'That's how you make a name for yourself'

MELROSE -- The gym's bleachers are chockablock with high school students, many sporting their red and white Red Raiders jerseys, when principal Daniel Burke, eliciting less fervor than he wants at the annual fall pep rally, bellows for Brian Morrissey to please come forward.

A surprised Morrissey -- a 5-foot-5-inch, 145-pound starting defensive back, baseball cocaptain, unofficial booster of the girls' volleyball team, voted "most spirited" male in the senior class -- bounds down the bleachers and stumbles on the last few steps. He spreads his arms with flourish, drops to one knee, and revs up the crowd with a shout of "We are!" that yields a rousing "MELROSE!" in return.

For Morrissey and the 76 other seniors -- almost one-third of the class -- who play on a fall sports team or march with the school band or unfurl banners in the color guard or yell as football cheerleaders, the last autumn season of high school has begun. With it come the sentiments of an era about to end. Volleyball cocaptain Marianne Foley has already cried three times since September -- once when her best friend Danielle Burke landed serve after serve in the game against Belmont, once when the coach was giving a pregame talk, and once on the team bus.

By the time he arrives at the Friday morning pep rally, football cocaptain Marc Crovo has already eaten an early lunch so he can digest his food before suffering the queasiness of a game-day stomach he likens to termites swarming in his belly.

By day's end, the varsity volleyball squad will have rolled over Stoneham for its 10th win and a guaranteed spot at the state tournament, the field hockey team will tie Lexington, and the swimmers will lose to Belmont. Crovo's fourth-quarter touchdown won't spare Melrose a 7-6 loss against Winchester, one made all the more disappointing by a penalty call nullifying cocaptain Jon Casey's 58-yard run to the end zone.

The score is only part of a season whose victories and defeats are measured in effort and injuries, camaraderie and quarrels, self-confidence and teamwork. At its best, sports offers young people life lessons in winning with humility, losing with grace, and performing under pressure. The seniors' last season is a bittersweet chance to leave a mark and be together. For some, it is a gateway to college, and their parents attend games with video camera in hand, making tapes for college coaches. For others, the game ends here. "I'm strictly a high school hero," says Morrissey.

History lives in the memories of all those years playing Pop Warner football or softball or basketball, and in parents, like Joan Hudd, who say, "We have imprints in these seats." It resides in the memory of the 1999 football season in which Melrose and archrival Wakefield, both undefeated, tied in the Thanksgiving game and Wakefield won a coin toss to play in the division's high school Super Bowl. "That certainly taught kids around here that life isn't fair," says coach Tim Morris.

The games begin

The girls on the volleyball team can be forgiven a hint of strut in their walks. They had nine wins, all without losing a game in best-of-three matches, then lost a nonleague game to powerhouse Haverhill after a hard-fought 30-26 second-round defeat that had Burke cheering from the bench with tears in her eyes.

Back on home court for a 5 p.m. Friday game, with cocaptain Amanda LaBella in her trademark red sneakers, Melrose pummels Stoneham 30-12 and 30-10.

"This year," says Denise Applegate, "we dominate."

The half-dozen boys lining the top row of the bleachers at the volleyball game -- one with a cowbell, another with drums, and all with voices loud enough to send a booming "Let's go, Melrose!" across the gym -- act as unofficial cheerleaders. They're part of a larger group that started when they were juniors. Morrissey, who took a break from football last year, would show up in a red-feathered headdress. He and others donned superhero costumes. Now Morrissey is back on the gridiron -- "I missed my family," he says -- but the tradition continues without him.

The five seniors on the volleyball squad have known one another, through sports, since third grade. Their dads coached them when they were younger. The team has weekly pasta parties. The 13 varsity players do homework together and pull pranks on the boys' fan club that involve wearing black and toilet-papering houses under cloak of darkness. Applegate, an aspiring hairdresser who removes seven earrings and a nose stud before games, sometimes styles a teammate's tresses.

"It's hard to find 13 girls who don't have problems with each other," cocaptain Foley says.

"We're the exception to the rule," says Burke. "When we were freshmen the seniors treated us like crap," she adds. "They gave us lists of things we had to get them. If we forgot they'd be wicked mad."

"I said when I'm a senior I don't want to be like that to people," Foley says.

Burke doesn't need the ghost of an ill-fated coin toss to know that life isn't fair. On Aug. 11, 2002, her father died of cancer. For a whole season, the team wore black bands on their jerseys.

"They were just there for me. Marianne was at the hospital. She held my hand. It was an unspoken thing," says Burke. "I was really in shock until I started going to games and he wasn't there. I'm not emotional. I don't like to show it in front of people. Volleyball was something to take my mind off it."

Good cheer

The volleyball game ends, and the football team, suited up, files into the locker room for the coach's pregame pep talk. Last fall, the team posted a 4-7 record. "You know it's your last year," says cocaptain Jason Hallett, "and you have to play harder than you've ever played before." The number by the door, 17, belonged to a 1990 graduate, Ray Racha, a bond trader killed in the World Trade Center. Members of the storied 1999 team have served their country in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The band, in scarlet jackets and ruffled shirts, warms up in the parking lot. Cheerleaders mill around, while their mothers set up a bake sale. The game is dress rehearsal for a band with its own competition the next day and subdued show for a cheering squad without the mats they need for the acrobatics they perform at meets. "I don't understand football," says cheerleading cocaptain Ashley Vinciarelli.

In contests, Vinciarelli, who was on the gymnastics team for three years until "there was something personal between me and someone else," is a "flyer" sent aloft by her teammates. "That's the funnest part," she says. "It was scary at first. You have to really trust your bases and your back spotters."

The band plays "The Star-Spangled Banner," and the football game begins. Unlike teammates weaned on Melrose sports, Andre Mills of Roxbury transferred here freshman year, along with his twin brother, as part of the Metco voluntary desegregation program. Basketball and football provided entree to a new community. "When people come to the games and stuff, they see you doing well," he says. "That's how you make a name for yourself. People say, `I saw you at the game last night.' They want to know more about you."

Mills is a lanky 6-foot-2-inch, 178-pound starting tight end. To his mother, Cheryl McDaniels, a Metco graduate watching from the stands, he's one of her miracle twins born prematurely at 2 pounds each, so small she could cradle both on the inside of one forearm. When Mills was choosing a baby picture for the yearbook, he passed over ones showing him with tubes in his tiny body. "I'm already planning the graduation party," McDaniels says. "I've been waiting for this for a long time."

Seniors occupy the top bleachers. Their numbers gradually swell to several dozen as classmates straggle in after a swim meet or after work or after sneaking a few beers. "It's a good time," says Matt Shea. "You get to see all your friends."

Liam McKnight cheers for his younger brother. One boy breezes past another and proclaims, "He's a party animal." Christine Sullivan -- class vice president, straight-A student, swim team cocaptain -- is here. So is Michael Krizanek, whose connections to the classroom are tenuous. When the principal spies him, Krizanek admits he wasn't in school that day. But he's in the bleachers now. "There's never anything to do around here," he says, "so I'll watch the game."

Drumming up support

Winchester leads 7-0 at the half, time for the band's halftime show. Mannie Goveia, who likes punk rock but considers himself too eclectic to wear a label, has been marching with the high school band since he was an eighth-grader playing saxophone. He's a drummer now, and this year he also has a guitar solo in the band's rendition of Santana's "Smooth." Off the field, fellow drummer Mike Carlson is keeper of the cowbell for the guys who cheer on the volleyball team.

The percussionists love Mountain Dew, with Goveia favoring Code Red, which he describes as "a Shirley Temple with a lot of caffeine."

The back window in the band room is stacked with more than 200 empty Mountain Dew cans, and any row above those secured by strips of tape stretched across the window frame is liable to tumble during a vigorous riff. "In band," says Goveia, "I'm a lot more outgoing because I'm a lot more comfortable with all the people because we spend all this time together."

Stephanie Genica, class secretary, twirls a shimmering gold flag with the color guard. "I never thought spinning a 6-foot pole would be fun, but it is," she says. Most girls at her lunch table shun these games -- "Football," says drama club copresident Tara Dolan, "is not the place we'd spend our Friday nights" -- but Genica's brothers played and she cheered freshman year. "Football," she says, "is in my blood."

The third quarter is almost over when Casey breaks free and sprints down the field, pigskin in hand. The referee penalizes a teammate for clipping, yet the play still has its rewards.

"It was awesome," Casey says, "just being in the open field running."

Casey's girlfriend, Jamie Pearson, misses the moment because she's busy working out a problem with a friend -- "high school drama," she calls it. She's an athlete, too, a basketball player who went to every practice and game last year, even though she was benched with a heart ailment that left her faint and vomiting and unable to see clearly after exertion. "I was just happy to be included," she says. Finally diagnosed with a condition treatable with medication, she's working with a trainer to prepare for a senior season on the court. "It was really wicked scary. I'd go to a doctor's office and there'd be all these older people," she says. "Now I'm nervous. I worry that if I can play I'm not going to be good enough."

Crovo scores a touchdown in the last two minutes of the game, but Melrose misses the extra point and Winchester runs out the clock. For the team's 11 seniors, the regular season ends with the Wakefield finale next month. At the last practice, seniors will share what football means to them, Coach Morris will douse an old cleat in gasoline, and everyone will watch it burn.

Each year, as Thanksgiving approaches, Crovo dreams about the Wakefield game. This fall, the dreams began much earlier than usual. "I dream if they lose we get pieces of their land, and if we lose they get pieces of our land. Then I play the game out," he says. "Sometimes I get switched to the other team. That's when I wake up in a sweat."