1 week Ago By By Peter Gobis For The Sun Chronicle
ATTLEBORO — He has been perhaps the most unrecognizable and unheralded member of the Attleboro High School football program for nearly four decades. Jeff Carr, however, has not gone unnoticed. Carr has watched many a Bombardier game from atop area high school press boxes and then has retreated to the football room to edit and prepare videotapes of practices, scrimmages and games for the purpose of bettering the development of every student-athlete involved in the AHS program over the years.
“Jeff has endured all the weather New England could throw at him — sunny and hot, cold and rainy, several extremely cold Thanksgiving Day games, the snow squalls in the 1992 Super Bowl — he always got the job done,” Attleboro High Athletic Director Mark Houle said of Carr enduring hours upon hours of physical and mental toll. “Jeff is one of the first ones to be at the game and last one to leave,” Houle added. “Jeff Carr exemplifies what a contributor means in a football program.
” Carr has worked with no less than five Bombardier head football coaches during his tenure spanning 36 years, in the background and on the sidelines for Dale Caparaso, Cliff Sherman, Kevin Deschenes, Mike Strachan and Jim Winters. In recognition of his dedication and efforts, Carr will become the latest honorary inductee into the Attleboro Area Football Hall of Fame when the annual ceremony and banquet to honor the AHS, North Attleboro High and Bishop Feehan High programs takes place Saturday at the Attleboro Elks Lodge. “I’ll always bleed blue,” said Carr, a member of the Attleboro High Class of 1979 and a former team co-captain as a senior of the Bombardiers boys swim team.
Carr served an internship under former Attleboro Superintendent Bart O’Connor at Attleboro High School upon graduation from Fitchburg State as one door opened to another. “He was a man of a million video cassettes,” Carr recalled of O’Connor being receptive to the idea of audio-visual programs for the school system. “He recorded everything when the VCR came out.
” Carr began in 1986 at AHS under Athletic Director Bill Madden and found himself on the sidelines when Attleboro High Principal Joe Rappa brought in Caparaso to guide the football program. “Back in the day, recording a game was done on 16-millimeter film,” Carr said. “I did a little bit of practice then (for Caparaso), but it was Cliff Sherman who got me into doing game footage.
” Sherman was the AHS boys basketball coach at the time and videotaped games. When he took over the Bombardiers football program, Carr took on game-day duties. Carr has been a member of the AHS School Department since 1986, serving as a shipping and receiving clerk as well as an IT courier, carting supplies and documentation among schools in the system.
At the time, Carr began implementing the Attleboro High Cable Access program, providing educational programming for the community. “That gave us the opportunity to do a lot of sports,” Carr said. The Attleboro High athletic department reached out to Carr to begin filming more of its events.
“Back when I started, I used a VCR deck that had a cord that ran into a camera,” he said of the makeshift apparatus. “That was one of the first remote cameras, a Sony, out there. My only drawback — and it’s always been a drawback — is battery power.
The colder it gets, the weaker your batteries get. I think that the colder it gets, the weaker my own battery gets.” Layers of clothes, insulated hats and gloves, along with retreating to shelter at halftime are prerequisites.
“I’ve always worn seven layers of clothes,” Carr said. “That’s always been a pet peeve of mine, trying to stay warm. Football can get cold up there atop a press box in the jet stream.
” Carr recalls that the coldest game ever for him was when AHS was in the Eastern Athletic Conference and had a football game at Bishop Stang in Dartmouth. “Out on Route 6, that press box was hanging over the road, the wind was blowing in,” Carr recalled. “The game started as a fog rolled in off the water, turned to rain, then turned to snow.
All the while, the wind was blowing about 70 miles per hour. That’s the coldest day it’s ever been. Then, there are the rainy Friday nights, especially at King Philip Regional High’s Macktaz Field.
“Rest assured, at least it seems that every time we go there,” Carr said of King Philip football under the lights, and the umbrellas. “If you want to play when it’s going to rain, look at the calendar for the Attleboro-at-King Philip football game to see when you can water your garden.” Over the past half dozen years or so, Carr has come down off of the press box roof into the end zone with the implementation of the HUDL Sideline game film program.
Former Bombardiers football coach (and current North Attleboro High football coach) Mike Strachan brought in an updated video program for the football team while at AHS. Strachan asked the AHS Gridiron Club to purchase an end zone camera, “that we still use — a camera that has lasted 10 years,” Carr said. “When the Hockomock League went to HUDL Sideline, that was my bane,” he recalled.
“We went from carrying one case that had a camera in it and maybe one end zone camera that was self-contained. When Kevin Deschenes was coaching, we’d set up an end zone camera, but we also set up staging in the end zone. And I would have to put that up and break that down.
“I was always the last one off the field, and sometimes they would turn the lights off.” Things didn’t always go smoothly for Carr. “When we were using that staging, (former AHS assistant football coach) Matt Bosh had just gotten a pickup truck and offered to help me move the staging,” Carr said.
“He said, ‘Just be careful, I got the truck three days ago.’ Wouldn’t you know it, when I went to put some staging in, it caved in a good 15-inch scratch and I had to tell him, ‘Bad news.’ “ Carr’s main concern though has always been capturing the action out on the field.
“When Coach Strachan brought in that end zone camera, it revolutionized the AHS video,” he said. “He brought in a Spokane, Washington-based company, Sports Scope, and they provided us with a robotic end zone camera that was directed by an iPad. This was revolutionary, the camera had the output that would feed into HUDL.
You would feed the signal of the camera down into a router which sent it to Wi-Fi which was picked up in the press box. “That team was the first to appreciate some of the camera work that we did. It’s visual learning, the X’s and the O’s.
That’s where video helps.” Carr’s son, Cody, was added to the AHS video team who “was the brains” when the HUDL program was added, according to Carr. “When HUDL Sideline came into play, we were up to 10 cases of equipment,” Carr said.
“We were setting up a wireless network on the field to be able to broadcast the end one image to the press box. When we were doing that process, we were communicating with Sports Scope so the range for the iPad was limited. What we wanted to do was have Cody in the press box controlling HUDL plus the end zone camera at the same time.
” Within a year of AHS implementing that system, Sports Scope designed its own network camera which ran off the same principle of HUDL Sideline. “It was almost that they copied the idea of what we had suggested, which was a compliment,” Carr said. Through it all, Carr has persevered.
“His work filming football practices, scrimmages and games has always been done with professionalism and pride,” Houle said. “Working through double sessions during camps and learning and implementing all the new technology with end zone cameras, press box coverage, sideline and Hudl over the years has been challenging. Thank you Jeff Carr for your dedication and contributions to the AHS football program — this honor is well deserved.
“The footage that he captured has helped coaches teach players, provided athletes with highlights and film for recruiting and has recorded the history of AHS football for nearly four decades,” Houle added. “His end-of-the-season highlight films at the banquet were always the perfect way to wrap up the season.” If there has been a bit of a bonus, it has been the number of football swags that Carr has collected from being around the AHS football programs.
Carr plays in a Wednesday night golf league at the Chemawa Golf Course and one of the starters, former AHS assistant coach Dale Langille, learned of Carr’s sartorial collection and presented him with 12 shirts. “I think that I have to build a walk-in closet with all the T-shirts, sweatshirts, jackets that I have,” Carr joked. “I think that my collection grew five-fold when Strachan came in.
” Carr has also served North Attleboro TV, filming Red Rocketeer football. More recently, he has trekked over to Norton High’s Adams Field for the Lancer football program. “We’ve graduated from different sizes of videotape to using a memory card,” Carr said of his near four-decade documentation.
“Now, the kids are watching the game that they just played four hours later. No more filming or editing 16-millimeter film. Now it’s a memory card, sent into the Cloud and every kid has an account to see that game.
“That’s the whole reason why we’re filming these games,” he added. “So that the kids can see what they’ve done right and what they’ve done wrong.” The Attleboro Area Football Hall of Fame will conduct its 52nd annual banquet and induction ceremonies to honor players, coaches and supporters of the Bombardier, Rocketeer and Shamrock programs.
It is an event in which fiercely competitive opponents from the present and past can share in an evening of camaraderie and mutual respect. The Football Hall of Fame’s Class of 2024 inductees are Pat Dunn (‘14), Brenden Massey (‘15) and Tim Christensen (‘15) from Attleboro High; representing Bishop Feehan are Mark Gaboury (‘81), Chris Paine (‘08), and Matt Glebus (‘13;) along with Pat Munley (‘15), Nick Rajotte (‘17) and Tom Reynolds (‘17) from North Attleboro High. Proceeds from this year’s banquet will endow the Football Hall of Fame Scholarship program, with monies awarded to select senior football players from each high school who exhibit an outstanding commitment to football, great leadership skills and sportsmanship.
The Hall of Fame Scholarship Award winners among the Class of 2024 graduates are: from Attleboro High, Dan Haist, Matt Harvie, Jackson Huntington, Brody McKenna and Adam Woolf; from Bishop Feehan High, Jack Allie, Timothy Caggiano Jr., Joseph Gallo, Vincent Lascuola-Helmar and Andrew Vickerman; and from North Attleboro High, Tyler Goyette, Chris Hanewich, Lucas Mattson, Nolan McLaughlin and Devin Naclerio. For tickets or to make a donation to the Football Hall of Fame Banquet visit AttleboroAreaFootballHOF.
com ..
