The six students who were selected for the 2016 All-Scholastic Football team from Malden High School are seniors Josh Simon, Matthew Geer, and Joshua Andrews, juniors Jared Martino and Marlon Cook, and sophomore Tyler Martineau. In fact, Jared Martino was selected as the Player of the Year due to the records-shattering performance he had this past season.
The All-Scholastic Football team is the all-star team of football players in the Greater Boston area, chosen for their impressive athletic prowess shown on the field. Students from Boston, Medford, Malden, and several other cities are recommended and are selected in being recognized for their outstanding performance throughout the season.
The football season had gone well last year in 2016. The team began their season in late August and ended on Thanksgiving day with a final record of 5-6. The 2016 season was especially of reformation under new varsity head coach Bill Manchester, who brough along a new system and scheme for the team to adjust to.
They had to practice, “going faster on the field and not using as many signals,” Simon, captain of the football team, explained, but “they stuck together.”
Coach Manchester said that he was, “overall, very proud [of the team] from where [they] started and [although they started off] slow [he is proud of] how well [the team] did at the end of the year. [He] saw a lot of growth in the kids throughout the year.”
Malden’s football players were selected for the All-Scholastic roster through the recommendations between the coaches from different football teams of the cities around the greater Boston area. Manchester explained how each coaching staff gets to select their players and based off of that selection the coaches come together in order to have the final select group of players for the all-star roster.
Manchester added that, “consistent great plays and games, consistent great work and practice,” are some of the key deciding factors in recommending which players get selected for the recognition.
The football players who were selected for the roster were very surprised when they found out that they had been selected, and a lot of them only found out when they read the listing, which was in the joint co-op piece by the Malden Evening News and the Medford Daily Mercury.
For captain Martino, “it was definitely a really cool experience,” especially since “he had one of the best seasons not only in Malden, but in Greater Boston League history,” Manchester praised. Martino “ended up with over 3,000 yards of offense, ran for 1,200 yards, which was the most ever run by a quarterback in under thirty plus years of Malden football history,” Manchester explained. Manchester also said that Martino, “passed for over 1,900 yards which was a new single season record.”
Captain Geer, an offensive lineman, explained how it was, “a great honor,” for him, due to the fact that “there’s only a few people that are selected, and it means you did your work on the field and off the field and that’s something to be proud of.” Fellow lineman Martineau replied in a similar fashion, saying how “just to be selected, was an honor,” for him.
Even though the start of Malden’s football team had been pretty rough, they weren’t discouraged and continued to push through the season with their best effort into winning as many games as possible. Manchester is not only proud of those that were recognized for all of their hard work and dedication that they had put into the season, but of his whole team in general.
