Fever pitch Soccer fields, Fuller Hamlets dominate Sutton landscape 10 GREAT SPORTS TOWNS NINTH IN A SERIES By John Conceison TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF SUTTON— The stenciling on the entrance of Tony's Sutton Pizza says it all. It's not your usual, "No dogs - no barefeet." It reads, "Please no soccer spikes or sports shoes with cleats — Thank you for your cooperation." The front door to this village landmark exclaims Sutton is indeed a sports town. And a supreme soccer town at that, complete with seven athletic fields sporting at least two sets of goals. This former farming community (though there still are several farms active) has long had athletic accomplishments of which to be proud. Many a townsfolk still speak of how Ray Small was an Olympic caliber runner in the '30s. Sutton High boys' basketball won its first Clark Tournament title nearly 50 years ago, and the girls' program enjoyed success back in the six-on-six days, when guards and forwards couldn't cross center court. In the '60s, Pleasant Valley Country Club burst on the scene, bringing the PGA and LPGA to New England, and the Sutton-Douglas baseball rivalry was played to a Sox-Yankees fever pitch. But in the '60s and '70s, people came on the scene who served as pioneers, blazing trails for the sports success Sutton is known for today. According to Howie Bottomly, who played baseball and basketball at Sutton High and the former girls' basketball coach there, "There were three people willing to take it to another level," Paul Lamontagne, Steve Romasco and Martyn Bowden. Of the three, only Bowden isn't directly linked to Sutton High School, as Lamontagne and Romasco spurred the girls' and boys' basketball programs to fine achievement. Yet Bowden, the founder, head coach and mentor of the Fuller Hamlets Soccer Club, sure can be linked to Sutton High School's sweet success. Before Bowden came on the scene, soccer in Sutton was merely an exercise in gym class. Bowden, a native of England, was a professor at Clark University - he just retired after teaching cultural geography for 40 years. He played club soccer in the Worcester area, but free space for club play had been tough to come by. So he and wife Margaret, who had been living in Oxford, searched the area for a house with enough land for a soccer field - Shrewsbury, Boylston, West Boylston, Leicester, Charlton, Northboro - until a real estate agent hooked them up in November 1967 with a 15-acre plot on Fuller Road, complete with 3 acres for a soccer pitch. "It was a partial accident that we wound up in Sutton," he said. "Any of those others could have wound up the soccer town of Worcester County." Now to build the field, and they will come. According to Bowden's 1990 club history "Hamlets," Fuller Field was ready for play in 1970, and they sure came. Members of the El Gammel's Camels, a club team for which Bowden played,took to the field, but more importantly, the neighborhood kids came calling. By summer of '71, Bowden was entertaining Ken Stuart and his buddies, a summer of kicking the ball on "Martyn's Mountain" that lasted until October. "As we were playing there on Fuller Road, the kids thought it was fantastic and started saying, 'Can we play?' " Bowden recalled. "At first, there were 10 to 12 kids, then before you know it, there were about 32 of them. Then there would be parents and kids playing in games, people ages 4 to 50." In 1972, the Fuller Hamlets took off, with two of their neighborhood teams playing units from the Wilkinsonville village and Sutton Center that August for what was termed "Little League Day: The Championship of Sutton." That fall, Bowden entered an under-10 team in a MetroWest-based Pioneer League, as Worcester County had no travel play for children under 16. And the rest is remarkable history. The trophies and championships amassed by the Fuller Hamlets take volumes to document. Today, not only do the neighbors come to play for the Fuller Hamlets, but they come from neighboring towns, and even neighboring states. Players ages 7 through adult, male and female, continue to enjoy success on 15 Fuller Hamlets teams in the Mass. Premier League. They take to the pitch all over New England, across the country and have even ventured to the other side of the Atlantic. The club maintains a quality year-round program, complete with indoor play in the winter and summer camps, which just completed their 20th year, at the Bowden Fields on Central Turnpike. The Bowden Fields, now with lights, began hosting play in 1982. "With the work Martyn did with the younger kids in the neighborhood, they became more skill-oriented, and that gave those kids a good start," said Bill Ellis, whose Sutton High boys teams won 15 league titles, two district titles and more than 300 games in 26 seasons as coach, retiring after the 2000 season. "His love to teach the game to kids is fantastic," Fuller Hamlets president Marc Bowden said of his father, who has been inducted into the Massachusetts Youth Soccer Association Hall of Fame. "The thing he loves the most is to work with the Wanderers (the youngest age group with the Fuller Hamlets). He has such a love of the game and love of passing it on to children. He loves to transfer that knowledge to the next generation." "That is the group I enjoy the most, but I wouldn't have believed that at first," Martyn Bowden said. "Coaching a semipro team was my first goal, but that never really caught on in the states. Yet the results I see from the younger children give me so much satisfaction." Deb Flaherty, the former Telegram & Gazette Super Team standout at Sutton High who is now in her second season as Holy Cross women's soccer coach, feels she couldn't be where she is today without Martyn Bowden. "He is awesome," said Flaherty, who played on Fuller Hamlet boys teams from age 4-12, then played on girls squads through junior year of high school. "He knows how to train players as a very young age. He's so genuine and wants to develop players. He has created an environment in which players want to do well for him." Still, Flaherty notes that high competitive level of the Fuller Hamlets is not for everyone. "It is for people who can handle the level of commitment," said Flaherty, who continues to coach with the Fuller Hamlets. "You have to be all soccer and really into it. You have to have the desire to be there." "I always get the feeling that we have quite a community here with the Fuller Hamlets," said Marc Bowden, who with his younger brother Jonathan and their families maintain a strong involvement with the club. "And we've moved to the next generation - out of the crews that started on Fuller Road, about 30 percent still has family involved." Sutton Youth Soccer has also provided a major role in developing players, starting youngsters at age 4-1/2 while offering a more recreational yet still competitive approach. The combination of these programs and other regional club experience places Sutton's soccer youth ahead of those in most communities. "We get kids who are well prepared as far as goals and mind-set," said Hussein Issa, who has coached the Sutton High girls to two of their seven state championships, including last fall. "We don't have to motivate them as much, and we can work on more advanced stuff." "The youth training is so good, and Sutton seemed to start before everybody else," Flaherty said. In a high school of only about 400 students, approximately 70 vied for spots on the varsity and junior varsity girls' soccer teams last year. For the first time since the early '80s, Sutton High has field hockey, playing a JV schedule this season. A JV girls' volleyball team also has been added, to the varsity that was brought along last year. "I actually welcome (the arrival of field hockey) because I don't have room for 67 players," Issa said. Other recent additions to the SHS athletic department have included boys' and girls' tennis, with both teams succeeding almost instantly since their inception in 2002. The boys' squad advanced to the Central Mass. Division 2 semifinals this year, while the girls' squad advanced to the Division 2 final for the second straight season before falling to state champion Notre Dame Academy. While Sutton's fields thrive without uprights, football actually is starting to boon among the youth. A growing number of youngsters from town are playing Millbury/Sutton Pop Warner, and Sutton High has provided the Millbury High squad with more and more gridders since the two went co-op eight years ago. About 25 Sutton players are currently in camp with Millbury coach Dave Palazzi, who is Sutton High's baseball coach. Quite a difference from the six Suttonites who were awarded letters in 1997. Many Sutton players provided major contributions to the Woolies' 12-0 Super Bowl season two years ago. "The kids play together as a team," Palazzi said. "Once those kids get in the locker room, you can't tell who's from Millbury and who's from Sutton. You don't know who's from where." Also still thriving are the nicknames at Sutton High, now the only school in Central Mass. with separate monnikers for its boys' and girls' sports. Sammies was selected for the boys in the late 1950s, and Suzies was adopted for the girls in the '60s. Though there was talk of changing names about 15 years ago, support remains strong for the Sammies and Suzies. Sutton's facilities are modest, to say the least. While the elementary, middle and high schools share the same physical plant, soccer and baseball share the same field, without the fancy turf and irrigation systems found among programs with similar success. There is no indoor or outdoor track, yet coach Bill Gillin's cross country and track teams continue to shine in the Dual Valley Conference and perform well in invitational and state competition. Of course, Sutton's golf team has a gem of a home course, Blackstone National Golf Club, which opened four years ago. "We've made the most out of what we've had to work with here," said Sutton High athletic director Dan Delongchamp, who as boys' soccer coach led the team to the 2002 Division 3 state championship as the Sammies have advanced to the Central Mass. final the last six years. "We have wonderful coaches, some really, really solid people. We have great youth programs, huge programs." And among those wonderful coaches were Lamontagne and Romasco, who brought out the best of the Suzies and Sammies on the hardwood. "Every girl bouncing a ball in town should think of him as a god," Bottomly said of Lamontagne, whose girls' basketball teams went 123-18 from 1962-69 and set the stage for the 23-0 squad in 1970 that won the Western Mass. Tournament title. Lamontagne, who taught at Sutton for 40 years before retiring in 2000, also coached JV girls' basketball and softball in the '90s. The Suzies advanced to four straight Central Mass. basketball finals, from 1992-95, winning in '94. The Sammies' basketball tradition is poised to continue prospering after the untimely death of Romasco, whose Sutton teams in 32 seasons won more than 400 games, 12 DVC and three district championships and advanced to the Division 3 state final in 1995. His Sammies won seven Clark Tournament titles, including one last season after Romasco was stricken with a massive cerebral hemorrhage during a first-round game in February. "Steve really worked hard with the town," said Delongchamp, who was an assistant coach to Romasco, the founding father of Sutton Youth Basketball. "He knew that's where he was going to get his players, he put time into his camps and the summer leagues. There's all kinds of basketball education here now in the summer, we have mini-camps that youth basketball puts on,it has nothing to do with the school, and they're constantly developing players, girls and boys." In conjunction with Hall of Fame ceremonies, the Sutton High gymnasium will be dedicated to Romasco on Nov. 26, a fitting tribute to the man who helped bring many of the championship banners to the building's walls. And while several players have gone on to fine college careers, athletics in Sutton have truly been a team effort. "It's not just a win-at-all-cost attitude," said Steve LeClair, a 1977 SHS grad who last year with brother John produced "A Century of Sutton Sports," written in conjunction with Sutton's tricentennial. "Class and dignity has always come through in the Sutton school system. It's been about pride and giving it your best effort." "It hasn't been a matter of tremendous athletes becoming professionals, just a matter of a lot of good teams," Bottomly said. "We've had the teams, which isn't a bad thing." "And that has a lot to do with the coaches through the years," added Hope Smith Stockhaus, who starred for Suzies teams in the '60s and coached the 1970 girls' basketball championship squad. "In Sutton, it's been important to have team effort and keep people happy."