LHS Football Season Will Become Part Of Local Lore

Note: Now includes note on "Who was Bishop Feehan?"

On Saturday, the LHS football team takes on Bishop Feehan High School in the Division 3A Super Bowl game at Gillete Stadium.

- On Thursday, Patch.com colleague Dan Libon was down at the stadium for a media availability with Lynnfield and the other teams. His story will be posted on this website Friday morning. Lynnfield Patch will also provide real-time blog coverage of the game as it happens on Saturday night. So if you have far-off LHS alumni, be sure to let them know.

- This article on Boston.com talks about the recent victory over Dighton-Rehoboth that propelled Bishop Feehan into the Super Bowl game against Lynnfield.  The team that Feehan beat, Dighton-Rehoboth, was good enough to crack ESPN Boston's Top 25 MIAA high school football list - at #25. Neither Lynnfield nor Feehan were on that list. Like LHS, Feehan is a 9-2 team. Their standout player appears to be Matt Allen, who according to this Boston.com table was 5th in Division 3A with 120 total points - including 14 touchdowns and 26 one-point kicks. The same table shows Lynnfield running back Kyle McGah as the 13th overall scorer in the division, with 13 touchdowns.

- Regardless of what happens in Saturday's game, the 2012 season and Super Bowl bid will be remembered in town for a long time. A check at the LHS gymnasium finds that the Pioneers were the Cape Ann League football champs in 1960, '61, '62, '73, '83, '85, '86 and '09. I might be missing something here because at least two other online sources point to a 1973 entry year into the CAL for the Pioneers.

- For the 1973 team, Tom Condardo has done an excellent job on his Lynnfield Football Gridblog this fall with his week by week look at that season. Check out the latest article here. The other ones can be seen in a sidebar on the lefthand side of his page.

- A visit to the Lynnfield High School Library on Thursday found that they have copies of the 1985 and 1986 yearbooks still handy. This brings up a detail that most of the LHS players and families already know, but which others will find interesting as well - the 1985 yearbook includes several photos of Mike Karavetsos Sr., who was apparently a standout player in his own right. . Also check out the images attached in the photos above. Saturday night, the LHS squad will be led by its captain and quarterback, Mike Karavetsos.

- The previously mentioned yearbooks also noted that the 1985 football team went 9-1 to win the CAL championship under then-first year coach Bill Adams. 1984 marked the final year for former coach Bill Rodan.

- Just for the record, both short term and long term, a copy of the 2012-2013 Lynnfield High School football roster is attached to this article in the images above.

- Bishop Feehan: For those who were wondering, Bishop Feehan is located in Attleboro, their team name is the Shamrocks, and their school is named after an area Bishop from the 1800s who was the son of a blacksmith, friends with President William Howard Taft, and who had the nickname "The Benevolent Bishop." Now we just have to see if Feehan has "The Benevolent Defense" on Saturday night. An earlier search for this article initially came up empty on the Bishops' background.

In contrast, this is what you can find online about Bishop Edward Fenwick, the pioneer-type namesake of the school in neighboring Peabody: 

On a side note somebody even entered an “Urban Dictionary” page for Bishop Feehan where they describe themselves as… Well, I’ll just let you click. This is the sort of thing that LHS linemen can use as motivational material. And so can the nuns who are apparently back at Bishop Feehan school.

Note: Do you have something you'd like to add? Use the comments box below!