Franklin County Technical School Football Coach Joe Gamache stood in front of his tired and muddy but exhilarated players, fresh off a hard-fought 24-14 victory over the McCann Tech Hornets. The win had clinched Tech a spot in the November 29 Vocational School Super Bowl.
After taking time to acknowledge their efforts, Gamache reminded his charges that the next game they would play would be, in terms of pride, the biggest game of the year. "They have no respect for you," Gamache said. "This is a chance to show them that this is a program worthy of their respect."
The "they" in question is the Turners Falls High School Indians football team, which will be invading Franklin Tech Saturday in the "Battle of Powertown."
It's a game the Eagles have a better than average chance of winning. Turners Falls has been outscored by its opponents by almost three to-one in a year when defense was expected to be the strongest aspect of its game.
But despite their struggles, the Indians are still dangerous opponents—especially when motivated by emotion, which is exactly what the "Battle of Powertown" is all about.
From the Tech perspective, this game is about much more than winning bragging rights over a cross-town rival. It's yet another example of a vocational school fighting for respect among its "regular ed brethren," a battle that's been waged as long as Franklin Tech has been in business.
I saw it firsthand during my days at Greenfield High School. No one ever actually came out and said it, but the implied message was always that Tech was full of troublemakers, malcontents, and bad news kids who went there to learn a trade as a last resort because they had nowhere else to go.
I bought into the hype and steered clear of anyone associated with that school. And while I could do that socially, it was impossible on the field of play. I was a varsity soccer player at Greenfield, and we not only played Tech every year, I'd also played with a lot of guys from that program in the summer adult league.
I learned a lot during those games, most notably that these "bad news" kids from Tech really weren't bad at all. They played hard and clean and actually weren't all that different from the kids in my own school. I even became friends with a few of them, most notably Greenfield's Dan Hatch, a talented midfielder who ended up becoming a teammate when we both played for Greenfield Community College in the fall of 1986.
I can't help but wonder what might have happened if I hadn't had a chance to get to know these guys on "the pitch." Would I have gotten past my initial biases long enough to see that the only differences between us and them were the curricula offered by our respective schools?
These days, it seems that there is less of a social wall being put up between regular and vocational ed kids. They hang out together pretty frequently. But that doesn't mean there still isn't a rivalry there. I've heard stories of Turners kids heading over on half days to have lunch at the Franklin Tech student restaurant. That may be because it's one of the best places to eat in the area, but there are clearly some at Tech who feel that the Turners students go there just so Tech students will have to wait on them.
Still, I don't get the sense that what stokes the Eagle's competitive fire comes from an evil or angry place. The Tech players I've seen always come to play, and do so with class. I've seen them take some horrendous ass-kickings, but I've never seen them take a cheap shot no matter how badly they were getting pummeled. That's a rarity in today's volatile world of competitive high school sports.
No one has to tell that to Gamache. "These guys play hard, and I'm proud of them," Gamache said. "If we win these last two games, we'll be 6 and 5 and we'll have a winning record, and that's something we haven't had in a long time here."
Maybe not in the record books, but in a lot of other books, they're already winners—regardless of what the scoreboard says when that final horn sounds.
