Many Marlboro High football fans remember the Panthers’ two Central Massachusetts Division I Super Bowl appearances, including one victory, under coach Huck Hannigan in 1979 and ’80.
What people don’t recall nearly as much are the teams under Hannigan who got the turnaround from bottom feeders to contenders started. I remember it because I was in the Class of 1978 and many of my classmates were on the football team and part of the beginning of that resurgence.
And this story is about them, with classmate Donald Hillegass as the lens through which we take a look back. If you look up the MHS athletic Hall of Fame members, Hillegass is listed there. He was a football running back and defensive back and a baseball center fielder.
There are three moments I distinctly recall being around Hillegass in high school. One has to do with his buddy, who I think he ended up getting Class Inseparable superlative with, David Chatalian. It was in the old MHS (Thresher Drive) locker room. They were joking on and on about various subjects before heading from gym class to another class. Surely, they didn’t have Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis comic ability, but I do recall chuckling to myself while listening to their banter.
The second moment was when I was playing second base in a JV baseball practice and someone hit a shot to the left-center gap that I did not think anyone in the outfield could get to. Sure enough, there was Hillegass covering the wide span of real estate and tracking it down.
Another moment was in gym class as upperclassmen in the new (Bolton St. and Poirier and LaFreniere Drives) school. It was a co-ed class with plenty of people with ability and non-ability lining up for a softball game. Hillegass stepped up to the plate, hit what would have been a single in any other baseball or softball world, and without even bothering to stop at first, second or third base, he sprinted for home before the ball came back from the outfield.
Interestingly, I got to know Donald (who classmates called Dino) more after graduation when we would commute with others to Worcester State College.
Oh wait, two other preliminary things; A lot of people were confused about which brother was which. Dino’s brother’s name was Dean, so you would often hear people say, ‘You mean Dean Hillegass’ followed by the response of, ‘No, Dino, his older brother.” Also, in the mid-1970s, one of my friends told me that the last name of the family about to move in to the neighborhood sounded something like “Willegass,” so I just assumed that was how you spelled it — Hillegass with a W instead of an H. Soon after they moved in, I realized it was actually spelled Wilgus.
That baseball moment I shared a few paragraphs ago made me remember two of our fallen ’78 classmates, both of whom Donald and I spoke about in our conversation. We lost Kevin Meade early in our senior year to a car accident. He, like me, had long hair and played second base early in that JV baseball season. Neither one of us stayed on the team after the first few weeks. We were not “cut,” but we also were not given uniforms. I think coach Dennis Kelly platooned Mark Corner and John Breen at second base that year. I also remember Chatalian, Mike Freitas, John Buckley and lefty pitcher Kenny Ledoux from the Class of ’78 being on the team. I do recall saying goodbye to Kevin as we were about to board separate buses the on Friday before the weekend he died. The other guy Hillegass and I talked about was David Cummings, a very funny individual and also a good pitcher. He died a few years after graduation, and a bunch of classmates gather every year for the “Lug Wrench” (his nickname) golf tournament.
About one year after graduation, I remember running into Cummings and chatting a bit. I was with a bunch of friends and we were renting a boarding-style room for a weekend at Hampton Beach. It turns out David’s parents owned the place, something I didn’t know previously. Speaking of Cummings, I also remember he was on my team for the Marlboro Junior Baseball League’s 12-year-old season-ending goodwill game. He proudly wore the brown of the First National Bank team and I wore the red of Joe Cullinan Pintos. Chatalian, a third baseman in baseball and monster back in football for the Panthers, wore the orange and black of the MJBL’s Marlboro Transportation team back then.
I forgot to ask Hillegass who he played for in those days of our youth. Another classmate, Dick Aseltine was on my Cullinan Pintos team. Yet another from the Class of ’78, Neil McLaughlin (who was a standout wrestler for the Panthers), wore the blue and red of Kiwanis, something I learned on Facebook in recent years. And Ledoux, that aforementioned lefty pitcher, once wore the green of Inland Express.
My guess is that anybody from the Class of ’78 reading this will message me their MJBL (or Marlboro Youth Baseball Association) team.
And so much for the preliminaries
It’s time to return to the main story line, which is the MHS football team in 1976 and 1977, when my classmates were juniors and seniors.
I attended all or most of the home games, keeping an eye on the action but also socializing quite a bit, too. And so I thought it would be interesting to get the perspective of some of the guys who were part of those teams. And Donald not only had a lot to offer about what it was like to be an MHS football player at that time, he was also generous enough to ask some of his teammates for their input via text.
It’s well known that MHS had some dismal football teams in the late 1960s and early 1970s— at least as far as winning goes. Against rival Hudson in the Thanksgiving Day rivalry, after a 0-0 Ice Bowl game in 1967, the Panthers only won once (in 1972) between 1968 and 1976. I was at every single one of those Turkey Day games, except the 1972 win.
So my thinking was that Marlboro would NEVER beat Hudson. Leave it to my classmates, though. in the 1977 game (in the fall of the Class of ’78’s senior year), the boys got it done, beating Hudson 34-13. But Hillegass also fondly recalls his junior year team with future college and semi-pro standout wide receiver Billy LaFreniere on the roster. “We went 4-6 in 1976 and I think we were the best 4-6 team ever,” Hillegass said. “We had some great athletes, but not everybody had great attitudes.”
Mark Fournier from the Class of 1977 threw a pass before getting hit in a 1975 game, and, as the caption reads, later connected with Bill LaFreniere for a touchdown. (All photos from the Marlboro Enterprise are courtesy of Donald Hillegass).
That was Huck Hannigan’s first year as head coach and he brought hope with him when he was lured away from a successful coaching career at Leominster High. In those lean years of the early 1970s, perhaps the missing ingredient was a coach who could change the culture and attitude into a winning one. And that’s exactly what he did, eventually leading Marlboro to a 1979 30-13 Super Bowl victory over Doherty and a second Super Bowl appearance in 1980, a14-12 loss to Doherty.
Hillegass rattled off.just a few players who were seniors in Huck’s first year in Marlboro — Mike Roache, Mike Sawtelle, Kevin Sheehan, Jimmy Kamataris, Gary Silva, Mark Fournier, David Iannini, Billy Vallee, Scott McLean and “Crazy Ed” Oram. “We ended up getting Huck and it was totally different,” Hillegass said. “We went to a camp for a week at Becker Junior College. That was great, unbelievable. He knew how to get everybody pumped up. And we were pumped up to be away.” During that camp, Marlboro scrimmaged Wachusett, who was coached by former MHS baseball coach and junior high physical education teacher Rich Lewis.
MHS’s offensive starters on Turkey Day in 1975, the year before Huck Hannigan came aboard as coach.
After camp, the Panthers scrimmaged Ayer at Ward Park. Ayer was led by running back Joe Morris, who wound up playing in the NFL for the New York Giants. In the season opener, the first time MHS played under the newly installed lights at Kelleher Field, the Panthers defeated Acton-Boxboro 21-0.
A 30-yard TD by Donald Hillegass against Hudson on Thanksgiving Day, 1976, at Kelleher Field.
“The six games we lost were by a total of 24 points,” Hillegass said. “We lost to Maynard 14-13, to Shrewsbury 7-0, to Milford 21-18 and to Hudson 8-7. We could have gone 7-3 or 8-2 that year. We beat Clinton, Wesboro and Gardner.”
A Screaming Huck Brings Good Luck
The day before a game against Algonquin, Hannigan got livid when he didn’t think he was getting the proper effort from his troops. It was during a no-pads run-through on a Friday,
“Looking back, he knew how to motivate the right people,” Hillegass said. “He was a master of using psychology. We weren’t really screwing off, but just kind of running through plays and going through stuff. All of a sudden, Huck blows his whistle and starts screaming, ‘You don’t care.’ And that’s when we knew we were in trouble. After practice, we all sat down and every single one of us had our head down, not even looking up. Huck walks in and all you could hear were his cleats on that (old) tile floor. He didn’t say anything for what seemed like an hour but was probably only a minute.”
And then came the lesson. “He kicks the metal can and man did that make a lot of noise,” Hillegass said. “He takes off his watch and throws it on the floor and it breaks into a hundred pieces. He says, ‘We’re playing a goddamned good team and you guys are out there screwing around. You guys better be prepared tomorrow ‘ He went on and on and on.” And then, of course, came the payoff, a great performance, thanks to Huck’s antics!! “The next day, we were all scared, but we were excited,” Hillegass continued. “We score a TD with 10 seconds left in the game and we thought we had the game won, but a ref threw a late flag — holding against us. It was our only penalty of the whole game. We had one more try but didn’t get it. The guys were crying.” And then after watching the game film, according to Hillegass, it was evident to the MHS players that there was no holding on the play.
Roger Gipps holds up Donald Hillegass after an apparent touchdown against Algonquin that would have tied the score 26-26 and led to an extra-point try for the victory. But the play was called back and the Panthers lost 26-20.
“It was so disgusting, so unfair,” he added. “Algonquin went on to the (Central/Western Massachusetts) Super Bowl (a 20-0 loss to East Longmeadow) that year.That kind of demoralized us a little bit.”
The Joy Of Beating Hudson
Hillegass could see that Huck’s teams in the future were going to go places. “The attitude is changing, I was thinking after my senior year,” he said. “Marlboro is going to beat somebody. It was a quick turnaround. At the new school, we had a better weight room — and even a Coke machine and that was unbelievable.” The following year the Panthers went 5-5 and that glorious win over Hudson was the big highlight.
The Panthers’ starting offense (above) on T-Day in 1977 for the game to be played at Hudson’s Morgan Bowl. Defensive starters are below.
“There were quotes from the seniors of both teams in the newspaper pregame story, and many of the Hudson seniors were saying things like, ‘Yeah, we should beat ’em easily,’ ” Hillegass said. “I still have the clipping. Huck pinned that up. If we had said things like that, Huck would have been so mad he would have chopped our heads off.”
More Screaming Gets The Job Done This Time
Hillegass remembers standing as a team on the side of the locker room before the Hudson game. “Huck is screaming, we’re screaming,” he said. “He says, ‘You guys aren’t going on the field. You guys aren’t pumped up. Come on, let’s get ’em. He kept on screaming and yelling. We screamed so loud going on the field and we were sky high by the time the game started.” By that time in the season, senior quarterback Steve Masciarelli had been converted to a running back with junior Paul Duplessis stepping in at quarterback. “Steve, they couldn’t stop him,” Hillegass said. “He was running right through them. We were just so motivated. We weren’t thinking we were gong to lose. We made some key stops at the end and our defense wore them out.”
Marlboro’s seniors in the 1977 Thanksgiving Day game that were part of the Panthers’ first win over Hudson since 1972.
Hillegass definitely remembers how the talk among people in the know would often turn to about how tough the “blue collar” Midland League was, even though the Boston Globe and Herald coverage areas didn’t really go west of Lincoln-Sudbury.
Some of the other senior football players from the Class of 1978 were kicker Brian Snow (another MHS athletic Hall of Famer), defensive back and running back Roger Gipps, fullback Ed Bittle, linemen John Lacroix, Mike Freitas, Jan Spinazzola, Mark Corner, and Harold Greenlaw, tight end Jack Lacina, defensive end Gary Adamovich, defensive tackle Jimmy Carter, and defensive backs John Buckley and Keith Thebado.
Jack Lacina and Donald Hillegass, with Steve Masciarelli in the background, were in a celebratory mood on Thanksgiving Day in 1977, when Marlboro “ended Hudson’s holiday dominance.”
Hillegass ended up having some big games, too. He rushed for 153 yards (250 all-purpose yards) against Acton-Boxboro as a junior. Against Shrewsbury as a senior, he had 200 all-purpose yards. And Hillegass scored that would-be winning TD against Algonquin that got called back and he also scored a TD that got called back in the one-point loss to Maynard.
Oh, I almost forgot, In a recent phone call with Hudson’s Mark Chiasson, who was on the losing side as a senior in that 1977 Thanksgiving Day game, he told me that after high school he used to work with Hillegass at the popular Hudson Main St. hockey and sports shop called Siger’s.
That conversation was a few months before I talked to Hillegass on the phone, and when I heard Dino once worked at the hockey shop, I was surprised.
“Can he skate?” I asked. The answer was no, which Hillegass subsequently offered on his own. A few months later in that senior year, in March 1978, Chiasson scored the winning goal in overtime at the Boston Garden to give Hudson the Division I state hockey championship. In a side note, I was on the Marlboro Panthers hockey team as a junior and senior, and after a painful 17-1 loss to the Hawks in 1977, we made it PRIORITY NO. 1 to beat them the next year.
And after an early-season 5-4 road loss, we did actually beat the eventual state champions 4-3 at Navin Rink. I will never forget that day, Feb. 22, 1978, when junior Russ McKinnon scored with 1:33 left on a pass from behind the net by senior Mike Tomczyk to win it.
Other seniors on that Marlboro team were Andrew Tuttle, Clifford Fenton, Joe Correia and Dean Boutwell. And I’m sure any classmate reading this will want to join me in saying rest In peace to Correia and Boutwell (as well as to Spinazzola from the football team), who we’ve lost in recent years.
So, when I spoke to Chiasson on the phone, and he told me about his former co-worker at Siger’s, I made sure to say kiddingly, “Let’s get him on the ice and knock him down.”
One thing at least three — Hillegass, Corner and Buckley — of those Class of ’78 football guys all remember about their last practice is when Hannigan gathered the seniors under the goalpost and burned a shoe as a rite of passage.
Below are some comments Hillegass gathered from four of the Class of ’78 teammates that he keeps in touch with:
Mark Corner:
“I remember burning a shoe. If you are mentioning Mush (Masciarelli) moving to running back, I think we have to give equal credit to Duplessis moving in at quarterback. I thought the office ran very well with him behind center. The big takeaway from playing football at Marlboro High are the life lessons. I vowed in my professional life never to be outworked and I attribute that to my experiences on the football team in high school and in college (Bowdoin). Plus the fact that here we are 40 some odd years later talking about stuff we did at 18 and remembering it so fondly.”
David Chatalian:
“I think it’s worth mentioning our 5-5 record was a milestone and foundation for Huck in turning the football program around. For specific moments that solidified the turnaround, it’s obviously the “underdogs” steamrolling Hudson. A significant point in the T-Day victory was at the halftime walk from the locker room to the field when Freitas and I were walking beside Huck. Huck turned to Freitas and said, ‘These guys aren’t ready to play. Get ’em ready,’ at which point Freitas shoved me and the domino effect turned into a pig pile. I got hurt more at that point than I did in the game. We were so fired up entering the second half, down 7-6 and then it was history in the making with a 34-13 victory. Our junior year, we embraced Huck’s system. We worked hard in the offseason, had a great attitude, good talent, but a lot of heart and camaraderie that elevated our play.”
Brian Snow:
“Unfortunately I don’t have a lot to add because you know ‘I was just a kicker.’ I do remember a great Huck line junior year when Adamovich was complaining to Huck that our weight room was inadequate. He said ‘Adamovich, I can take the right guy and put him in a room with two rocks and he’d come up with a great workout.’ “
John Buckley:
“I recall our last practice before the Thanksgiving Day game and what became a tradition for seniors. We burned a shoe that represented the outgoing class and their final high school game. Seniors were then asked to share their thoughts and we did so. I remember saying that my teammates were all like brothers and the coaches were second fathers to many of us. Not sure I knew how true that statement turned out to be. My teammates from high school football were and are still some of my best friends. It’s my experience that all players on sports teams have a bond, but I don’t think there are any stronger bonds than those forged on the football field. In New England, you start the season in August in 100-degree weather and end it in November in sub-freezing temperatures. In between, there is a lot of joy and laughter but also a lot of pain and sacrifice. It’s impossible to forget the people you went through those times with and, especially around Thanksgiving every year, I think of those days and those guys often. Those were great years and my only regret is we can’t go back and do it again.”
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Author’s note: Anyone reading this story who is interested in a more multimedia experience, click this link and hear a tune that was a big hit in those way-back day: Electric Light Orchestra — Sweet Talkin’ Woman. I added this a day after posting the story, having heard it a few hours after interviewing Donald Hillegass on the phone for this story. It brought me back. It was on the 1977 album, “Out of the Blue.”
