The debut of the first Vineyard football team, under the guidance of Coaches John Kelley, Daniel McCarthy and Stanley Whitman, will take place tomorrow afternoon on the newly laid-out field at t
They haven’t played together in 50 years, but tonight the members of the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School’s first football team will come together from as far away as Florida and as near as Oak Bluffs to attend a dinner at the high school before the Island Cup game tomorrow.
High school athletic director Mark McCarthy, whose late father was the coach of that team, has organized the event.
The scouting reports are in and Whaler Pride is back. The last Nantucket team the Vineyard faced finished the season 0-10, capped by an embarrassing 43-22 Island Cup thrashing that saw Vineyard coach Don Herman pull most of his starters by halftime.
By JIM HICKEY
Vineyard football fans can dust off their cowbells and Harpoon the Whalers signs, because the Island Cup game is back.
After a brief one-year hiatus, the fabled football game between the Vineyard and Nantucket will return this year, scheduled to be played on the Vineyard the Saturday before Thanksgiving. School and athletic officials from both Islands have been busy in recent weeks hammering out an agreement to bring back the game, which was canceled last season for the first time in nearly 50 years.
There was a noticeable feeling of loss around the Vineyard this week.
“I can’t believe we’re not playing Nantucket this weekend,” one man lamented Monday while waiting for a haircut at Bert’s barber shop in Vineyard Haven. “What is the world coming to?”
For the first time in nearly 50 years, Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard will not play the Island Cup football game this weekend, one of the most celebrated and storied traditions for both Islands that was cancelled this year for financial reasons.
The Island Cup, the storied inter-Island battle between the Vineyard and Nantucket high school football teams that comes around every November, will have a markedly different feel this year. Nantucket coach Vito Capizzo, who is as storied as the rivalry, announced this week he is retiring after 45 years.
The Vineyard high school football team may have suffered a disappointing finish to the season — losing 40-19 to Amesbury in the Division 3A state championship game — but there has been much to be positive about in recent weeks as the postseason awards continued to pile up.
