Archive for January, 2010

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    “It was the single most stressful meet of my coaching career,” was the description Head Coach Conor Cashman gave of last Thursday’s track meet between the Rebels and the Wildcats of Milton.
   Many events coming down to inches and seconds, the battle was hard-fought on both sides. The Wildcats managed to get wins over both the boys and girls teams in the end, however, with the final scores at 50-36 and 56-30 respectively. The capturing of key upset firsts for Milton allowed them to conquer a rolling Rebel team.
   Sophomore Justin Connolly gave the Rebels a great deal of comfort to start the meet, as he won an uncontested first in the mile with a time of 4:53.8. The Milton milers could not keep up with Connolly, but still managed to grab second and third, giving Walpole a slim one-point lead.
   Although Connolly had given the Rebels some momentum, it was soon countered by the 1000-meter race, which took the entire …

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   When the host Walpole High gymnastics team beat the visiting Brookline Warriors at Paradise Gymnastics 126.2-103.2 Thursday night, it did a lot more than just beat another foe.
   With the win the Rebels put themselves on the cusp of doing what many didn’t think was possible when the season began: a winning record.
   The victory was crucial because it lifted Walpole High’s record to 4-3 with two regular season meets left. Among those meets is the upcoming match at Paradise against Weymouth Friday night (7:00pm), a competition that favors the hosts based on comparative scores.
   A victory over the Wildcats would assure the Rebels of at least five wins, pretty remarkable considering they have gone the season with only nine girls, including a track star (Andrea Zoppo) that had switched over just this year, and have been riddled with injuries and illness throughout the season.
   Among those injuries was a foot fracture sustained by the teams’ resident star athlete, junior Captain Amanda Carney. Without Carney, the team would be hard-pressed to win almost any meet, so she has been gutting …

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   The Walpole High wrestling team failed again to upset Natick Saturday but the Rebels still got to make a huge statement.
   In a solid day of wrestling in a quad meet hosted by powerful Needham, the Rebels were able to tie the Carey Division leading Rockets on their own turf, 34-34.
   Added to a 51-24 win over Braintree Tuesday, as well as a 65-9 crushing of Brookline and a hard-fought 44-22 loss to perennial nemesis Natick in the Saturday quad meet, the Rebels were able to raise their dual meet record to 8-4-1 with five matches left.
   The Rebels still have a shot at scoring a major upset when they host Weymouth next Thursday (7:00pm, Feb. 4) at Walpole High. The Wildcats have been in a duel with Needham for the Bay State Carey title, and is one of the state’s top Div. 1 teams this winter.
   Knotting up the Rockets wasn’t too shabby either, however. Needham was just coming off a great performance at the Belmont Tournament, which the Rockets won a second straight year, as well as their …

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Retired Walpole High School Principal Frank Sambuceti will take over as interim principal at the high school after Alan Bernstein leaves on Feb. 5.

Last week, School Superintendent Lincoln Lynch announced Sambuceti, who was Bernstein’s predecessor at Walpole High from 1996 to 2006, would serve as interim for about a month before he leaves due to a previous commitment to the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Current high school Principal Alan Bernstein will be leaving to begin his new job as New England senior education manager for the College Board. Sambuceti begins on Monday, Feb. 8.

 “Dr. Sambuceti has selflessly put his life on hold to assist us during this time of uncertainty. He will assume all duties and authority of said position,” Lynch wrote in an e-mail. “He will provide invaluable leadership during our transition to a permanent appointment for a WHS principal.”

Sambuceti will be paid a daily salary that has yet to be determined, Lynch said.

The superintendent said he considered a handful of candidates, ultimately deciding on the person who would be the “least disruptive” to the high school.

Lynch said he thought about promoting …

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Daniel Villa’s meteoric rise as hometown hero while leading the Walpole football Rebels to an undefeated season en route to a Division 2 Super Bowl win on Dec. 6, 2008 was well chronicled throughout the state. The 2008 Coach of the Year’s astonishing crash to earth later that month, however, made national headlines.

 “Mr. Villa was the toast of his community. The fall from grace here is almost unimaginable and that is something Mr. Villa will have to live with,” said Peter Ball, one of Villa’s attorneys, before he was sentenced in August to two years in jail for three counts each of statutory rape and enticing a minor.

On Christmas Eve 2008, The Walpole Times broke the story that Villa, now 45, resigned his position as head football coach, athletic director and high school teacher hours after a meeting with Superintendent Lincoln Lynch on Dec. 23.

At the time, Lynch said Villa quit after he confronted the eight-year coach with a “credible parent complaint.”

It was later learned that Villa had been carrying on a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old high school freshman that fall who he first …