The Franklin Reporter & Advocate Eight Villages, One Community
Coaches, parents and players showed up en masse at the November 18 Board of Education meeting to lobby for their pick for the next Franklin High School football head coach.
The person they want to fill the spot, vacated recently by four-year coach John Paczkowski, is Middle School head coach Blair Wilson.
The way Wilson’s supporters see it, he’s the only person who can not only bring back the Warriors’ storied football past, but can also keep his players on the straight and narrow.
That’s because, his supporters contend, Wilson is a born-and-bred Warrior, having played for the team during his time at FHS.
“Franklin is a football community,” resident Paul Mattia said. “This head coach position is not a position for the school, it is a position for the community. It’s a position for all of us, as parents and residents.”
“We believe in football, this town was built on football,” he said. “Our kids leave the school because they don’t have anything to play for.”
“You can play for a winning program, or you can play for a coach,” Mattia said. “A winning program is not going to happen overnight. But the opportunity we do have is to give these kids someone to play for, and that can happen immediately.”
Mattia said Wilson works with his players off the field, requiring that they do community service projects,.
“We’ve tried it with many other coaches that live out of the area,” he said. “The first thing they do when the whistle blows, they gotta go. What we need is someone who is here and dedicated to the kids.”
“These kids need mentorship off the field,” Mattia said. “To build this program immediately, we have a unique opportunity. We have a candidate who can step right in and continue what he has been doing for our kids.”
The Franklin Reporter & Advocate interviewed some of Wilson’s supporters prior to the Board meeting:
Resident George Mettle said, “I think there’s value in bringing in a coach that not only grew up in this area, but also is entrenched in the lives of all these young men. It’s important for us to be a voice for him.”
Benjamin Guy told the Board that one of the staples of Franklin has been its high school football team.
Wilson, he said, has “done a great job being raised up in this community, he’s done a great job with raising the community kids that are here, and he’s done a great job with the middle school.”
“We need the soul back in this community,” Guy said. “And the person who can bring back the soul is Blair Wilson. It’s not about politics, it’s not about culture, it’s about people. And this person is a person of the people.”
Tiffany Montgomery said Wilson is “a wonderful gentleman from the community. He cares about our boys, and that’s the most important thing.”
“He wants them to win on and off the field, and he has shown that for years and years and years,” she said.” He does so much for these boys, and that’s what it’s about. We need our children to have that role model, and he is a significant awesome role model to our boys. He shows them that it’s more than just football.”
Wilson “makes sure that they are out there in the community doing community service, he makes sure that these boys are doing what they need to do not just on the field but off the field,” she said.
One of Wilson’s assistant coaches at the Middle School, Chris Strzelecki, told the Board that Wilson could help stem the flow of Franklin’s best players leaving to play for other schools.
“I’m not sure if you’re all aware that over the last 10 years there’s been 15 players that should have played football in Franklin Township that are currently playing major Division 1 college football,” he said. “Thirteen of them could have played on one team together.”
“We have a saying on our team … we teach 75 percent life and 25 percent football,” he said. “Coaches have been there at 10 o’clock at night, 1 o’clock in the morning, fielding calls, picking kids up, driving them home, and being sometimes a pseudo-father figure that they don’t have.”
Strzelecki told the Board of the time he and his fiance were fostering a player who was living in a Somerville shlter, and were having trouble with him. He said he called Wilson at 11 p./m., and he showed up at their house to help.
“That has nothing to do with football, and everything to do with character, and that’s why Blair Wilson should be the next head football coach at Franklin High School,” he said.
Schools Superintendent John Ravally told the crowd that he would meet with FHS principal Nicholas Solomon and Ken Margolin, the district Athletic Director, the morning of November 19 “and make sure their voices are heard. I certainly will do that; I think that would be fair and I will take care of that first thing tomorrow.”
Ravally noted that the process to pick a new coach “will begin at the High School, and ultimately the recommendation comes from the high school to the board. Like all our other coaches, like all our other staff members, teachers, principals, it starts at the school level.”
