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.

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 Vineyarders closed out their most successful season to date with a sparkling 5-2 record, beating Nantucket, after beating them soundly the week before on the Vineyard. Gordon Bassett and John Bunker rushed the Nantucket quarterback, Vaughan Machado, in a second period pass play from the Nantucket 30. In a play described by Assistant Coach Francis Pachico as “The most unbelievable play of the year,” Machado threw the ball away, from about his own fifteen. Only he got turned around under pressure, and threw to his own goal line.

The Regional High School football team went down to its fourth defeat of the season Saturday in a game with Nantucket at War Veterans’ Memorial Park in Vineyard Haven. The score was 14 to 8.

 

Coach Dan McCarthy’s boys did not get themselves warmed up until the second half of the game, and by that time, Nantucket had already accumulated two touchdowns, one in the first quarter when Kevin Thurston ran 19 yards to pay dirt, and one in the second quarter when Larry Lema plunged over the Vineyard line from the 4-yard line.

Having lost only one game out of six this season, the Nantucket High School football team came to Veterans Memorial Park Saturday and added still another victory to its record by defeating the Regional High School team 26 to 0. Nantucket’s power and experience accounted for everything, although neither of those qualities made any real showing until the final quarter, when the Nantucketers really got all gears meshing.

 

Up until then, the prospective winners were beset by fumbles and penalties, which nipped all but one scoring threat.

 

As Vineyard coach Don Herman arrived at Nantucket’s football field carrying the Island Cup last Saturday, a couple of fans wearing Nantucket sweatshirts jokingly offered to take it from him. Coach Herman smiled politely, clutched the Cup a little tighter, and kept walking.

 

Nantucket’s team was finally able to wrest the Cup from the coach’s grasp, but it took all 40 minutes of the game to do so.