By STEVE KRAUSE
We changed the name this week because, well, it looks like for the first time all season we’re going to have to punt.
We hope to hit a booming spiral to the basketball and hockey players, swimmers, wrestlers, gymnasts, runners, jumpers and throwers, let them field the ball and take the field for a while. The calendar says it’s time for a rest from football.
Not totally. We still have college (more on that later), and of course the pros. And as if right on cue, the Patriots are losing receivers like 6-year-olds lose teeth. First, Rob Gronkowski and now Danny Amendola. Who’s next?
As for our little corner of the world, any time you have two teams in your area make their way down Route 95 to Foxborough (or anywhere, really), you’d have to say that we’ve just completed an eventful football season.
And we certainly have.
There wasn’t much drama in the sense that both Marblehead and St. Mary’s really dominated their respective leagues. Neither of the two games that figured to be difficult for Marblehead turned out to be quite so difficult (though Danvers gave the Magicians a test) and St. Mary’s didn’t have a test until its Division 1 North final against Stoneham, when the Spartans had to make do with their two best players, Abraham Toe and Calvin Johnson, out of the game.
There were some good teams. If I were to rate the best of them, it would go something like this:
Marblehead — I give the Magicians a slight nod over St. Mary’s, but it’s razor-thin. It probably has more to do with the fact Marblehead is a higher-division team, and that the Magicians handled the Division 2 North champion (Beverly) with relative ease.
St. Mary’s — When the Spartans were healthy and on a roll, I’d have loved to have seen them play Marblehead just to settle the argument. It would have been a great game. The teams played different styles. Marblehead threw the ball more, but both those St. Mary’s backs (Johnson and Toe) would be off to the races in the blink of an eye.
Danvers — The Falcons had the best player in the Northeastern Conference in Matt Andreas, and I’m convinced that had the senior running back not broken his leg in the Division 2 North semifinal against North Reading, the Falcons might have won that game and faced Marblehead in the final for the second straight year.
Beverly — In the middle of the season, this might have been different. But the Panthers rallied and showed some real intestinal fortitude in beating back both Tewksbury and Billerica, both from the powerful Middlesex Valley Conference, to win the Division 2 North title.
Gloucester — If Andreas was the best player in the league, Christian Sanfilippo was the best running back. The only problem with Gloucester is that it lost all three games to NEC/North opponents, Beverly, Danvers and Marblehead. It’s difficult to rate the Fishermen any higher than this as a result.
Bishop Fenwick — The Crusaders lost three games, one to Division 3 North champion Triton, one to 3A champion St. Mary’s, and one to Catholic Central League power Archbishop Williams, on a Friday night, in Braintree, after the usual long, traffic-choked bus ride. Fenwick has had one of the great local runs around here in quite a while, and the Crusaders deserve all our respect for it. The regular-season game the Crusaders lost to Williams was its first since 2012.
Lynnfield — the Pioneers won six of their last eight (losing only to St. Mary’s and North Reading — two sectional champions). The coaching job Neal Weidman did was among the best in the area this season.
Revere — As was the job Lou Cicatelli did here. The Patriots won six of their last seven, the only loss coming to Chelmsford in the playoffs. I don’t care who you’re playing. Six out of seven is an accomplishment.
Of the rest, Peabody knocked at the door at 5-6, and that includes a great win over Westford Academy in the 1A playoffs.
We have to give St. John’s Prep an asterisk. I know there are people who will throw the paper all over the room at this, but there isn’t another team on the North Shore that could ever hope to beat the Eagles consistently. Maybe they’d have a bad day at the same time someone else had an exceptional one, but over the course of a season? No.
The distance between those Division 1 Catholic-school teams and everyone else is simply too vast. Even Malden Catholic, whose wins against teams in its own league are few and far between over the last five years, generally does well in its non-league games.
——-
Riddle me this: How can you have a “championship weekend” and then tell the champions they’re not good enough to play for a national championship?
I know, lots of “champions” in that sentence. It was intentional.
There’s no way I think Penn State is a better football team than Ohio State, regardless of who won what. Consider it the same as if one of our NEC teams put it it all together and beat The Prep.
But the idea of having “championship weekend” becomes an obvious money grab worthy of anything Ponzi or Bernie Madoff put together.
I say get rid of it and stop insulting our intelligence. All it does is complicate something that’s already complicated enough.
—-
Ok, everybody. Last call. The padlock’s going on the equipment shed. It’s fourth-and-a football field and the only thing left to do is punt.
See you next fall.
Steve Krause can be reached at [email protected].