Page 14 THE EVERETT ADVOCATE – FRiDAy, SEpTEmbER 22, 2023 THE SPORTS WIRE: Taking a Look Around Our Region in Sports; Closeups and Views from the Spyglass Looks like the Crimson Tide Football squad might not be easing up on the gas pedal this year By Steve Freker What do you think Coach T hey did do that; they really played a game in Florida. We are talking about the Catholic Memorial (CM) varsity football team, they of the two consecutive Division 2 State Championships and the formerly state-best 30-game win streak.Well, the win streak disappeared in a cavalcade of mishaps, a 35-2 loss Friday including – apparently – losing three key players in the battle, according to CM Head Coach John DiBiaso Jr., the former Everett High icon football boss in news accounts. So why did they go all the way to Florida for a regular season game? “We needed the game,” Coach “Dibs” told Boston Herald sports scribe Matty Feld, apparently in reference to what we assume is that no one wants to play CM. Or, as the green-bedecked guard at the gate of the Wizard’s digs said in “The Wizard of Oz,” “No Way, No How!” That’s what potential nonleague opponents used to say to Coach Dibs when he tried to schedule non-league games when he formerly coached Everett High from 1992-2018, winning a raucous 12 Super Bowls for the Crimson Tide. Why go and probably get smoked by Everett (now CM) when there are plenty of other teams to play? So, what did Coach Dibs do instead at Everett? He went out and scheduled basically an all-Catholic Conference nonleague slate, drawing massive crowds (and massive gates!) to Everett Memorial Stadium on the regular. He can’t do that anymore, though. He’s in the Catholic Conference. Thus, the trip to play Cardinal Newman in the Palm Beach area of Florida. This week CM is hosting another out-of-state opponent, St. Francis, of Hamburg, N.Y. St. Francis, which wears the same “SF Giants” logo and colors of the NFL team, is off to a rocky start at 0-3. Don’t matter. CM will absolutely stuff this place this weekend – they scheduled the game on Saturday, Sept. 23, at 12:00 noon. Dibs’ record is after a loss? Hmmm. Probably something like 12-0 or 13-0. That’s how few games his teams have lost through the years! Stay awake, CM scoreboard operator, Saturday, this one could get ugly in a hurry. Does the home opening 59-0 win over Somerville mean Everett is not taking its foot off the gas pedal this season? OK. Everett High Football dropped a game to Xaverian in Week One to one of the Division 1 State preseason favorites – Xaverian – but roared back with a 59-0 win over Greater Boston League (GBL) opponent Somerville on Friday in the Crimson Tide’s home opener. A historic win on a couple of fronts: A) It was a win for new Head Coach Justin Flores in his home and GBL opener. B) It was the first time an Everett team had surpassed the 50-point scoring mark versus a GBL opponent since 2013, only the second time since 1992. C) It was the most one-sided GBL win for an Everett team in about 40 years... maybe ever! Not that Everett could not have passed 50 points against a GBL opponent many, many times in the past. Quite frankly, there was a stretch when former Coach John DiBiaso Jr. was Head Coach when the Tide played, basically, “Name Your Score” football with both GBL opponents, and some non-league opponents as well. But Coach DiBiaso chose not to pass into the 50-point scoring range. What happened a lot was a 5 or 6 touchdown lead at halftime and then taking the foot off the gas pedal. Everett would take the air out of the football and let the clock pass on their way to something in the 40s. A 42-0 or 49-0 win were frequent numbers. Not Friday. The same kid who scored Everett’s second touchdown in the first quarThe Andre Chiefs, whose home field is in Maplewood Park in Malden, are the 2023 Intercity League (ICL) Champions. Two Malden residents on the player roster are – second row, from left – Shai Cohen and Andrew Caulfield, the ICL’s leading slugger. (Courtesy ICL) ‘NO WAY, NO HOW!’Frank Morgan played the Green Gate Keeper in the Emerald City of Oz, one of five roles he played in “The Wizard of Oz.” (Courtesy Photo) ter scored the last one... in the fourth quarter. Granted, Everett was ahead 30-0 after the first quarter and 47-0 at halftime and probably could have scored many more points than 59, but it was a big number. The coaches who succeeded DiBiaso, Theluxon Pierre and Rob DiLoreto, also never went into the 50s. The last time Everett scored 50 points or more in a GBL game was on October 5, 2013, when the Tide defeated Cambridge Rindge and Latin, 5130, in Everett, under Coach Dibs. It needed those points, however, to keep the Falcons from getting close. That happened to be Cambridge’s final year in the GBL before heading to the Dual County League. They finished 7-4 that year, their best record in decades. Before that? No times did Coach Dibs’ Everett teams score 50 against a fellow GBL team. Not once, from 19922013. Looks like those days may be over. Former Re v er e H igh quarterback Calvin Boudreau is now helping out the fortunes of the Malden Catholic football team. (Courtesy Photo) Former Revere High 3-sport star Calvin Boudreau gets his feet wet coaching in Catholic Conference This one’s a curveball... even for a guy who used to play Baseball (among other sports) for the RHS Patriots. Former three-sport Revere High standout (Football, Basketball, Baseball) Calvin Boudreau (Class of 2021), who served as an assistant coach on the Patriots football staff under his own former head man Lou Cicatelli last season, is now coaching in the Catholic Conference. Boudreau this year joined the coaching staff of the Malden Catholic Lancers, under Head Coach Joe Gaff, where he assists second-year Offensive Coordinator Paul Norton with offensive planning and quarterback coaching. Norton was OC under Cicatelli at Revere High when the 6-3 Boudreau had several standout seasons as QB for the Patriots. Coach Deion “Prime Time” Sanders has unveiled a new sunglasses line, capitalizing on his national news-making tiff with the Colorado State coach. (Courtesy Photo) Freshman Football looks like it’s extinct in the GBL... and for other leagues as well Freshman football looks like a thing of the past for local teams, especially those in the Greater Boston League. The numbers are just not there, particularly since the emergence of “No Weight Restriction” Pop Warner Football. This year, in particular, it appears that a lot of ninth-graders from GBL communities like Malden, Somerville, Revere and others have migrated to those Pop Warner programs. According to Malden High School football people, that is fine with them, since the Malden “A” Squad now practices at Macdonald Stadium on Pearl Street and has developed a bond between the MHS Tornados and the Pop Warner Cyclones, like “back in the day.” Get it? “Tornados”? “Cyclones (smaller Tornados)”? With all the weather terms rolling SPORTS WIRE | SEE PAGE 15
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