Teenager recalled as 'gifted athlete'
Holliston youth collapsed at game, died hours later
HOLLISTON - Sheets of white paper covered in colorful notes of remembrance and loss lined the walls of the main entrance of Holliston High School yesterday. They were written in tribute to a popular Holliston varsity football player who collapsed and died Friday night after being hit in the chest during a scrimmage.
The messages were one of the ways family and friends fought to cope with the death of Joseph "Joey" Larracey, a 16-year-old junior lineman who had been playing for the school for three years. Grief counselors also met with students and teammates. Cars lined the street where Larracey lived, and people hugged in his family's driveway.
Larracey's uncle Dean Cerrati sat on the tailgate of a pick-up truck. He said Larracey was a good kid, who liked and played all sorts of sports, including baseball, soccer, and basketball. "He was always laughing, always smiling, respectful. Everybody says that, but he really was."
Larracey, who was a 6-foot-1-inch, 190-pound offensive and defensive tackle, collapsed at a football scrimmage at Apponequet Regional High School in Lakeville on Friday, after he had been hit earlier in the game, according to a statement from the Holliston school district. Head coach Todd Kiley declined to discuss the details of what happened.
Tom Larracey, another of Joey Larra cey's uncles, told MetroWest Daily News that the teen began to feel dizzy during a huddle. Trainers believed he had a concussion. He regained consciousness at Morton Hospital and Medical Center in Taunton, but doctors found that his lungs were full of fluid, and he died shortly thereafter, Tom Larracey said.
The scene at Holliston High School was quiet yesterday afternoon. On the message sheets, students had written about their shock at Larracey's death. They wrote about their long friendships, stretching back as far as preschool in one case. Football players wrote that they could not imagine going on the field without him.
"By all accounts, Joey was a top-notch student, as well as a gifted athlete, who, judging by the hundreds of messages on our wall today, was truly loved by his fellow students and by the faculty here," said Bradford Jackson, superintendent of Holliston Public Schools. "This obviously has been an incredibly difficult day here in Holliston."
The school was open all day for students who wanted to meet with grief counselors and will also be open today.
Kiley said that Larracey "possessed absolutely every quality you would want in a player, a teammate, and a friend."
He coached Larracey for the last three years and said he thought he knew him well. But as he reads the notes friends leave for him, he's learning so much more about the sort of person Larracey was. "He was a special kid."
Tommy Moore, 17, a senior at Holliston High School was practicing for soccer on the school's football field yesterday. He had played with Larracey on a summer league baseball team this year. Moore said he was funny and got along with most everyone.
"He was a kid no one would have anything bad to say about," Moore said. "I've never heard anyone have anything against him."
Back at Larracey's house, just before it began to rain, Larracey's grandfather, Vincent Cerrati, called his grandson "a kid who society is going to miss." He said he and Larracey used to play golf together and cause some "general mayhem."
"We had a great time together," he said.
By yesterday afternoon, friends had also formed a group for Larracey on Facebook, an Internet social networking site: "R.i.P. Joey larracey, you will be missed" More than 450 people had joined the group, and a number of them left messages to Larracey and his family.
Also on Friday night, a Buckingham Browne & Nichols football player had emergency surgery and was in intensive care yesterday at Boston Medical Center after collapsing in his team's huddle during a preseason scrimmage at Wayland High School. The junior defensive back became wobbly and collapsed, Joe Clifford, the Cambridge school's director of communications said.
"There was no clear cut, violent collision or tackle that one would point to as an obvious cause," Clifford said.
School administrators, including Rebecca T. Upham, the head of the school; Jack Knapp, director of the upper school and coaches; and head coach John Papas, visited the player and his family at the hospital, Clifford said. The team held a meeting yesterday.
"The boys were solemn and concerned, and wanted to know how they could help," Clifford said.
The exact cause of Larracey's death is still unknown, Jackson said.
Jackson described Holliston as a tight-knit community that would come together during this time of loss.
"Holliston is this kind of community within suburbia where neighborhoods still have block parties, where families still go on vacation together, where kids are the nucleus of this community," Jackson said. "It hits everybody hard."
Globe correspondent Padraig Shea contributed to this report. 