Wicked Local Sports News

From the Wicked Local Walpole website:

 Danny Villa has resigned his positions as Walpole High School head football coach, athletic director and teacher, according to a press release from the office of the superintendent sent out Wednesday evening.

Superintendent Lincoln Lynch said he had received a “credible parent complaint related to the conduct of Mr. Daniel Villa.”

Villa, 44, resigned when faced with those allegations in an early morning meeting Tuesday, according to Lynch.

In an interview Wednesday night, Lynch said he would not be releasing the details of the complaint at this time.

The resignation was effective immediately.

Villa had denied rumors that he had resigned in the Daily News Transcript Tuesday. He told the Transcript that he hopes to be the head coach of the Rebels next year but “you never know what the next day presents itself.”

It now appears he had already resigned at the time he made those statements.

Villa has been the high school’s head football coach for the past eight seasons. The Rebels under Villa completed an undefeated season this year with a Division 2 Super Bowl win on Dec. 6 over Mansfield.

A guard in the National Football League from 1987 to 1998, Villa spent most of his career with the Patriots.

Villa could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

 “The Walpole Public schools will do everything in its power to prevent this matter from interfering with the educational process, including, but not limited to, the school setting and related activities,” wrote Lynch in the release.

Read “Villa out as WHS coach, AD amid allegations” on the Wicked Local Walpole website

From the Wicked Local Walpole website:

   The cozy little gym on Merchants Drive is now known as Paradise Gymnastics Academy, but don’t tell that to high school teams coming in from the Bay State Conference.
   Instead of Paradise, it will be a nightmare for them once more as the Walpole Rebels defend their conference championship and once again seek a berth in the sectional and state meets at the end of the year.
   Last year the Rebels had a season so fantastic that it was the best in the history of the program at Walpole High.
   By the end of the season, every individual team record had fallen thanks to Kady Sullivan, now at Div. 1 Towson University, as did every team record.
   The Rebels finished seventh overall at the sectional championship meet in Hudson last year, with Sullivan winning the vault with a mark of 9.6. This year, the Rebels might be even better.
Last year’s team had a lot of depth with freshman Amanda Carney and junior Kerry Clark, both Level 10 gymnasts, as was Sullivan.
   That allowed Coach Inez May and long-time assistant Coach Wendy Lewis to experiment with their lineup, getting everyone experience, and to assure no faltering en route to an 8-0 record and victory at the conference meet, toppling defending champion Framingham for the second time. The Rebels had earlier invaded the Flyer gym in Framingham and won the dual meet, 136.8 to 135.05.
   Sullivan has moved on, but taking her place is top Level 10 gymnast Kesley Cofsky who, like Sullivan, yearned for a chance to proudly compete for her high school senior year and was able to work out the schedule between her private school and the Rebels.
   Like Sullivan Cofsky got off to a roaring start, stealing Sully’s floor record in her first try with a 9.65 at Paradise December 16.
   The nightmarish part for the rest of the league and probably the state is that Sullivan, an All-Scholastic, was ably replaced with all the rest of the pieces of the puzzle still in place.
Clark was out with a wrist injury to start the season and the Rebels still cruised past Needham in the opener, 129.35 to 107.15. Jess Olson was out with a concussion, Lauren Kemple was benched by illness and a subpar Carney competed shortly after getting over mononucleosis. A healthy team would have been well into the 130’s, and by season’s end, this group should be topping 140, a mark reached by elite teams like state champion Barnstable, which scored 146.1 in the state meet.
   One reason why the team is virtually unstoppable (only Wellesley has a shot this year in the BSC) is that everyone back from last year has improved greatly. Another is the addition of Cofsky. The third is the addition of two talented freshmen in Sydney Gillis and Ashley Canter, both of whom bear watching the next four years.
   In the past a mark in the low sevens would have easily scored for Walpole, now in most events anything below an eight could be close, but not close enough.
   The thing that keeps powers like Barnstable, which scored a 144.6 in last year’s sectional, and Shrewsbury where they are is a slew of top-notch competitors that allow the teams to reload and keep team scores high in each event. Having at least two all-arounds who can score 35 or better in a meet is key and the Rebels have that in Cofsky, Clark and Carney. They also have Kelly Meredith, who scored a 29.7 in the all-around against Needham, and a handful of others with the skills to compete in all four events.
   “This is going to be a fun year,” remarks May. “A lot of girls are doing very well, and there’s a lot of great support and chemistry in this group.”
   The team starts out with its hard-working senior captains, Sue Conroy and Allie Jenks.
Both are responsible leaders, and Conroy brings big game experience and the maturity associated with being part of the sectional champion field hockey team.
    Despite concentrating on field hockey all fall, Conroy returned to up her beam score from 4.0 to 5.25 in the first meet, and should improve drastically in all events she competes. Conroy, however, is not the first Rebel to combine the unusual mix of field hockey and gymnastics. A 1986 grad, Kim Lestan, was second in the state on bars in 1985 for a Walpole team that was in the state meet for the fifth time in six years, as well as a state field hockey champion.
   Jenks also counts beam as her main event and with the non-all-arounds spread out among the four apparatus, there should be no holes to fill once the team regains its collective health.
There are four other seniors, including the two Level 10s. The third senior is diving record holder Jackie Rando, who is strong in both vault and bars, where she scored a personal best 7.85 in last year’s sectionals and started this year off already at 7.6. Another is Meg Crawford, specializing in vault.
   Clark, coming off tendon surgery on her wrist, is in her second year at Level 10 and scores in the high 8’s and 9’s in every event. She scored a 35.2 on all-around back in January.
   Cofsky stepped up and scored a 9.65 on floor to end the Needham meet, breaking the record of 9.5 established by Sullivan on January 31. While Sullivan could leap out of the gym on spring-like legs, giving her unbelievable lift to complete her maneuvers, Cofsky succeeds with a combination of quick fluid moves. Her 9.5 on bars is topped only by Sullivan’s team record of 9.7.
   There are only two juniors, a reason to be thankful for the dynamic frosh that appeared. The first is Morgan Smith, another swim team diver who specializes in floor and vault and the other is Stephanie Habib, an accomplished cheerleader who participated in gymnastics years ago and returned to compete on beam, floor and vault for the Rebels.
   The team has a strong sophomore class, including Carney, Meredith, Olson, Kemple and Jess Byrne.
   Byrne is off to a fine start, upping her beam PR from 7.0 to 7.35 (with no falls) to open the season and Kemple, who also does floor, had a PR of 7.9 on vault last year.
   Meredith had a 7.8 on vault, 7.5 on bars, and 7.6 on floor Dec. 16. When Olsen returns the scores in bars and vault will automatically go up as her PR in both is 8.3.
   Then there’s Carney, whose scores include a 9.5 on vault in the Framingham meet last year.
Added to the mix are Cantor an Gillis, and they shone right away.
   Cantor’s broad smile was irrepressible when she waited to do her floor routine, and she showed a lot of promise with her springs and placement. Her 6.65 score was only a result of starting out with a conservative, simpler routine.
   Gillis, a tall redhead, stepped right into the mix and scored a 7.6 on vault, 7.1 on bars and 6.2 on beam in the opener.
   “Sydney hasn’t competed in a couple of years,” reminds May. “I though she did great, and she can improve on her scores. She was anxiously awaiting to be part of the high school team. She doesn’t even have her routines complete, but she put something quickly together and did it.”
   A conservative estimate of a Rebel team score at full strength would be about a 142, well above the record 140.15 the locals chalked up at least year’s league meet. If they had hit 142 in the sectionals, they would have finished second to state champion Barnstable, and a 142 would have placed them fifth at the state championship.
Welcome to Paradise.
 

Read “Powerful gymnastics team reloaded” on the Wicked Local Walpole website

From the Wicked Local Walpole website:

   There are a lot of teams at Walpole High built for speed this year, and the boys’ hockey team isn’t one of them.
   That doesn’t matter to them, though, as the Rebels return this year bigger, stronger and tougher than they were last winter.
   Oh yes, there’s also some speed, on the swift first line, and also on a defense, backboned by two talented goalies, that could be the teams’ core strength this year.
Throwing everything together, there’s no reason why Walpole High can’t be back in the state tourney this March.
   The only thing that could get in its way is having to play in a very balanced Herget Division where almost anyone can beat anyone else on any given night. That means that the team among defending champion Wellesley, Milton, Norwood, Natick and Walpole that makes the fewest mistakes, has the fewest injuries and discovers the biggest surprises, could win the Bay State Herget title. Either that, or the team with the most luck.
   Walpole has already discovered a couple of major surprises on offense where they need them most. One is Dave Conroy back from a promising freshman campaign much bigger and capable of muscling his way to the crease almost every time out.
   Another is speedy Mike Rockwell, who joins captains Tyler Golden and Tom Tempesta on the first line, which can keep up with most lines in the league.
   With offense again the biggest question mark, it’s nice to see the hard-working forwards striving to give Coach Bill Meehan the answers needed to get a 9-11-2 team over the hump in 2009.
   They should do it this winter, and should be back in postseason play for the first time since the 2005-2006 season when the Rebels were 14-7-3 following an exciting state tourney run.
None of the current players were on that team, but veterans Golden, Tempesta, Brendan Corcoran, Kevin Jelloe, Corey Menno and A. J. Rossi still remember the 2006-2007 season where everything that could go wrong did and the Rebels ended up just 3-16-2.
   That was the first year for Menno and Rossi, who both made a major impact as freshmen. Rossi already had some size at the time but Menno was a smaller ninth-grader with impressive skills. Now Rossi is a rock as a junior and Menno, an all-star last year, has sprouted to a solid six feet.
   The juniors are part of a veteran, five-man rotation on defense that should be one of the best in the Bay State Conference, and will help first-year starting goalies Jack Eckart and Bill Sweeney, who will split the duties, transition the net from Ryan Johnson, who turned in a lot of great performances last year after a speedy recovery from a major knee injury.
   It was defense and goaltending that almost carried the Rebels into the tourney last season. The offense had three games of six or more goals but they were against three “sisters of the poor” as former Medford Coach Charlie Driscoll always likes to say – Dedham, Medfield and Durfee.
   In 11 losses last year the Rebels scored two or fewer goals; in a win at Brookline they scored just one. They were shut out six times over their last 17 games.
   On the other hand they played 11 games in which they surrendered two or fewer, and were on fire in their zone the middle of the year, until junior defenseman Kevin Jelloe was lost for the season.
   In one stretch at midseason, starting with a 3-2 loss to King Philip in the title game of the Milbury Cup and stretching six games until a 5-3 loss to Wellesley, the Rebels had allowed just nine goals, or 1.50 per game.
   Now the Rebels hope to recapture that magic. The defense will actually be stronger than last year and should improve on the 2.41 goals allowed per game.
   Leading the charge is senior captain Pat McClellan, off to a rough start by sustaining an injury that has had him out the first three games. The stay-at-home defender will play the left side opposite Rossi, who could become one of the best two-way blue liners in the league.
   Senior Ran Gulla, another steady stay-at-home defender, will be on the right side opposite Menno, one of the better skating defensemen in the league.
   A healthy Jelloe is slated to play right side opposite junior Mike Semler, who brings a lot of skills up from the jayvees, and Patrick Connolly and Mike Doherty round out a strong defense.
   The unit will front junior Billy Sweeney and senior Jack Eckart. For two years Eckart struggled with consistency, and lost the starting spot last year to Johnson. But hard work made Eckart a new man and when he was in net last year he was brilliant, to the tune of a 0.50 goals against average.
   Sweeney was waiting in the wings as well, and finished with a fine 2.22 GAA following a great freshman season with KP-W youth hockey. With both back-up goalies – who could have started at many other schools – back fronted by a veteran defensive crew, the play in Walpole’s zone will be as steady, and at times spectacular, as it was last winter. Whoever gets hot will get the nod in the tourney push.
   The biggest difference this year will be up front and with scorers up from the jayvees like Mike Rockwell, plus improved veterans and support from the D, the Rebels should increase last year’s average of 2.36 goals per game.
   The defense is so strong that Meehan was able to move O’Coin up to forward, and when the Rebels, already without McClellan, lost Menno a little over halfway through the Natick game, O’Coin bounced back to the blue line and helped preserve a 3-1 win.
   Menno returns as one of last year’s top scorers, with 14 points, and the top goal scorer with eight. His production, along with more from the rest of the defense, would be a help.
The offense almost can’t help but score more, as long as the key players remain healthy, however.
   The top four scorers return from last year’s club, with three of them up front. Speedy Tom Tempesta, one of the captains, tied Menno for the scoring lead with 14 points, seven of which were goals, second on the club. Senior Captain Tyler Golden had four goals and 12 points, and Brendan Corcoran potted six goals with six assists.
   Golden will be centering the first line with Tempesta at right wing, and Mike Rockwell, one of those who can keep up with the pair, will be on left wing.
   Corcoran will center the next line, with junior Tim Bailey on his left and O’Coin on his right, and junior Christian Miller is sandwiched between sophomore left wing Brendan O’Neil and right wings Dan Matthews (junior) and Aaron McCabe (senior) on an exciting third line with a lot of potential.
   Walpole appears ready to field four competitive lines as well, with big wings Nick Rockwell, a senior, on the left, and Dave Conroy skating with fellow sophomore Mike Nadeau, a center.
Tempesta is a returning all-star and Rockwell has shown all sorts of speed and skill with the puck, and their line could potentially be one of the best in the Herget.
   Corcoran, who increased his speed and stamina with an outstanding season of cross-country, will benefit from O’Coin’s passing and the instincts of his linemates.
   “I look forward to watching the growth of the younger players,” offers Meehan. “The strengths of the team will be senior leadership and depth at defense. Also, the team has more potential to light the lamp than we’ve had in a few years.”
   If things go right, the Rebels could be the team that rises to the top in the balanced Bay State Herget.
 

Read “Rebels checking in” on the Wicked Local Walpole website

From the Wicked Local Walpole website:

   If there is one girls’ hockey team capable of sneaking up on the rest of the state this year, it’s Walpole High.
   The locals finished 6-13-1 last year, which certainly isn’t a red flag for the Div. 2 powers that be.
   However the girls were 6-8 to finish the season and of those eight victories the most notable, and most telling, was the last one on the last day.
   February  21, 2008 was the day that the Rebels proved they could play with anyone in the state as they picked off tourney team Duxbury two days after the Dragons had lost in overtime to Notre Dame of Hingham, another state power.
   The Rebels had lost to state champion Hingham, 7-1, in the Cougar Classic Tourney opener but that was more a result of a bunch of sophomores and freshmen being in awe of a team that had one loss and was trampling everyone.
   The Rebels are no longer in awe of anyone. Just hungry. A lot of that had to do with Milton, which beat Walpole just 2-0 both times they met, but getting al the way to the Div. 2 state title game where they lost to Hingham, 6-1.
   In all the Rebels played 14 of their 20 games against tourney teams, lost seven by two or fewer goals and were in all but two of the games at the end.
   Now, with all but one player back they are on the verge of not only making the state tourney for the first time, but also challenging defending champion Milton, Dedham and Wellesley for the Bay State Herget title.
   The only think that kept the Rebels from these goals last year was their goals, or lack of them. The anemic offense scored only 1.45 a game and was shut out eight times, although they had outshot opponents many times.
   Chalk that up to youth, inexperience and playing for a new coach. Now Joe Verderber is back (with Dad Ted again as assistant), the girls are used to him, and the girls are older and more confident. The future is now.
   Despite playing a nucleus of five freshmen and one sophomore, the defense was especially tough and the group is back in front of two solid goalies in senior Captain Sue Cunniff and senior Steph Kelly.
   The two won a league title with the swim team, and between them and the defense, cut goals against from 4.65 to 2.65 last year. Cunniff, spectacular at times, parlayed a 2.20 average into all-star status but Kelly also had her moments, especially a game against Milton.
   The defense has had some turbulence this year, but in the first three games has still been playing well despite personnel losses.
   They are playing without junior star Heather Foley, who dislocated her knee and is out for the year.
   The starting defense still has teeth, however, with second-team all-star Lauren Whitmore on the left and fellow sophomore Hannah Feeley on the right. Whitmore got off to a great start last year when she took the puck rink length through the Braintree defense and scored in a 3-1 loss at the Iorio to the 11-4-5 Wamps.
   The Rebels almost lost talented defender Tori Richardson to infection last year, and despite her life hanging in the balance after a serious condition, she is back to normal.
   “She was down and out last spring, ad then she came back and was back on the ice in July,” marvels Verderber.
   Richardson will be on the right opposite another top-level performer, Vittoria Petrillo. Up from jayvees as the fifth defender is sophomore Jackie Kelliher, but she’s playing like a veteran as well.
   “The good thing about her,” offers Verderber, “is that she knows what she’s supposed to be doing out there.”
   The forwards also know what they’re doing out there, especially junior center Stephanie “Frye-a-lator” Frye. Coming off two years as the team’s leading scorer, last year with seven goals and 10 points in an all-star campaign, she got the season off to a great start with a hat trick in an 11-1 drubbing of Dover-Sherborn at the Iorio Dec. 13. Until now no Rebel has had a hat trick, now there are two as she was joined that night by Julia Tosone.
   Frye has been centering the Yellow Line for sophomore left wing Kelsey Cosby, the hard-nosed hockey version of hoops sister Michaela, and junior right wing Kellie Duffy (4-4-8), fresh off a season as a starter for the sectional champion field hockey team. The Yellow Line will prove to be a misnomer, however, because this could be one of the toughest lines in the state. With Cosby back after a 4-4-8 season, it could also prove to be high-scoring.
   Junior Rachel McMillan started the year centering for White Line wings Tosone (3-6-9) and sophomore Kristen Morrissey, but a fractured tibia that will keep her out about six weeks will keep the stick that produced five goals and eight points on the bench for a while. McMillan was on a tear to start, including six assists in a preseason jamboree.
   The next line features Emily Cronin centering right wing Michelle Lennon and a tag team of Jacey Dold and Jacqui Dolan at left wing. With McMillan out, though, someone will have to step in at center for the White line.
   Of course Verderber could always pull up someone from Matt Haselhurst’s jayvee team. Since the varsity is virtually intact from last year so is the 13-member jayvee squad, which was 13-1-2.
   If they can manage to put the puck in the net more regularly, this could be a title year for the young Rebels.
 

Read “Icewomen cometh” on the Wicked Local Walpole website

From the Wicked Local Walpole website:

   Walpole lost one of the best wrestlers in the history of the program – only the third Rebel to ever place in the New Englands – when Tom Fraser graduated, and also lost the architect of the WHS wrestling revival when Coach Brian Gallagher stepped down after his family grew by one this year.
   Still the rest of the state, especially archrival Natick, which keeps dominating the Bay State Conference and Div. 2 South, better be worried. That’s because the Rebels haven’t lost anyone else and have added a lot to a mix that is capable of replacing Greater Lawrence as the Div. 2 state champion.
   In fact even the one spot where they lost someone – the 160-pound class dominated by Fraser the last couple of years, is in fine fettle as proven by new 160-pounder Chris True. Now back in his more comfortable weight class, “The Truth” is showing this year what a couple of years of practice with someone like Fraser does for one’s own game.
   Also losing Gallagher, who won a slew of state titles in Foxborough before taking over in Walpole, isn’t really losing Gallagher.
   Before his son was born Gal had already unknowingly selected his successor. Bobby Lee, one of Gal’s stars in Foxborough and one of his assistants when coaching the Rebels, applied for the position as soon as Gallagher told him he was stepping down, and after reviewing the candidates Athletic Director Danny Villa made a strong selection welcomed by both the team and the boosters.
   “He called me and said ‘I wasn’t going to be able to do it,’ and I said okay and applied the next day,” explains Lee, who teaches Special Education and also coaches lacrosse in Foxborough.
“I was glad he went for it, he’s been a great assistant and should have no problem keeping going what we started in Walpole,” offers Gallagher, who says he will be dropping in from time to time to spectate. “I coached him in school and knew what I was getting when I made him an assistant. He knows what it takes to win.”
   “Gal was my Coach in Foxborough,” says Lee. “I wrestled for him and graduated in 2000. I was on the team from eighth grade through my senior year and was captain my senior year. We were state champs four of those years.”
   Lee started out wrestling at 103, the lightest class, in eighth grade. By the time he was a senior he was at 140, having wrestled at two other weights in between.
   Besides knowing how to win Lee has something else on his side as the Rebels chase after this year’s Div. 2 state title. Twice Gallagher stepped down from coaching duties at Foxborough High, and both times the Warriors came back the next year to win the state title.
   Not only is the prolific coach a sort of good luck charm for his predecessors, but he also obviously leaves the cupboard full.
   Walpole is hoping the third time’s a charm as well as a very large group, with talent up and down the line-up, chases first the Bay State Conference title, and then the Bay State title.
Fielding a team that was half freshmen, the Rebels were only out of four dual matches last year – the regular season bouts with Reading, Carey power Framingham and Natick, and the sectional showdown with the Red and Blue.
   The rapidly improving Rebels roared back to shock Reading, 31-30, in the sectional semi, setting up a second showdown with the Red and Blue that resulted in Natick eliminating the locals, 50-15.
   Natick, Reading and everyone else has lost key seniors, however, and the Rebels return all but one. They placed eight in the individual sectionals, finishing third behind Natick and Reading. Ironically the football team, of which many are a part of, traveled the same course.
The biggest question right now is if the grid men can overcome their on-field maladies in time to solidify the line-up against a tough league.
   Heavyweight claimed the first casualty as All-Scholastic gridder Adam Riegel, the incumbent, recovers from a bad shoulder. The senior, a smart mat man, was up and coming last year, and pinned two in the sectionals. Freshman Ken Woods took over and showed a lot of potential in the first meet, but Riegel expects to return soon.
   Senior Captain Dave Wyman is back at 215 with Ryan Wasilunas, brother of former wrestlers John and Pat, as a competitive back-up. Wyman, chiseled now from a great grid season, is capable of becoming another state level competitor and was fifth in the sectional.
   One of the best battles for supremacy on the team is at 189, where sophomore Justin Ellis and John McKeon engaged in a wrestle-off so equal it’s still hard to say which is better.
   Senior Captain Mark Ellis, who emerged last year with a 20-13 slate is back at 171, with senior John Farrell right behind. Ellis kept 160 going strong last year when Fraser started out injured and after growing has solidified the 171 slot where True was last winter.
   Now at his natural weight True is picking up where he left off last year, when he finished fifth at the sectionals after arriving unseeded. Another talented 160-pounder, senior Evan Locke, has pushed him hard, however.
   Senior Captain Ryan Murphy is back at 152 where he uses his 6-foot-2 frame to wrap up opponents and break down leverage.
   Sophomore John White moves up a class to 145 after a fantastic rookie season that saw him just missing fifth at the sectionals via a late pin. Senior Dave Nostro, another Rebel to keep a keen eye on, is up five pounds to 140 after being unstoppable at 135 in the sectionals until running into Natick superstar Todd Arthur, the eventual champion. The class is one of Walpole’s strongest, as Sean Coyne has also shown he’s capable of winning a lot.
   Sophomore Kevin Hickey has firmly entrenched himself at 135 as Nostro slides up, and both junior John Cleveland and senior Justin Flynn, sixth last year at 119, vie at 130. Cleveland finished sixth at the sectionals with two pins.
   The incumbent superstar is now Steve Shevory, who tore apart 125 as a junior last winter. Long overlooked, he peaked at the sectionals when he came from nowhere, unranked, to dominate the weight and win the title.
   Shevory leads another talented group of lower weight wrestlers that includes 119-pounder Paul Cunniff, 112-pounder Dan Palmer and 103-pounder Tommy Lee.
   Cunniff and Palmer are returned starters, and each peaked at the sectionals with Cunniff winning one at 103 by tech fall and two by pin, and Palmer taking fifth.
   Freshman Lee takes over at 103, where he started the season Saturday with two pins. There are around 50 guys on the squad so starters will be pushed and have good competition in practice, something a reloaded team thinking about the next step always needs.
   Lee also picked up former Foxborough wrestler Devin Pacilli as an assistant and retained Chris Ellis, older brother of Mark and Justin and former Rebel mat man, to assist with the heavyweights.
   The competition will be tough, especially non-league foes like Chelmsford, Reading and North Quincy, but the future is now for these Rebels so don’t count them out of being in the elite mix.
   In any case, mark these dates on the calendar: Jan. 24, Feb. 17, Feb. 24 and March 3. The first date is the league showdown at Natick High, the next the sectional championship, the third the divisional semifinals and the last the divisional state finals. With any luck the Rebels might also wrestle on the weekend of March 6 and 7. That’s the New Englands.
 

Read “Blue and Orange could replace Blue and Red” on the Wicked Local Walpole website