with records of .500 or better were allowed to qualify, which resulted in brackets as large as 46 schools in some instances. I’m not opposed to a “the more, the merrier” approach, but these power ratings are too strongly based upon the strength of teams’ schedules and the margin of victory in games, and not enough upon whether you win those games.

Still, for variety’s sake, I’ll give the statewide tourney a B-plus to start.

Alex Salachi, Tom Faria and I man the mics.

Finally, I want to offer a lot of thanks to a lot of people for helping me and my broadcast partners do our jobs.

First, of course, are the bosses — North TV’s Peter Gay, Foxboro Cable Access’ Mike Webber and Mansfield Cable Access’ Jack O’Neill, who put their faith in my talents to deliver a listenable telecast despite my having only a few years of experience at doing it. And the camerapersons — Scott Tooker and Loren Carpenter of North TV, all the volunteers in Foxboro and the incomparable Maureen O’Neill in Mansfield — all delivered an outstanding product to the viewing public.

And of course, the athletic directors and coaches of the teams I covered all deserve thanks for fitting our needs into their very busy schedules. Thanks to you all!

Most of all, I want to thank my broadcast partners for the expertise they shared to make me sound less of an idiot than I really am. I’ve talked to many great big-time broadcasters in my day and every one of them credited their analysts with being the bedrock upon which a strong broadcast was built — and through personal experience, I’ve learned the truth in that statement.

Glen Farley, at left, makes the KP telecasts better.

For King Philip hockey, my old friend Glen Farley serves as my partner. A long-time Brockton Enterprise sportswriter and former Patriots beat scribe, Glen has great timing for when to interject, as well as a love and full understand of hockey and sharper eyes than I, bailing me out on several occasions when I couldn’t follow the puck into the net. We work together just as well on KP football, field hockey, baseball, softball and (new this season) lacrosse, and I’m privileged to have him by my side.

My former co-worker (and boss) at The Sun Chronicle, Mike Kirby, joined me for a Feehan basketball game this year and I really enjoyed having an old friend (and former basketball referee) at the mic. I hope we get a chance to work together more going forward.

Always thankful for Lisa Downs’ help and support.

At Foxboro this year, I had a rotating crew of analysts for the games I did. Mark Davis returned to the table following the graduation of daughter Lizzy in 2020 for two games with me, and it was like there had never been a pause. Kate Hill (freshman Ava’s mom) joined me for one game and senior Hannah Blake’s dad, Tom, joined me for another. All were welcome additions.

And in Mansfield, I had plenty of help.

My partner of three previous seasons, Tom Faria, had other responsibilities this year as a proud grandfather to Samantha Faria, a freshman and starting guard at North Attleboro. But he was able to join me for three games, and I’m very happy he did. I intend to make sure Tom stays involved with his beloved Hornets when there’s no conflict with his family responsibilities.

I was also privileged to join up with Kathy Hill, mom of all those Hill kids and, as Kathy Finn, a 1,900-point scorer at Providence College in her day. Can’t beat her background and her enthusiasm. And when I couldn’t do a Mansfield game because of a schedule conflict, Kathy and Bridgett Casey (now in her 25th year as Bridgewater State’s coach after stellar careers at Oliver Ames and Bryant) filled in admirably.

And of course, my primary partner for KP and Mansfield games is my brother from another mother, former Mansfield star hoopster Alex Salachi, who coached the Mansfield girls briefly before embarking upon a long career as an assistant and head coach at Xaverian Brothers High in Westwood. Alex and I had built-in chemistry because of our long friendship, and his knowledge of the game and coaching strategies has been absolutely invaluable to our telecasts. And the feedback we get proves that. 

Aside from that, it’s also a joy to work with a friend that has been there through thick and thin for almost 60 years. At this stage of our lives, it’s almost the fountain of youth for both of us.

And now, it’s on to lacrosse. Anyone got a rule book I can borrow?