By Tom Haley
RUTLAND HERALD
Paul Gallo, a huge supporter of Mount St. Joseph, challenged the example of Oakland Raider great Steve Wisniewski playing football for Rutland High had the Wisniewski family remained in Rutland.
It was only a hypothetical example but Gallo is correct, of course, in saying that Wisniewski almost certainly would have played for MSJ.
Wisniewski’s father worked alongside MSJ assistant coach Tony Zingale at GE and also attended Christ the King.
This is what the timing would have been like had Wisniewski suited up for the Mounties: Steve would have been a member of the 1983 and 1985 state championship MSJ teams and his brother Leo, a three-year letterman at Penn State, would have played on the 1976 state championship team, a squad that many regard as the greatest Vermont high school football team of all time.
Longtime sportscaster Jack Healey is one who regards that 1976 Mountie team as the greatest in the annals of Vermont football.
I was in New Hampshire that year and working for Claremont’s Eagle Times. It so happened that the Mounties were in Claremont for a game that season against Stevens High School.
The 1976 MSJ team won that contest 58-16.
The game was broadcast on the Claremont radio station and the assessment of the MSJ team made by the play-by-play man said it all: He said that MSJ was the best team that he had seen all year and that the second best team he had seen all season was MSJ’s second team.
Add the Wisniewski brothers into the mix and MSJ’s illustrious football history becomes something even greater, if that is possible.
It is still hard to think of MSJ as a school without football today.
It is also difficult to come to grips with the MSJ-Rutland football rivalry being over even though its end came many years ago.
It was an event: The pep rally, bonfire and snake dance through downtown. All of the alumni coming back for the weekend. Crowds estimated at 4,000, sometimes more. Postgame gatherings at places like The Palms restaurant and Eddie Carroll’s house across the street from St. Peter’s Field.
Like the Halloween parade or the Vermont State Fair, the MSJ-Rutland football rivalry was a part of the fabric of Rutland City.
Healey arrived in Rutland in 1971 and watched his first MSJ-Rutand game as a spectator.
He is quoted in the book about the rivalry compiled by Ed Carroll and the late MSJ coach Funzie Cioffi as saying about that first game he ever saw: “I could feel the electricity and the tension in the air.”
Then, he worked his first game as the color man on the radio broadcast in 1974 and did his first play-by-play of the game in 1976.
One day on my car radio, I heard a complaint from a caller about Healey being partial to one side — I do not recall which one. The caller claimed Healey was more excited when calling a touchdown for one of the teams.
I would not have expected anything else. This was a rivalry.
It’s missed but life moves on. Things change, voids are filled.
There is no void for young people today. They never knew the rivalry in their lifetime.
But they have heard about. It is a piece of Rutland history that will be passed down from generation to generation because the story is a good one.
On and on and on
While dwindling enrollment at MSJ extinguished football and the great rivalry with Rutland, one Vermont high school football rivalry lives on.
Lyndon Institute and St. Johnsbury Academy first met in 1894 and when they clash on Oct. 22 in Lyndon, it will be the 117th meeting between the schools.
Another longstanding football rivalry is the one in the Connecticut River Valley between Springfield and Bellows Falls. They have met more than one hundred times. Most historians have the first meeting as happening in 1900.
Hudson on fire
Otter Valley graduate Nate Hudson is leading the Keene State baseball team in batting at .375 with six doubles.
The best chance for Otter Valley fans to see Hudson, along with former OV players Josh Beayon and Pat McKeighan who also play for Keene, comes on April 26 when the Owls are at Castleton.
Jamboree on for now
The high school softball jamboree in Poultney is a go for now with Poultney High coach Tony Lamberton ready to make the call on Friday night. The weather won’t be perfect but Lamberton believes there is a good chance to play.
Action is expected to begin at 1 p.m. and it is the hope that two of the three fields will be in playable condition.
The four teams involved are Poultney, Randolph, Granville and Whitehall.
If two fields are ready, play is scheduled to conclude at 4:30 p.m. If only one of the fields is playable, action will go until 6 p.m.
The day is expected to answer a lot of questions for Lamberton with some of the positions still unsettled for the Blue Devils.
“By the end of the day, we will know where everyone is playing,” he said.
tom.haley @rutlandherald.com
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