RallyNorth.net: High School Sports – Merrimack Valley and Southern NH

55 fouls, 66 free throws and about 1,000 heads shaking as they departed the Lawrence High Fieldhouse.
“Awful” said one friend of mine.
“Worst Christmas tourney final I’ve ever seen,” said another.
And you know what, they were right.
Two solid basketball teams, a heated cross-city rivalry, and we got whistles. That’s it.
Oh, by the way, Central Catholic won the 37th annual free throw shooting contest known as the Greater Lawrence Christmas Tournament. Are they the better basketball team? Can Lawrence, a sure underdog coming in, run with the Raiders?
Your guess is as good as mine. We didn’t find out because the two guys wearing stripes last night were overwhelmed, overmatched and simply too easily convinced to blow the whistle.
I can hear all the officiating apologists now. “These guys are college refs, they’re two of the best. Longo is a blowhard.”
Blah, blah, blah.
The officiating in the Christmas tourney final could only be described as atrocious. You know how I know the two guys didn’t belong? At one point Joel Berroa hit a jump shot from the 3-point arc. They ruled it a 2. The official ran past Rick Nault, who asked what it was. The guy put up two fingers. 30 seconds later, the officials added a point to the CC total ruling it was a 3, meaning the guy who was baseline left, overruled the guy who was outside on the arc … and he did it after 30 seconds of play went by.
Was it a 2 or a 3, who knows? But, unless replay shows beyond a shadow of a doubt, why second-guess the first call that one official confirmed to the coach?
Honestly, I felt like we were in for something special last night. I looked up, it was 10-10 early, we had just been through an end to end flurry in which we saw blocked shots off each backboard, and wild action. For four minutes, it was vintage CC-Lawrence.
And then the whistles came.
25 fouls in the first half alone. 30 more in the second. Talk about painful. In the first half, there had to be 6 or 7 charges. Somewhere, Coach K was smiling. But the fans here in Lawrence weren’t.
I was really fired up to see this game. I think Lawrence is better than I expected. I think last year’s amazing run to the Garden for the North title has rubbed off on this group.
And now, thanks to the officials, I still have to wonder.
I will stop now. I’m depressed.
Eight things we learned from the Christmas tourney final/free throw contest:
1. MVP Tyler Nelson can shoot free throws. Baby Face went 18 for 18 on the night from the line.
2. Even on a tough night when Lawrence contested everything, the sophomore got it done for his team in need. Nelson’s two fourth quarter assists sealed Lawrence’s fate.
3. Nick Cambio could be another diamond in the rough for CC. Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. Thanks to foul trouble, we saw about 48 seconds from the sophomore who clearly had a target on his back.
4. Central’s offense right now, without Luis Puello, has often turned to the offense of a “dump and chase” hockey team. That is they wait for Tyler Nelson or someone else to dump it in from the perimeter and they hit the glass with a ferocity we have not seen from past Raider teams. Against PA they had 32 offensive rebounds in the semis. They hurt Lawrence on the glass again in the finals.
5. I tried all summer to get Lawrence’s DJ Gonzalez to go back to football. Is there any doubt after seeing him run the floor that the kid is a scholarship tight end waiting to happen. For that matter, I’d stand by the fact that CC’s Doug Gemmell and Luis Puello are scholarship football players waiting to happen.
6. Big minutes and contributions early for the Raiders from Lucas Hammel and late from Mike Barry and Henry Rodriguez.
7. I do long for what might have been. I would love to see a mid-February Central-North Andover battle with each team at full strength.
8. Great job of participating by both student sections tonight. This hoop rivalry has grown so huge. They get the real MVP for the night.

Haverhill baseball was in the news recently, with the resigning/releasing/firing of Chip Dunn as the baseball coach.
Perhaps, it’s time to talk a little Hillie talk here on the Creature.
As you guys know, I’m pretty tight into Haverhill sports. And baseball in the region.
I try to be as objective as possible, not one to lash out at someone on a whim or to listen to angry parents who are often frustrated about playing time.
Let’s just say, I’ve watched Chip through many of his 22 seasons.
Carlos Pena was one of the first, young stud athletes I gravitated toward coverage wise, and so we saw a lot of Chip’s teams then.
Chip gets lambasted in Haverhill, brutalized. He doesn’t really help himself in that regard. Honestly, I don’t think it’s ever fazed Chip when folks talk about him.
He coaches his way. He trusts it, believes in it, and honestly he did pretty well over the years with it.
Remember now, before Chip took over Haverhill High baseball was a laughing stock. They basically went 40 years without a state tournament berth. Now, I know it was tougher to qualify back in the day, but 40 years?
Chip legitimized the thing. And you know what? When he had players, he did well with them.
Thinking back to that 17-7 North semifinalist team in 2008, Chip got all he could out of that group, bowing out to Malden Catholic, the eventual champion. There’s no shame in that, not with 31 wins in two seasons.
Chip is gruff, sure. But if you watch him coach, he knows what he’s doing, and honestly, I don’t ever think I’ve seen him be unfair to a kid.
If kids don’t like his personality and don’t play, then shame on them. Leave the spot to another kid who loves the game and is willing to put personalities aside.
The bottom line with me is simple. Would I want my son to play for Chip? ABSOLUTELY!
And out of the 10 current MVC coaches, there’s probably only six I could say that about.

So that’s the good.

Now the bad.

Baseball in Haverhill is in mass disarray, at least in my eyes, from the youth levels up.
I went through it first hand with the Riverside-Bradford League, watching kids — not mine but many others — get mishandled and shoved into different scenarios politically.
I listen every day to parents who gripe about R-B and that’s not right.
Then I also watched the Haverhill Little League — something I thought was pretty straight forward and solid for the kids — simply disappear. Luckily, I could find a new home for Ollie, but a lot of kids don’t have that.
I still don’t understand what happens to kids at 13 in the city. I think there are rival factions there, too, kids being pulled in different directions.
But my main point is Chip takes some of the blame here for what has happened in the city to baseball at its younger levels. He rarely, if ever, worked with HLL or R-B, no clinics or anything.
The fact that the Central Catholic baseball coach, with his two kids in the system, was huge in youth baseball in this city for so many years and Chip allowed it to run rampant, is my biggest gripe.
Haverhill kids have shaped CC baseball over the last 10 years.
People in Haverhill … even a former youth coach in our travel program … have blasted Mike Trovato, through me, for not landing Tyler Nelson.
In the last 10 years, Chip has probably lost a dozen Tyler Nelsons to CC.
And he never really fought it. He was happy coaching the players he had. That is my one gripe on Chip.
Remember, a key cog of that 2008 team, pitcher Leif Sorenson.
He originally went to Central Catholic and was cut as a freshman.
The new coach in Haverhill has to do something to unite all these factions at the youth level, get everyone on the same page.
The one thing Haverhill has is fields. Look at that stadium complex. The fact that Chip didn’t run 6-8 weeks of summer camps out there always shocked me. Talk about a gold mine, and a way to promote baseball in town.
Two words immediately pop into my head … Dave Bettencourt.
Imagine what he might be able to do here if he ever were interested.

Now the ugly …

The Haverhill High boys have played one basketball game, yet I’ve already read and heard the same sentiment echoed again and again about Mike Trovato, not caring about Haverhill.
“He’s an AAU coach”
“He’s in it for the money”
“He’s not a Haverhill guy”
It’s alot of the same unfair griping that Chip got for years and years.
The fact is Mike has taken over at a tough time in HHS history. Few boys teams are winning. The talent is down.
The recruiting threats from privates and even Whittier Tech continue to loom large. My point is, Mike keeps working as hard or harder than any coach I know.
Any time our youth program needs something Mike has been there. A clinic, a scoreboard, gym time, he fights for the kids of Haverhill. Nobody seems to want to hear that. It’s easier for them just to kick a guy who is down.

I just wonder if Haverhill, the people there, are ever going to give anyone that’s not Bob Walsh — a guy who I really like and absolutely respect as a coach — a chance.
And therein lies the ugly.

The city has to start trusting guys like Mike, and whoever else Tom O’Brien brings in to run the baseball team.

It looks like the football team is in solid hands. Tim O’Connor has people excited … although I would have scrapped the spread and pounded it with Chance Brady this fall, but that’s another day’s issue … and that’s a big step.

Trovato has a deep, young group that will someday be good, even without Noah Vonleh.

The soccer and lax programs look OK, and as long as Mike Maguire’s around, track will be superb.

It’s time for the naysayers in the city to simmer down, and give these guys, whoever the next baseball coach is included, a chance.

Chip Dunn won’t be coaching Haverhill baseball this spring.
This note from AD Tom O’Brien:

“I can confirm Chip Dunn will not be returning as the head baseball coach at Haverhill High School this spring.

We appreciate his hard work and dedication over the past two decades as the head coach.

We will conduct and extensive search and I am confident that we will find an excellent coach to lead the Haverhill baseball program.”

Dunn has been the head coach at Haverhill for 22 seasons. He finishes with a 210-235 career mark.

Folks, after hearing from a couple of additional sides on this, I would like to make some additions. The additions, mainly because I have been told my opinions on this were/are unfair, are in bold. The original stuff is left in regular type. I still feel the way I did. I just want to clear things up.
Never once here or in the newspaper, have I ever attacked a kid.
Not once.
And if anyone misread my thoughts here about the four reinstated kids, who were witnesses to a heinous act and thought I cast blame at them, you were simply wrong.

I’m sure the kids from the rival MVC schools, who show up for games from rival schools will treat the Andover program with kindness and love.
OK, so David Fazio is back on the bench, coaching the Warriors, who I’m told looked very sharp in Friday’s scrimmage vs. Newton North.
I’m in Washington with the Pats for the weekend, so I am using only you guys here on my blog as a sensor of how things are going there.
Look, on the coach coming back, if I was Andover administration, I would have been a lot more worried about how Fazio’s presence at games is going to incite the opposition.
Look, one of my bloggers said it, Andover’s play in recent years in gyms, has turned a lot of people off, not just at CC, but in a lot of gyms.
Awful timing by me to state this fact. Borders on a cheapshot at Faz and it was wrong.But, the authorities stepped in, they looked at it, and asked the simple question, “why would the coach be implicated here?” Legally, he shouldn’t be.
But there is the responsibility issue as a coach/educator.
I will say it again. Any coach who sends his kids off to camp together, any camp, anywhere, is asking for trouble. You are responsible for what those kids do together.
I still totally believe this. And in fact, Mike Muldoon writes about it every year.
Nothing good comes out of sending kids away to a camp together.
I said the same thing to Nault, who sends his kids to ABA camp. I said the same thing to Mike LaRosa at Salem, who sent his teams to Providence. It stinks, it smells, it sucks, but that’s the way the world is today.

In the end, I feel bad for the kids who got caught up in it …. But!!!!!!
All one of them had to do, if they truly feared for themselves or for their teammate, was tell somebody about it back in July … their parents, a confidant, Fazio, an assistant coach, etc.
And honestly, in my heart of hearts, I find it hard to believe none did.
Somebody had to know. And you know what, that person(s) shares blame along with the expelled perpetrators.
This is the toughest, and in many people’s eyes, most ignorant premise I wrote in this blog passage.
First, the six exclamation points, were way over the top.
The statemement “all one of them had to do” can be and has been totally misread.
“All one of them had to do,” would have been one of the toughest things a teen-ager could ever do.
It’s as tough a choice as “saying no” to drugs or booze.
It was meant to read, it all could have been avoided if …
Not, all they had to do was … Maybe, it’s poor verbiage by me. But …
If at any way you thought I was minimizing that statement, you were mistaken. As I told somebody, I probably would have told on the kids at the camp, that is, after I urinated down my leg and cried myself to sleep in terror.
So, absolutely, those kids had to be petrified and honestly, they share in it as victims.
The statement:
“Somebody had to know. And you know what, that person(s) shares blame along with the expelled perpetrators.”
It was not meant at kids. It was meant to say if any adult knew, then they share the blame.

Anyway, it’s on to the season. Time to play the game, as HHH might say.
I feel bad, though, because so much is going to be talked about in the periphery as opposed to on the court.

Two-time Eagle-Tribune Baseball Player of the Year at Salem High, Terry Doyle, has been selected by the Minnesota Twins in the MLB Rule 5 Draft.
Doyle, who tore it up this summer at Double-A Birmingham for the White Sox, went on to a monster, All-Star-winning performance in the Arizona Fall League.
Since Chicago did not sign Doyle to its 40-man big league roster, he was available. Doyle will now get a legitimate shot to make the big league club in spring training this February and March.
I have tried to plug in the link on a story from MLB.COM here: