Island Cup
Two Teams, Twelve Miles of Ocean, and Fifty Years of Football Rivalry
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
To most of us "wash-ashores," the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket are resort destinations, summer homes for the Kennedys, the Obamas, and--yes--Bill Belichick. But the year-rounders see a different picture.
After the tourists and jetsetters leave, the cold weather descends, and the local shop owners, carpenters, and fishermen ready themselves for the main event: high school football. For over fifty years, the local teams been locked in a fierce rivalry. They play for pride, a trophy, and very often, a shot at the league championship. Despite their tiny populations, both islands are dangerous on the football field.
In this far-reaching book, James Sullivan tells the story not only of the Whaler-Vineyarder rivalry, but of two places without a country. Filled with empty houses nine months of the year, Nantucket and the Vineyard have long, unique histories that include such oddities as an attempt to secede from the U.S., and the invention of a proprietary sign language. Delving into the rich history of both places, Sullivan paints a picture of a bygone New England, a place that has never stopped fighting for its life--and for the rights to coveted Island Cup.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
College is the province of football rivalries, but two small high schools in Massachusetts have established a rivalry that challenges the phenomena of "Army-Navy, Ohio State-Michigan, Georgia-Florida." The high schools on Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket play annually for the coveted "Island Cup," first awarded in 1978 after the rivalry was almost 20 years old. Sullivan (Seven Dirty Words) chronicles the evolution of the contest played not by the "wealthy white Americans" who summer there, but by "boys of polyglot heritage," "the working people who truly define Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard." The rivalry achieved enough fame to be featured in Sports Illustrated and the New Yorker, but Sullivan's narrative is uneven, at times to the point that chapters are little more than a series of paragraphs that themselves are isolated vignettes. Island history is a highlight interspersed between game summaries and life stories, but part of that history is "uncommonly high rates of depression, alcoholism, and suicide," and what sadly emerges is a tale of broken homes and the physical toll of high school football.
