The Thanksgiving Without High School Football

Harry Lowe, Softball Head Coach, Football Off. Coordinator

Any other year would find the coach attending a pep rally and then the bon fire. Tomorrow morning he would meet the other coaches at 6 a.m. for a Thanksgiving breakfast. After that would come the annual rivalry with Durfee High School and the final game for the seniors. Of course, that was before COVID-19.

Welcome to 2020.

For Harry Lowe, this is the first time in 40 years that he has not been coaching a Thanksgiving football game. Coach Lowe is an assistant to Head Coach Mark DeBrito and is currently the offensive coordinator for New Bedford High School. He’s retired from teaching now, so what does he do with his days? He and another coach/retired teacher John Seed have been working on their golf game once or twice a week.

Twilight Zone

“It’s like the ‘Twilight Zone’, it’s crazy,” he told me recently.

Coach Lowe is also the head coach for the Lady Whaler’s softball team. They never played last season when the virus was first breaking out. The spring season, scheduled to start in March, was delayed and then delayed again and again before finally being canceled. It was frustrating on many levels. First there was a brand new state-of-the-art softball field for the team and brand new uniforms. Coach Lowe also felt he would have a strong team last season and then COVID struck.. 

“I had girls calling me up, seniors, saying ‘Coach I want to play, when can we play?’ We had a good team coming back. We thought we were going to be able to compete, go deeper this year in the state tournament. But we never got to play one inning. I lost six starters, six seniors to graduation,” he said.

I asked him if the kids were angry when they couldn’t play.

“I wouldn’t say angry, maybe disappointed. They understand the situation but it’s almost like, ‘Why me? Why MY senior year.’”

The Thanksgiving Without High School Football

As we talked he described a typical Thanksgiving week for me.

“Monday is our last hard practice. Tuesday is Hall of Fame night. On Wednesday morning we have a rally in school and it’s big, I mean the whole school is there and it’s great. Then we go to practice and we have like one or two of the Hall of Fame inductees that came in the year before come and talk to them about Whaler Football and what it meant to them. We end the Wednesday practice with a senior walk-through. All the kids line up and the seniors walk through for the last time. They’re missing that this year too.”

This year, football will be played in March and April and Coach Lowe feels it won’t  be the same. One reason is that because of the shortened season there won’t be the usual playoffs or a possible trip to the Super Bowl. There won’t be a state champion this year.

One positive this year is that there will be four seasons instead of the usual three. 

“If you get a kid that can play four sports, that’s never been done. We have one of our quarterbacks, Ryan Dosenberg, he ran cross country just so he can get four because he plays basketball, football and in the spring he plays lacrosse.”

Thanksgiving is what matters

Thanksgiving though is what matters most to the coach.

“Like I said, Thursday morning to me is the greatest day in high school football in the United States, not just Massachusetts, not just New Bedford. You wake up – you’re a senior playing your last game, you know. This year you’re not going to have it. This year I’m cooking a turkey. I haven’t done that in awhile. I hope I don’t blow up the house.”