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Food for thought for the holidays

By Tom King - Sports Writer | Nov 21, 2020

Telegraph photo by TOM KING Nashua North football coach Dante Laurendi, center, leads the celebration for the Titans after their win over Salem in this past Saturday's Division I semis at Stellos Stadium.

Here are a few local tids and bits as an appetizer to your Thanksgiving week:

First, Rivier University athletic director Joanne Merrill had this telling quote a few years ago: “You win,” she said, “with seniors.”

And that’s on the high school level as well as the collegiate level. That’s why both Nashua North and Souhegan were playing for the NHIAA Division I and II football titles, respectively, this weekend.

Both teams have senior groups that have been the recent foundation of their programs. North had as many as 18 seniors on the roster, Souhegan 14.

Talking to the players from both teams, they all had spent time together as far back as their youth football days, and many of them play multiple sports together.

Telegraph Sports Reporter Tom KIng.

That’s why so many looked at these two programs thinking they would definitely be playing in a championship setting if the season was allowed to take place, and they were both able to stay healthy, follow protocols, etc. As of this writing, that was the case.

In football, knowing your teammates, and what they do and how they do it, is so important. With these two teams, you had seniors who had not only played together for four seasons, but also some time likely before that.

It added up to two championship game appearances, the fourth season in a row the area has had at least one team in the football finals. It will be interesting to see where we go from here.

Sad to see that Milford lost another prominent member of its basketball community and legacy in former Milford High School boys basketball coach Bill Brown. Of course, a year and a half ago, the guy whose shoes Brown had to once fill and also later coached again with, Mo Facques, passed.

Brown was as competitive as they come. His good friend and former assistant coach Steve Erdody was recalling perhaps the one time when Brown got tossed from a game. He had thrown his keys during intermission at a door and that was that.

“I remember at a Pinkerton game, I had never seen anybody get kicked out of a game at halftime,”Erdody recalled, “but Bill got himself kicked out of a game. He threw his keys against the referee’s door and Wes Cook was the official and said, ‘By the way, you’re all done, go sit up in the stands.'”

Brown’s competitive nature, though, helped the Spartans scrape and scrap their way through the seasons with the loss of the Amherst and Mont Vernon students to the opening of Souhegan in the early 1990s.

“When that happened we had one kid coming back,” Erdody recalled. “Everyone else was over at Souhegan. All the All-Area players.

“But he kept plugging away and found ways to make his teams win.”

And teach life lessons. Erdody was a student of Brown’s in school and Brown took him under his wing.

“If it wasn’t for him,” Edody said, “I’d have been the guy standing at the Milford Oval being shuffled off every night.”

It was a while ago, but yours truly always enjoyed covering Brown’s teams and games. He’ll be missed.

• Boston area sports talk hosts need to stop with sudden takes on what happens outside the region. They took a foolish post on twitter about Giants coach Joe Judge getting into a fist fight with the offensive line coach he fired, Marc Colombo, as gospel when it was almost immediately debunked. Then immediately made the connection that Judge is so bad that the Giants would try to pry Bill Belichick away from New England. Please. Judge is fast becoming a fan and media favorite in New York despite a 3-7 Giants record.

But here’s a tasty tidbit: The guy the Giants replaced Colombo with, Dave DeGuglielmo, the former Patriots offensive line coach, is an old friend of Nashua North head coach Dante Laurendi.

Everyone have a great holiday week, Happy Thanksgiving, use good judgement and stay safe.

Tom King may be reached at tking@nashuatelegraph.com, or on twitter at @Telegraph _TomK.

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