Warriors will renew regular season rivalries with Reading and Woburn
By JIM SOUTHMAYD
WAKEFIELD — The Wakefield Memorial High football team will have two new opponents for the 2017 season and both are teams that the Warriors used to play regularly in the past.
Wakefield will be playing Reading the first weekend of the fall season this year and also will be facing Woburn in a crossover game among the four teams that face each other in late October to avoid Thanksgiving Day rivals playing each two or three times in a season.
According to head coach Steve Cummings, Wakefield signed a two year deal to play Beverly and that contract was up. Cummings spoke with Rocket head coach John Fiore and asked if Reading wanted to play Wakefield. Fiore said yes since the Rockets didn’t want to face Central Catholic like they had.
So the Wakefield-Reading rivalry will be renewed in September on Friday, Sept. 8 at Birch Meadow in Reading. In ‘18, the Warriors will host the Rockets at Landrigan Field. The two long M.L. rivals haven’t played each other since the 2012 season when Wakefield suffered a 25-7 loss at a muddy Landrigan Field (before the field was renovated and field turf installed).
With the new playoff system which begun in 2013, several of the coaches and athletic directors in the M.L. miss the old rivalries between teams from the Freedom and Liberty divisions. Cummings believes that is good to be playing several of the old league rivals once again.
Wakefield will also be playing Woburn this year. Two years ago when the league decided to give up the automatic bids for the playoffs and have the Thanksgiving Day games between Wakefield and Melrose and Woburn and Winchester count in the league standings once again, that left an open week for those four schools. The past two years, Wakefield played Winchester and Melrose played Woburn. The next two years, the Warriors will face the Tanners and the Red Raiders and Sachems will square off.
The Warriors and Tanners haven’t faced each other in the regular season since 2010. The two M.L. rivals played each other in the playoffs in ‘13 and a non-playoff game in November 2015.
Wakefield will also play Marblehead again in a non-league game this fall along with M.L. Freedom division rivals — Watertown, Stoneham, Wilmington, and Burlington. After three of playoff and possibly non-playoff games, Wakefield will face Melrose on Thanksgiving.
Cummings said that the Warriors will be facing three teams that will also have new head coaches this fall. Woburn’s Rocky Nelson retired, Burlington’s Shawn Maguire resigned amid controversy, and Wilmington head coach Mike Barry tendered his resignation after the fall season.
