For one day every year, the Island Cup trophy sits on the sidelines of a football field, where its home for the next year will be determined. For the other 364 days, the trophy sits in a case.
Ken Goldberg has called Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School football games for 33 years, and will be in the booth again on Nantucket Saturday for the Island Cup game. His prediction: “When you get to the Nantucket-Vineyard game, forget what the season records are.”
In the final home game of the season, the regional high school team fell 22-8 to Norwell on Friday night. The team is now 3-5 for the season, and with a 10th ranking in the division will not move on to the playoffs.
On Friday Norwell drove in the first touchdown midway through the second quarter, but the Vineyard answered on the next drive with a score of their own. Senior Joe Turney took the handoff from quarterback Tony Breth, rushing six yards for the touchdown. Turney and Breth then teamed up for the two-point conversion, tying the game at 8-8.
After two weeks of frustrating league losses, the Vineyard football team picked up a clutch 18-7 win Friday night in the homecoming match against Coyle and Cassidy. Sophomore Jacob Cardoza scored the winning touchdown with a minute and a half left in the game.
Heartbreak came late for the Vineyard football team on Friday night. After a defensive showcase that led to a scoreless regulation game, the Vineyard fell in triple overtime to visiting Eastern Athletic Conference opponent Bishop Feehan, 9-6. The team is now 1-3.
Football and soccer shined brightly for the Vineyard over the weekend. On the gridiron the Vineyarders picked up their first win of the season Friday night, defeating Randolph 18-6 in an away contest. On Saturday afternoon, both girls’ and boys’ soccer earned 1-0 wins over visiting Whitinsville Christian School. Field hockey fell to visiting Needham 2-0 on Saturday.
Football’s win Friday night was “mainly due to the special teams,” head coach Donald Herman said. “They were the heroes.”
The Vineyarders were on the wrong end of an offensive shootout during Saturday’s home game against the Brighton Bengals, falling 60-41.
The Vineyard jumped on the board first after senior back Joe Turney rushed for a five-yard touchdown, but Brighton answered with a score of its own on a 60 yard pass.
Playing before a large home crowd at the Daniel McCarthy Field, the Vineyarders took a 21-0 loss to visiting Bedford on Saturday afternoon.
The Buccaneers got on the board in the first quarter and kept going, scoring once more in the third before putting away the final touchdown in the fourth with less than two minutes remaining.
Regional high school students start classes later than usual this year, but the fall athletes are already on the fields preparing for the upcoming season. Mornings and evenings bring a flurry of activity to the quiet school campus as football, field hockey, cross country, soccer and golf shake off the summer haze and get down to business.
It’s a time of tryouts, when varsity and junior varsity teams are created, and a time of camaraderie as teammates work through drills and circuits. It is also exhausting.
Regional high school senior Alec Tattersall is one of six amateur athletes featured in the Dec. 10 issue of Sports Illustrated in the magazine’s popular Faces in the Crowd column. Tattersall is the first currently-enrolled Vineyard student to appear in the column. Field hockey alumna Liane Dixon appeared in Faces in the Crowd as a college player at Northeastern.
