"An offshore competition; After year’s hiatus, Island Cup football game is on" by James Sullivan, Globe Correspondent / November 20, 2010
OAK BLUFFS — For year-round residents of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, the earth has been righted on its axis: After a brush with sudden death, the Island Cup football game is alive and well.
Today’s 1 p.m. kickoff on the Vineyarders’ home turf resumes the storied high school matchup, whose cancellation last year rattled the two islands and had both playing the blame game....
For decades, the two football teams had ended their seasons playing each other the weekend before Thanksgiving. At stake: year-round bragging rights. In addition, the treasured local tradition in many cases decided the Mayflower League title and a Super Bowl berth. The rivalry has been featured on national television and in the pages of Sports Illustrated, The New Yorker, and Yankee magazine.
So last year, residents were dumbfounded when Nantucket pulled out of the game. Worse, there was speculation it might be canceled for good.
I'm sorry I don't care, readers.
I'm so sick of football and its over-sized importance in this society.
In recent years, the two schools had been heading in different directions. Coach Donald Herman, a 22-year-veteran on the Vineyard, moved the football team up to the Division 3 Eastern Athletic Conference last year and won his 200th game earlier this year.
Nantucket, on the other hand, dropped down to Division 4A and suffered a winless record two years ago, an anticlimactic finish to coach Vito Capizzo’s legendary 45-year, 293-win career.
Dwindling student participation in football and economic woes contributed to Nantucket’s decision to pull out of last year’s game. The schools have to pay thousands of dollars to charter a special Steamship Authority ferry to make the trip from one island to the other, and the Vineyard was not eager to organize interisland games in other sports, as its counterpart had hoped.
How many teachers did they lay off?
But last summer, after a surprisingly solid first season under new Nantucket head coach John Aloisi, Nantucket athletic director Chris Maury, team MVP in 1970, extended an olive branch to his new counterpart, incoming Martha’s Vineyard athletic director Mark McCarthy....
Neither team can win its league this year. Nantucket lost twice to a tough West Bridgewater team, which is going to the playoffs. But Martha’s Vineyard goes into the final game at 6-3, and Nantucket is 7-3....
--more--"
How you getting to the game?
"Driver in Brady auto accident loses license
The driver accused of running a red light and crashing his minivan into a car driven by New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady has lost his driver’s license for 60 days. Records from the Registry of Motor Vehicles show that Ludgero Rodriques’s license was suspended Oct. 28 because he had seven moving violations or accidents in which he was at least 50 percent at fault over the last three years. Rodrigues can apply for reinstatement on Dec. 27. He must pay a $100 reinstatement fee. Brady was shaken but unhurt in the Sept. 9 accident near his Boston home. Rodrigues’s father, a passenger in his son’s car, was hospitalized with serious injuries. Rodrigues was cited by police for running a red light. (AP)."
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