This is March.
The month of madness has officially commenced in our Recorder ‘Greatest team’ bracket. Each day this week, we’ll break down one of the four regions with opening round games, ultimately chopping the field down to the Round of 32 by the weekend.
To begin, we’re going to analyze the Vi Goodnow Region, named for the Frontier coach who set just about every record in the books during her 40-plus years in South Deerfield.
Top-seeded 1942 Turners Falls baseball, the overall No. 1 seed in the entire 64-team field, opened with a convincing victory. The Powertown Nine did not need its usual dose of late-game heroics to seal the deal in its first-round contest. Sixteenth-seeded 1994 Athol boys soccer, which reached the WMass title game that year but fell to Wahconah, 4-1, fell behind early and could not recover. As a result, Turners marched on, into the Round of 32 where it continues to be a team no one wants to see on the bracket. Think 2012 Kentucky basketball juggernaut-level here.
The rest of the opening round games in the Vi Goodnow Region played out as follows:
No. 9 Greenfield Cross Country (1964) def. No. 8 Mahar football (2003)
A historic season, a historic team. The Greenfield cross country team took home an impressive state title in 1964, one of the crown jewels of the Green Wave program in its history.
The championship pedigree from that squad propelled it through to the Round of 32, as Greenfield edged Super Bowl-winning Mahar in a slight upset. Scott Woodward led his Senators back from an early deficit, only to watch as a hard-charging final kick propelled the Wave — and first-year head coach Pete Conway — to a win and matchup against the Turners baseball team.
No. 4 Greenfield field hockey (1999) def. No. 13 Mahar baseball (1979)
Mahar baseball made an impressive run to the state finals back in 1979.
But the 13th-seeded Senators never played against someone like Kelly Doton.
The Greenfield senior torched the Mahar defense en route to a monster outing. The eventual NCAA Division 1 Player of the Year at Wake Forest, U.S. Olympian and current Boston College head coach kept her team alive in the bracket. The No. 4 Wave are destined to give any team in this field a battle.
No. 5 Frontier boys soccer (2015) def. No. 12 Greenfield ice hockey (1982)
The 5-12 games are known for their upset potential.
But the only local soccer team to ever win a WMass championship had other ideas.
Fifth-seeded 2015 Frontier needed penalties, a familiar refrain, to hold off a game challenge from a very solid 1982 Greenfield ice hockey team that went 16-4-1 under coach Ralph Collins and ultimately fell in an absolute heart-breaking WMass Div. 2 championship game. The Green Wave were edged, 7-6, in double overtime by Ludlow in a game played at the Coliseum in West Springfield. Greenfield got there by beating Amherst, 3-1, and East Longmeadow, 10-2, in other postseason contests.
We’ll be hearing more from Frontier, which beat Palmer 1-0 in PKs in the Division 2 final, in what should be a very interesting Round of 32 game against the Greenfield field hockey.
No. 3 Greenfield baseball (1984) def. No. 14 Frontier field hockey (2004)
Perhaps the best baseball team in Greenfield’s history, the 1984 squad got a surprising challenge but ratcheted up the defensive intensity late to make all the plays and send 2004 Frontier field hockey home.
The third-seeded Green Wave enjoyed a run of success some 25 years ago, when they beat Amherst, 4-1, to win the WMass Div. 2 title before eventually falling to Stoughton, 5-2, in the state final a week later.
That ’84 team was loaded with talent. John Hickey, a complete-game machine on the mound, pitched the Wave through to the Round of 32, with Tom Bresciano and Ralph Jelly smacking key hits.
They managed to survive and advance against a 2004 Frontier field hockey team led by a young Missy Phillips. Then a third-year head coach, Phillips (now Mahar) and the Red Hawks made an impressive run to the state championship game, falling to Canton, 2-1, in overtime. To get there, Frontier edged rival Greenfield, 1-0, in one of the many memorable sectional title games between the two squads.
No. 11 Athol girls basketball (1987) def. No. 6 Greenfield softball (1986)
Our bracket has our first real upset, seeding-wise.
But the 1987 Athol girls basketball team was no Cinderella story. The Red Raiders were a dominant force in the 1980s, and proved their mettle by reaching the MIAA Division 2 state final in the process. That team is one of only two girls sides in the Recorder area to reach a state final in the history of the sport, as the squad was edged, 70-61, by North Attleboro. To get there, they defeated fellow powerhouse Monument Mountain, 67-52, in the WMass title tilt.
Getting past the 1986 Greenfield softball team was no easy feat. The Green Wave were reeling a bit, knocked down to earth by a big season from their 2018 brethren last spring when that Olivia Joy-led team joined them as WMass champions for the first time in 32 years.
No. 7 Athol field hockey (1986) def. No. 10 Mohawk football (1980)
This was a highly-entertaining opening round tilt.
State champion 1986 Athol field hockey relied on its winning pedigree to punch its ticket to the Round of 32.
The Red Raiders were no strangers to close games during a wild 1986 season. The squad edged Smith Academy, 2-1, to win the WMass Div. 2 title, and needed overtime to seal a state championship when it got past Saugus, 3-2.
Buoyed by the area’s leading scorer in Mark Gerry (114 points), 1980 Mohawk football made it a high-scoring affair. But the Warriors couldn’t recover a late on-sides kick, allowing Athol a chance to escape and live to fight another day.
No. 2 Frontier baseball (1978) def. No. 15 Mohawk field hockey (2008)
After a 36-year absence, the 1978 Frontier baseball team brought state championship glory back to the Recorder area.
We thank them for their efforts.
That team’s dominant run to the Division 3 state crown was led by a vaunted offense that scored double-digit runs in a pair of championship-game wins. And that offense was enough to lift them past the 2008 Mohawk field hockey team in our bracket and into the Round of 32.
Frontier beat St. Mary’s, 11-6, to win the WMass Division 3 title, and ramped things up a notch to beat Fitchburg Montachusett Tech, 14-4, in the state final. After the 1942 Turners Falls baseball state title, Frontier’s win broke a three-plus decade drought for baseball championships in Franklin County.
Frontier beat a good Mohawk field hockey team in our bracket. That Lynn Hoeppner-guided club beat Greenfield, 2-1, to win the WMass championship — just the second-ever WMass title for the Warriors (2001). The team blanked Quaboag, 2-0, in the state semifinal, but fell one win shy of the ultimate prize when it dropped a 2-0 decision to Hopkinton in a game played at Worcester State University.