Robert Tankard is calling it quits after eight years as head coach of the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School football team.
News of his resignation, following a 27-14 loss to Nantucket Saturday, came as a shock to his players, football fans and the high school athletic department.
Personal victories are what Bob Tankard cares about. He relies on them, he says, because they are messages that validate life and each person’s place on earth. Bob Tankard is the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School football coach.
He’s got the winner’s attitude and it just won’t quit.
When Bob Tankard says “I have a firm belief” or when he says “I mean it, I really mean it,” he clenches black hands into tight fists and squeezes his dark, merry eyes shut. His face forms a solid, peaceful expression.
The record shows that in 1953, an informal team of Vineyarders played football against Nantucket High School, losing 33-20. A rematch the next year yielded a scoreless tie.
Five years later, in 1959, Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School opened its doors, bringing together under one roof the ninth, 10th, 11th and 12th-graders from all six Island towns. This school consolidation enabled the Island to field an interscholastic football team for the first time, and official competition against Nantucket High School began in 1960.
The Island Cup is a treasure shared by two Islands. Though tarnished, occasionally dropped and frequently squeezed, its significance has only increased. For 25 years the cup continues to be photographed, celebrated and coveted by athletes. And tomorrow, when Nantucket meets Martha’s Vineyard on the football gridiron, the cup is up for grabs again.
As a 10-year-old boy in Sicily, Vito Capizzo was a sporting heretic. He never liked soccer, the sports obsession of his birth country. “Never liked it,” said the Nantucket football coach.
And 56 years since his arrival in America, after more than 40 years coaching high school football, Mr. Capizzo has more reason than ever not to like soccer, for it is robbing him of talented athletes and damaging and his reputation as the ”winningest” football coach in Massachusetts.
The Vineyarders chalked up their second win of the gridiron season last Saturday in a clear-cut 36-0 score over Nantucket High School. The regional’s outstanding defensive line, led by co-captain John Bunker, Tony DeBettencourt, Lennie DonAroma and Bob Norton, proved too much for the Nantucket gridders.
Offensively, Vineyarders took most of their yardage through straight drive plays. The Vineyard score consisted of five touchdowns, with Niemiec kicking for two extra points and Manny Nunes rushing for four.
