Five takeaways from Thursday, as champions were crowned, coaches hired, TMC met, and a big soccer honor awarded
While not an MIAA sport, St. Mary's captured the 2025 girls' flag football title.
With the conclusion of the softball and tennis semifinals, every championship match is locked in, and with a shift in softball to put every game on Saturday, that means 23 champions will be crowned that day, weather permitting.
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You can find out when every championship game is with our title tracker, and you can revisit every game from the last two rounds with
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The rest of Thursday's coverage:
1. Commitment corner
Holland (formerly Burke) senior
Jay'von Depina
has committed to play at Northern Essex Community College, making it five of the six Bulldogs seniors who are going on to play collegiately.
Blessed enough to say i'm commiting to Northern Essex Community College! Go Knights!
— Jay'von Depina (@DepinaJayvon)
▪ Dartmouth College announced an incoming women's soccer class that includes two Massachusetts products: Brookline defender
Anna Leschly
, a two-time EMass All-Star and Bay State Conference All-Star, and BB&N's
Maeve Theobald
, who made the All-NEPSAC and All-ISL first teams.
2. Coaching carousel
▪ Methuen football coach
Tom Ryan
will be the athletic director at the school after serving on an interim basis last year. Longtime offensive coordinator
Ryan Dugan
will be promoted to interim head coach.
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Ryan went 81-48 in 12 seasons coaching the Rangers. Dugan has been the offensive coordinator at his alma mater, where he teaches math, for 12 years.
▪ Nipmuc has promoted
Britt Kahler
from assistant to head girls' basketball coach. Kahler was formerly the head coach at Blackstone Valley Tech.
Congratulations to current Nipmuc Asst. Coach and former BVT Head Coach Britt Kahler. Britt will be taking over the helm of the Nipmuc Girls program
— Nipmuc HS Sports (@NipmucAD)
▪ Tabor Academy announced the promotion of 2014 graduate
Lydia Caputi
from assistant to head girls' basketball coach.
Caputi takes over for
Will Becker
, who she coached under the last two years. An All-New England player while at Tabor, she went on to play at Babson, where she was a three-year starter.
She has coached at Trinity College and Dartmouth and was head coach at Westminster School in Simsbury, Conn.
We are excited to announce Lydia Caputi'14 as the Next Girls Varsity Basketball Head Coach!
— Tabor Athletics (@taborathletics)
▪ Westwood athletic director
Matt Gillis
announced he will be retiring next week after 33 years with the school district. The Blue Hills graduate has served as the Wolverines' AD for 13 years.
3. Milton Academy's Partal wins Gatorade boys' soccer award
Milton Academy senior
Josh Partal
has been named the Gatorade Massachusetts Boys Soccer Player of the Year.
The midfielder from Bangor, Maine, notched seven goals and eight assists, leading the Mustangs to the NEPSAC Class A championship game. A United Soccer Coaches High School All-American selection, he participated in the High School All-American Game and will play at Stanford.
'Josh just controls the game from minute one to minute 90,' said BB&N coach
Joe Campbell
in a release. 'He never plays a bad pass and is silky smooth on the ball. His game awareness is uncanny for such a young player.'
Partal volunteers as a youth soccer coach and is a member of the Milton Academy Science Olympiad team and co-head of the MicroFinance Club.
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5. TMC talks big picture, tweaks wrestling postseason
The MIAA's Tournament Management Committee discussed two big-picture topics and made a slight change to wrestling during its Thursday meeting.
The only vote of the day was to reduce the number of wrestlers who qualify for All-States from six to five per weight, which was recommended by the wrestling committee.
'They're trying to get their arms around the number of people who are wrestling,' said TMC chair
Shaun Hart
, the Burlington AD. 'The events are so huge.'
Two athletic directors, Newton North's
Mike Jackson
and Franklin's
Karrah Ellis
, proposed that basketball quarterfinal games be held at neutral locations instead of home gyms.
'It's definitely difficult to host an Elite Eight game in basketball,' Ellis said. 'From turning people away at the door because tickets sold out, to locking down your facility. We had people break in through our loading dock trying to sneak into a game. That's an unreasonable expectation of your event staff.'
The committee decided to add the issue to a future agenda when they have more data, with Paine noting that only three quarterfinal games in 2025 sold more than 1,000 tickets.
'We understand Newton North and Franklin had a problem, but we need to look at the numbers and look at the ticket sales,' Hart said.
Hart also noted that while hockey quarterfinals were moved to neutral locations last season, it's not an apples-to-apples comparison.
'Everyone owns their own basketball gym and less than half the hockey teams play at a venue that is theirs,' Hart said. 'They're not the same.'
The committee also discussed the need to make the alignment process, which just wrapped up for the 2025-26 and 2026-27 school years, less arduous and acrimonious.
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'We have to seriously consider what we are doing and why we are doing this work,' Hart said. 'My hope is no person needs to do alignments again. We put the formula together and it runs the state and where you land is where you are.'
A sub-committee was discussed to look at alternate methods for settling alignments.
Brendan Kurie can be reached at
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