As the summer bustle begins to fade and the sun sinks earlier in the afternoon, local athletes across the Island have been lacing up cleats, shaving handicaps, and gritting their teeth through grueling hell weeks ahead of the official start of the fall sport season.
For the Martha’s Vineyard football team, reigning league champs for the last two years and who were centimeters away from winning a monumental rivalry game at Fenway Park, their goal this season as always is to play at Gillette Stadium in December for the MIAA State Championship, take another Cape and Islands league title, bring the Island Cup back to Martha’s Vineyard, and improve overall as a team.
The team kicks off the season tomorrow against a formidable Mashpee team.
The Vineyarders are a young squad this year, with 15 freshmen joining the program. But so far in preseason action, the youngsters have shown grit, displayed when the team scrimmaged against South Shore Technical High School and Monomoy Regional High School in preseason action.
In the game against Monomoy, head coach Tony Mottola said the team did win on the scoreboard but that wasn’t their focus — they were getting the fundamentals in check and challenging the young Vineyard squad.
“We challenged them to be more physical, we challenged them to do some certain things that we didn’t do well a week earlier and they responded. So we built off of some of that momentum,” said head coach Tony Mottola in an interview with the Times. “We had a bi-week last week. So we’re just getting ready for Mashpee on Friday.”
“They are really talented,” Assistant coach Elijah Larue said of the young team following the preseason action. “In the seven years I’ve been coaching, this is the most prepared and high school-ready class I have seen.”
As for the team’s strengths, senior quarterback William Nicholson (No. 10) has made “leaps and bounds” in his play style over the summer, attending camps and learning new plays early.
“He puts the ball where he wants to put it, and he’s a football guru,” said Larue. “He knows the playbook inside and out.”
Head coach Mottola also said fans should keep an eye on the team’s offensive and defensive lines, and although they are young, they are a tight-knit group, with many having played together since fifth grade in junior high football.
“Our offense and defensive lines are really, really strong this year,” said Mottola. “We got a lot of kids on both sides of the ball that have played a lot of football. We’re pretty athletic on the offense and defensive lines and they’ve really bonded. We have a couple of young kids on the line that the older kids have kind of taken under their wings and have kind of taught them and shown them what to do and how we do things.”
The Vineyarders have two, non-league games scheduled before league play kicks off. They face off against a historically tough team in Mashpee High School on Sept. 12 at 6 pm in Mashpee, then come back to McCarthy Stadium on Sept. 16 against Sharon High School at 1:30 pm.
For head coach Mottola, they put Mashpee — who have annually competed in the state championships — on the schedule at the beginning of the season to test the Vineyarders, and see where they need to grow as a program.
“They are the program that we are trying to work towards and to really become that type of consistency,” said Mottola. “They’ve got a lot of good players and they’re really, really well coached. So for us to go there and have the opportunity to play a team of that caliber, we’re excited for it.”
As for the big games on the schedule for the Vineyarders, coach Mottola said of course the Nantucket Whalers on Nov. 1, but for the young and developing Vineyard program, every game is important.
“Every game that we play is a big match up, there’s nothing on our schedule that we circle and are like ‘that’s a win,’ we’re just not that type of a program yet, so we just feel like we have to bring our A game every single week.”.”
The Vineyard football team’s first league game is scheduled for Sept. 26 against Cape Cod Regional Technical High School, away at 6 pm.
“This is a big year for our program. We don’t have an easy game, we have to kind of run the gauntlet when you’re playing teams like Sandwich, and Falmouth, and you’re playing Mashpee, and Sharon, and so we got some tough games on our schedule, but we just feel like the program’s heading in a great direction. It’s healthy, kids are really working hard and coming together and doing a lot of nice things.”