Denominator anything but common in school playoff

Reading star Ryan Shea, who left Walpole when his parents died, will be running into some old friends - literally - on Tuesday. (Robert spencer/for the boston globe)

READING - Everyone knew why Ryan Shea went away. His father died, then his mother, and he was gone.

He was 15, and Walpole had been his world. He had learned to walk there, to fish there, to play football there. The only home he ever knew was a modest cape on Daisy Drive, a woodsy cul-de-sac where childhood memories were made.

When Shea's mother, Deborah, succumbed to breast cancer the day after Thanksgiving two years ago, he was a promising sophomore on the Walpole High School football team. In his mother's final months, he immersed himself in football and weightlifting. His teammates became his extended family.

Then he had to go. He needed a new home, a new family, a place where his mother and father would have wanted him to be. He found refuge with one of his few adult relatives, a cousin who lived in Reading, and his days on the football field with the Walpole Rebels were history.

Or so it seemed.

On Tuesday, in one of life's little blessings, Shea and the Rebels will play again - this time on opposite sides of the football. In a battle of unbeaten Division 2 powers, Shea's new football family, the Reading Rockets, will host Walpole in the Eastern Massachusetts high school playoffs, the winner advancing to the Division 2 Super Bowl Saturday at Gillette Stadium.

For Shea and his former football brethren in Walpole, it's a holiday homecoming of their dreams.

"We never imagined we would ever play against Ryan after we played with him our whole lives," said Ryan Collins, a Walpole captain and one of many Rebels who played Pop Warner football with Shea as children. "It's going to be weird but exciting."

Both teams enter the game at 11-0, with Walpole ranked fourth in the latest Globe poll, Reading ninth, and Shea their common denominator. He anchors Reading's defense as a Middlesex League all-star nose tackle, and he remains with Walpole in spirit.

"I miss him, man," Walpole coach Danny Villa said. "We hated to lose him."

Shea wanted to stay in Walpole after his mother died. One of three brothers, he had spent his last years on Daisy Drive helping his mother fight for her life. She was diagnosed with cancer soon after Shea's father, Michael, a truck driver for American Steel and Aluminum in Norwood, died of a heart attack in 1998 at age 44.

"Ryan was really close to his mother," said Mark Ellis, a Walpole linebacker and longtime friend. "He took care of her a lot."

When Deborah died at age 54, townspeople flocked to her funeral, and a number of Walpole families offered to open their homes to her sons. Villa, who played 12 seasons in the NFL, including five with the Patriots, tried harder than anyone to help Shea stay in town. He said he made the effort both to honor Shea's wishes and benefit his football team.

"I was kind of selfish in the beginning," Villa said. "We tried everything we could to keep him here."

But Deborah, a nurse at Brigham and Women's Hospital, had insisted that her sons live with relatives after she died. Her wishes trumped all others, and Villa ultimately conceded that it was in Shea's best interests to find a home with his next of kin. Deborah's oldest son, Matt, then a star running back for Xaverian, soon joined the Bentley College football team. But Ryan and his younger brother, Colin, then 14, needed new families.

"As much as we wanted Ryan to stay, we needed to consider what his mother wanted," Villa said.

His days in Walpole over, Shea set out for Reading, a 40-mile trip that felt like 400. He arrived at Reading Memorial High School as a grieving stranger with an additional burden: He walked on crutches, having broken two bones in his leg while playing for the Rebels a week before his mother died.

"It was pretty hard," Shea said. "It took me a while to make new friends and adjust, but football helped."

He began by thrusting himself, crutches and all, into Reading's offseason conditioning program.

"He came here under some real tough circumstances," Reading coach John Fiore said. "But football clearly was very important to him and he was very intense about making himself a better player."

As Shea "threw around some serious weight" in the lifting program, Fiore said, "The kids gravitated to him right away."

They gained even greater respect for him when they saw him play.

"He only weighs about 185, but he plays like he's 290 or 310," Fiore said. "He's tough, strong, and he brings a great amount of intensity to our team. He's a huge reason why we have had success this year."

The last time a Reading football team went 11-0 was 1995, when the Rockets defeated Acton-Boxborough in the Division 2A Super Bowl. They have since returned to the championship game three times, winning in '96, '98, and 2000.

Walpole, meanwhile, is 11-0 for the first time since 1991, and trying to avenge a loss to Bishop Feehan in last year's Super Bowl. The Rebels also lost the 2004 Super Bowl and are looking for their first championship trophy since 1997.

For Reading to return to the title game, the Rockets will need an edge in the trenches, where Shea is expected to line up against a longtime friend, Walpole guard Bryan Norberg. The fact is, though, nearly every player Shea hits will be a Walpole friend.

"To look at their sideline and see all the coaches and all the kids I used to play with, it's going to be surreal," he said.

Win or lose, Shea will be remembered in Walpole and Reading as an unassuming star who provided a lesson for other young people facing personal tragedies.

"Some coaches talk about football making you resilient," Fiore said. "In Ryan's case, life has made him resilient."

As Shea prepared for the final week of his high school football career, he paused to reflect on a few of his childhood joys in Walpole: the mornings fishing with his father, the afternoons building makeshift forts in the woods with his buddies, the nights spent at home with his mother. He said the pain of her death has eased a bit with time and he has gained some comfort from living in the Reading home in which his father grew up.

But Shea is still a Walpole kid at heart. He still wears his "Walpole Powerlifting" T-shirt and values his Walpole friends as much as they respect him. He may need to knock a few of them down to reach the Super Bowl, but nothing will diminish the memories of the life they once shared.

"They are really going to try to beat each other up during the game," Villa said. "But when it's over, they are going to end up hugging each other. That's the beauty of high school football."

And the legacy of an orphan with two hometowns.

Bob Hohler can be reached at hohler@globe.com