By its very nature, the month of March lends itself to creation of the almighty bracket.
March Madness sets the tone, bracketing 68 college basketball teams into one field, with every team theoretically given a chance to cut down the nets and take home a national championship.
But society doesn’t stop there. Want to see which fast food chain has the best burgers? Throw it in a bracket. Which Game of Thrones character is your favorite? Bracket it. Which town’s potholes are the most lethal? You guessed it.
Here at The Recorder, we’ve got better uses for our bracketing time. In fact, we’ve decided to take on an ambitious endeavor throughout the month of March. Indulge us, if you will.
Sixty-four high school teams. All local. From throughout history. Line ’em up and let’s debate.
We’ve created our very own bracket, stacking up the best teams in Franklin County history regardless of sport. It’s an impossible debate — apples and oranges. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t going to take on the challenge.
Have you ever wondered how the Adam Harrington-led Pioneer teams would fare against Kelly Doton’s Greenfield field hockey team? Would Scott Woodward and the Mahar football teams show well against Vi Goodnow’s Frontier field hockey teams from the 1970s? OK, maybe you weren’t thinking that. But we were.
So how are we going to handle this? A week of research — digging through old records, articles, files, championship photos — along with discussions with local historians, former writers, etc. has led to a non-scientific field of teams that we think represents the history of the area well. There’s a bias toward recent teams, no doubt. Information is much easier to find for the past 30-40 years than it is from 100 years ago. We tried to spread it around the various sports, though there are some that Franklin County excels in like field hockey, softball and volleyball that are well-represented. For teams like Turners Falls softball and Frontier volleyball that have won a plethora of state championships, we tried to highlight the best of the best as much as possible. You could put every Turners softball state champion in the field, but we tried to balance it between the sports.
We’re publishing our initial bracket today, with the first round of matchups scheduled to take place throughout next week in the pages of the Recorder. Each day during the week, we’ll break down a region of the bracket (named after a Hall of Fame coach) until we’re down to 32 teams by the end of next week. From there, we’ll continue on until only one team is left standing in the end. The Recorder’s Greatest Team, or as close as we can get to that distinction.
Is your team on the list? Should it have been? We’d love to hear from you. Drop us an email at sports@recorder.com and let us know who we forget, or why your team deserved a better seed. We’re taking any and all input from readers. Let us know which teams should be marching on, which teams are worthy of pulling an upset. We’re looking to make this a fun, interactive feature as the rest of the world also moves through March Madness.
To begin with, our four No. 1 teams in the field offer a diverse look into the history of high school athletics in the Recorder area.
The 1942 Turners Falls baseball team earned the No. 1 overall seed in the Vi Goodnow Region (for the Frontier coach its gymnasium is named after), and open with a first-round game against a 16th-seeded 1994 Athol boys soccer squad. The Powertown captured a 5-4 win over Arlington High School on June 20, 1942, at Fenway Park in Boston to win the MIAA Division 1 state title. Harvey “Henic” Welcome smacked a game-winning triple in the ninth inning to lift Turners, which trailed 4-0 before rallying in the waning frames, to the area’s first baseball state title. The team went 9-0 in the regular season, which was shortened due to World War II. After claiming the championship, the Powertown Nine returned home via train at 3 a.m. Fire trucks were there to greet the squad, pick them up at the Greenfield train station, and drove them home to a hero’s welcome.
The 1996 Pioneer boys basketball team also captured a No. 1 seed in our bracket as the top-seeded side in the Tom Suchanek Region, named for Greenfield’s Hall of Fame baseball skipper. The Panthers went a perfect 25-0, taking home just the second-ever area state championship when they beat Winchester, 75-68, in the Division 3 final. Adam Harrington’s sophomore season with the program featured a loaded, veteran-laced squad. Pioneer won a defensive battle in the WMass title game, 37-24, over Frontier, and kept on rolling to the school’s first state crown. Pioneer repeated as state champs the next year, going 25-0 for the second straight season en route to another Div. 3 crown. That ’97 team is also held in high regard, and checks into our bracket as a No. 2 seed.
The Turners Falls softball program has been a juggernaut for two decades now, and the squad was represented in our bracket on multiple occasions. The 2005 team is our third No. 1 in the field, the top-seeded side in the Gary Mullins Region, appropriately named after the team’s long-time coach. That team also went 25-0, rolling through the MIAA Div. 2 bracket to beat Amesbury, 2-0, in the state title game.
That victory marked the end for a senior class that had quite the track record. The contingent of Kellie Brown, Katie Kidder, Sara Girard, Shelby Landeck, Jill Sicard, Jaclyn Bastarache and Marissa Sicley posted an 84-11 mark in four years, winning three WMass titles and state crowns in 2004 and 2005. Junior pitcher Julie Girard did the job in the circle, putting together one of the best seasons in program history.
“I think that softball team out there may be the best Western Mass. team we’ve had — in all divisions,” Turners coach Gary Mullins lauded after beating Amesbury.
Rounding out our No. 1 seeds is the 2010 Frontier volleyball team, seeded first in the Joe Chadwick Region, named for the long-time Mohawk track and cross country coach. Dominance? Let’s talk about dominance. The Red Hawks blasted Joseph Case High School, 25-15, 25-12, 25-11, to win the MIAA Div. 3 title. That capped a spectacular run for Frontier, which completed the area’s first 26-0 season to claim the program’s third state title in six seasons. It was just the start for the program, as it went on to win the next five state crowns in an unprecedented run of six straight titles.
That 2010 team was hard to touch. The Red Hawks dominated the postseason run, winning all 18 sets while outscoring their opponents by an absurd 450-201 margin.