Varsity Insider

Some people think it is a sad state of the affairs for MMU to willingly make money off the misfortune of one Otter Valley player on a single play.  This is not the NFL.

In case you missed it, here is the situation: MMU junior Jeff Sutherland picked up the football after Otter Valley’s premature celebration and ran in the winning touchdown with no time left as the Cougars stunned the Otters, 20-16, in a Division II game Sept. 26 to end a wild game.

Otter Valley took a 16-14 lead with 16 seconds left on a 20-yard field goal. MMU got off two offensive plays before it attempted a 46-yard field goal with 1.3 seconds left.

The kick fell short and an Otter Valley player fielded the ball near the goal line. He ran to the 11, where he spiked the ball to celebrate the apparent win. Sutherland scooped up the ball at the 8 and ran into the end zone. Otter Valley contended the ball was dead because it was fielded in the end zone. The referees ruled the ball was live and scored the play a touchdown because they thought the ball was caught by OV out of the end zone.

The Otter Valley player, family and team took a lot of heat for the play. It came not only from people in his community and school, but from all across the country. There were more than one million hits on YouTube in the first week of posting a television sportscast that included his name.

Just when it looked like the issue had died down, a new wave of attention happened with a contest to determine the best or worst play in high school football. The 50-second video won both the regional award and is now the overall winner in the country.

As one Northern Vermont football fan noted to in an e-mail to me: “I was utterly disgusted by MMU’s video contest winning, and appalled at their athletic department for allowing it to be submitted. Yes, it was very quick thinking on the part of the MMU player – but is anyone thinking about how devastating that whole experience was for the Otter Valley player?”

MMU athletic director Brian Cain said the video was submitted by a parent – not the school — to a national contest.

From all we have heard, the Otter Valley student-athlete is a quality kid. It looks like he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. What would have happened had he taken a few more steps and had gone out of bounds, or that when he spiked it, the ball bounced out of bounds? There was a second Otter Valley player also back for the kick. What would have happened had he caught the ball? The questions are endless.

MMU, which has been without a home field, plans to use the money toward building its first permanent football field. The school needs to buy chains and yard markers, while also building a press box and a grandstand.

The planned use of the money is just one of many ironies in this story. The play came as Otter Valley was celebrating opening day of its new football facility, Markowski Field.

Wouldn’t it be a touch of class if MMU provide a share of the prize money to Otter Valley?

Half might be nice, but certainly $1,000 or $2,000 wouldn’t be out of line.

After all, isn’t it about sportsmanship?

What do you think?

There is a lot of talk about high school basketball in the Northeast Kingdom this year.

Some of the biggest chats have been about the 3-pointers that were sailing when Lake Region beat North Country, 78-69, in Orleans on Monday.

The teams connected on 23 shots from beyond the arc for 69 points – almost half of the total points in the game. Lake Region had 13 as a team with Emmitt Simpson hitting seven and Richie Hackett bombing another five. It must have been a fun game to watch.

The Lake Region girls basketball team has a dynamic back court tandem with senior Abbey Lalime, who has accepted a scholarship to play for the University of Vermont next year, and sophomore Kylie Atwood.

The Rangers, the reigning D-III champs, put a scare into Division I Burlington, 46-42, last week, and are looking to repeat.  Their bench has been shortened by injuries, including the loss of Hannah Kinsey for the season with a torn ACL during soccer.

The Rangers still have a few players in the wings by the looks of their junior varsity. Lake Region has a 45-game winning streak, including back-to-back perfect 19-0 seasons and four wins this year. The Rangers, coached by Joe Houston, who also serves as athletic director at Craftsbury, came back from an eight-point deficit to beat Burlington 29-28 in the final seconds.

Mike Wood probably wishes he got paid for mileage in addition to the stipend he gets as head coach for the Rutland High boys basketball team.

His Raiders are taking frequent bus trips north early this season.  Rutland posted a win Monday at Rice Memorial in South Burlington.

Wood and company will be at the North-South Challenge on Friday night and Saturday afternoon at Burlington High and also includes Essex.

Rutland also is scheduled to be part of the Spaulding Holiday Tournament in Barre on both Dec. 17 and Dec. 19.  That also features Mount Mansfield Union.

And to wrap up his pre-Christmas travels, Wood will take his Raiders to St. Johnsbury on Dec. 23.   The final 12 games are against teams in the Marble Valley League, which covers the four most southern counties.

While chatting before the Rice game, Wood said he is trying to get his team tournament-ready and that means taking on some of the tougher teams. 

“We are on the road a lot to get those games,” said Wood about the northern trips.

Woods directed the Raiders to the semifinals last year and has most of his team back this year.  The biggest exception is the loss of Free Press second team all-state Mark Comstock to graduation.

 The Vermont Basketball Coaches Association ranked Rutland second in the pre-season poll, so things look good for at least one and maybe two more trips north for the Division I tournament in Burlington.

Maggie DiMasi, the youngest member of one of Vermont’s best-known hockey families, was one of the most recruited high school  athletes in Vermont history.

DiMasi made it official this week when she accepted a full scholarship to play for Northeastern University next year.  Northeastern is ranked No. 9 in the nation currently. 

DiMasi, a defenseman,  amassed about 160 points in goals and assists over her four year high school career — two years at Burlington, one at Lawrence (Mass.) Academy and one at Northwood Prep in Lake Placid, N.Y., where two of her brothers were student-athletes.

It was a tough decision for DiMasi, the 2007 Burlington Free Press “Miss Hockey,” symbolic of the best player in Vermont.  DiMasi had been contacted by just about every one of the three dozen D-I hockey schools.   Northeastern appears to be a perfect fit, she said. 

Ice hockey is the sport of choice at the DiMasi home, which often had a flooded rink in the backyard.  She is the daughter of Nancy and Lou DiMasi, who coached the St. Michael’s College men’s team for 25 years. Her oldest brother, Lou, is a former Free Press “Mr. Hockey” who went on to be a two-time All-American at Norwich University and played professionally in Europe. A second brother, Andy, played at St. Michael’s for four years, while her youngest brother, Ronny, was all-state at BHS and is on the St. Michael’s team this year. Her only sister, Molly, a four-time high school all-state selection, is playing at St. Michael’s as a senior. All five have the distinction of playing in the Vermont-New Hampshire Make-A-Wish All-Star Classic.

Football fans are still talking about the four safeties that Mount Anthony scored in the 36-0 win over Burlington High at Buck Hard Field on Friday night.

“How is it possible?” or “How did they do it?” was the most asked question wherever I’ve gone over the last couple of days.

 What is interesting is that Mount Anthony scored each in a different way.

The first safety was a backwards toss by the quarterback that went out of the end zone in the second period. The second happened after an ill advised attempt by BHS in the third quarter to run an interception out of the end zone ended up near the goal line.   A few plays later Mount Anthony tackled a BHS runner in the end zone. The third safety happened when the ball being snapped over the BHS punter and swatted out of the back of the end zone. The last safety happened when the BHS punter dropped the snap and there was a hog pile in the end zone.

The coaches, referees, sportswriters, sportscasters and fans that have called, written or that I have come across all say they are hard pressed to even think of anything close to what everyone concedes must be a state record.

It’s hard to say definitively because of the lack of a central repository for high school football records. Yet it does seem like a pretty good guess.

 Anybody know know anything even close or more?

Mount St. Joseph Academy will forfeit a Division I game this Saturday against Mount Anthony Union due to suspensions for unspecified misconduct by players, The Burlington Free Press has learned.

A statement from MSJ this afternoon said, “The team was in violation of fundamental Christian principles.”   MSJ Principal Paolo Zancanaro said the team will participate in community service and must issue an apology to the MSJ community.

“It’s cancelled. I learned this morning,” Mount Anthony Athletic Director Tim Brown said about a phone call he received from Marty McDonough, the MSJ athletic director. 

 The forfeit will go down as a win for the Patriots and a loss for MSJ, said Mike O’Day of the Vermont Interscholastic Football League.

MSJ is  one of   two Roman Catholic high schools in Vermont and like many public high schools is trying to deal with declining enrollments.   The Mounties have struggled to field a football team the past two seasons.

Second year Burlington High football coach Brennan Carney has the Seahorses off to a 3-1 start this year after taking over a struggling program in 2008 that went winless.

Carney, a former three-sport standout at South Burlington, now has to prepare for Friday night when he hosts his old coach Joe McDonald. McDonald was in the top row of the Rice grandstand scouting on Saturday in the 21-0 win over the Green Knights.

Carney, who turned a winless Spaulding program in his first season into state champions the following year, said  BHS needs to take its next step after beating an inspired Rice squad.

“Other guys have to step up. It just can’t be Cooper (Wile) all the time. Andrew (Cane) played really well for us. Andrew is a good player. He is playing great and doing a lot of different things for us. We have a lot of guys that have to play a little better, a little crisper and we’ll be a better team,” said Carney after the win at Rice.

Kick-off at the D.G. Weaver Athletic Complex has been bumped to 7:30 Friday night because BHS is hosting Rutland in boys soccer at 4 p.m. on the turf field.

What are the odds that both goals by the same team in a soccer game would be scored at the same precise second of each half in a game?

Get you calculator out. It happened over the weekend in the Milton 2-0 win over the Mount Abraham boys.

Drew Marquis scored the game winner with 23:38 left in the first half.

Teammate Maxx Curtiss scored the insurance goal with 23:38 left in the second half.

Both with 12:38 left on the clock?

“It was kind of funny when you looked at the score sheet. There was no mistake,” said veteran Milton coach Glen Button Jr.  He said he couldn’t recall it ever happening at any level of soccer.

Junior forward Mike Clayton, who stayed on the sidelines last year with a broken femur, is making up for lost time for the undefeated Champlain Valley Union soccer team this fall.

 Clayton tallied two goals in the opening 12 minutes today in a 4-0 win over defending state champion Burlington as part of the Homecoming Weekend celebration.  He later added an assist for CVU, which improved to 5-0.

 “He was at every single practice last year,”  Redhawks coach T.J. Mead said about the dedicated student of the game.

 Clayton has scored eight goals and three assists in five games this year as the Redhawks leading scorer. He has at least one goal in each game with his best effort against Mount Abraham when he scored three goals and one assist.