BLACKSTONE – Joshua Euglow sat on a bench near tennis courts overlooking the football practice field behind the Blackstone-Millville Regional High School. He is in his ninth season as the Chargers head varsity football coach and he was coming off a difficult loss to rival Bellingham, 22-0.

“The halftime score was 0-0,” he said as a broad grin appeared in the center of his bushy beard. He did not sound like a coach agitated by the loss. “I told the kids this, it was probably one of the best halves of football I’ve seen defensively from this program. They were flying around. They were excited. They were making hits and making plays. We just got gassed in the second half.”

Euglow wants his team to keep a healthy perspective on where they are as a program. “We always play close with Bellingham,” he said. “They were the better football team that day. They outlasted us. They executed better than we did. But that just gives us motivation to keep working.”

The Blackstone-Millville football program has seen better days record wise. From 2017 to 2019, the Chargers finished with three straight winning seasons and a record of 18-15 during that span. However, COVID ravaged the program.

“I know we’re not the only school that has had to live with it,” Euglow said. “I just think the whole COVID thing really hit hard with the kids at the school. You know, being at home; learning from home; doing the remote learning; doing the half in school, half at home. It just became hard for the kids to get motivated to want to do anything and it just traveled through pretty much every sport last year and it was just hard.”

With last season postponed to the spring of 2021, Euglow had very little contact with his players due to COVID restrictions. All offseason workout and football offseason programs were nonexistent. Coupled with already dealing with an inexperienced and unfocused team in the spring Fall II season, playing football was difficult as they finished the short schedule, 0-6.

“In the spring, that’s when we knew we were starting from scratch,” he said.

Euglow felt it was time to rebuild the team’s culture and he knew exactly where it had to start. Still seated on the bench facing the tennis courts, he turned to look back at the high school. He smiled and pointed toward the building and said, “it starts right in there,” referring to how his players interact with each other and with the school community as a whole. “You know a winning culture starts right in there.”

However, another difficult obstacle is their low roster numbers and inexperience with more than half the team’s first year varsity players underclassmen, including nine sophomores and eleven freshmen. “Right now, we’re kind of in a rebuilding phase,” Euglow said. “We had a really good team a few years back, but it was a really old team. We had a lot of juniors and seniors pretty much playing all of the positions. They had a lot of experience and knew how to play.”

With the current roster at 34 players, including three starters missing due to injuries, Euglow relies on his senior captains to bring the young players along. It is his captains that have set a tone for the players to be accountable for their actions. The three senior captains are Caiden Bernard, Zach Castonguay, and Dylin Chicoine. All three have been in the program for four years and were unanimously voted by the players to be team captains at the end of last season.

“They have taken to that leadership role since last season ended,” Euglow said. “They would reach out to the team to get the word out about workouts, passing leagues, team gatherings, etc. They give their all each day … When we start practice, they’re the ones you hear setting the tone and setting the example for everyone out there. I think it was very obvious to everyone why they were voted captains.”

They also set the tone in the school hallways and inside the classrooms.

“We definitely try to lead by example and do all the right things at practice and in school,” Castonguay said.

Bernard said, it can be “patchy at times (with the freshmen behavior in school), but they are learning.”

“Like Caiden said, it’s patchy,” said Castonguay. “But there are definitely kids coming along.”

The captains mentioned several players, such as juniors Adam Rockwell and Aaron Marcotte, sophomores Ethan Arzigian and Daniel Forest, and freshmen Nick Torricelli and Shaun Haynes, who have bought into the sea change in culture and have represented Chargers football as a positive member of the school community. However, they admit their team has a long way to go. 

“We’ll always have those kids that are going to mess around,” Chicoine said. “But we try to keep it to a minimum.”

“But recently, the kids have not been their best,” Bernard conceded.

“Yeah, they had been acting up,” Castonguay said. “Obviously it’s an adjustment to get back into school.” 

“Mainly, it’s the freshmen who are new to this school having trouble,” said Chicoine. “They just got to realize they represent this program and it’s our job to keep them in line.”

“Bottom line, you mess around, you won’t play,” Bernard said.

Euglow backed his captains and said the most important focus of his team is accountability in the classroom and on the field. “They are students first,” he said. “I have conversations with their teachers all the time. We stress to them they need to set a good example. I love it when they tell me when our players do great things in class. At the end of it, the lessons they learn are what’s going to build good men.”

As for playing football, it is no coincidence that the players making an impact on the field are the same players cited by the captains and the coaching staff demonstrating high character as student-athletes.

Castonguay and Haynes make up a potent pass rushing and run stopping duo as the team’s defensive tackles. Castonguay is fast and smart on his feet. He is able to set the edge and keep opposing running backs from making a big gain on the outside, but he also has the ability to use his speed to put pressure on the quarterback. “He understands his responsibilities at defensive end,” Euglow said. “He seems to always make the right play.”

Haynes makes plays by using his size and strength to disrupt opposing offenses. “He’s probably the biggest kid on the team,” Euglow said. “He looks like a senior and he’s a freshman. He’s just a big body, for sure. He plays great for us.”

They’re not the only players doing well for the Chargers. “We have a lot of young players that are making an impact,” Euglow said. The coach cited Forest at running back and linebacker, Arzigian at quarterback, wide receiver, and linebacker, Torricelli at offensive and defensive guard, and Marcotte at linebacker as making a solid impact in games and at practice.

The Chargers also run the ball well with nearly 200 yards as a team on the ground against Bellingham. “We have a pretty good run game,” said Euglow. “Our offensive line is pretty experienced. We have four returning offensive linemen with one freshman. We have a consistently gelled offensive line.”

Making up that line is Bernard and Castonguay at tackles, Marcotte and Torricelli at the guard positions, and Rockwell at center. Bernard said they are effective when they can be aggressive off the line “by firing into their blocks.”

The defense is equally aggressive with Chicoine calling the defensive plays from the linebacker position.

Unfortunately for the Chargers, they lost their second game against Uxbridge 24-6. Euglow said the team “had every opportunity but we just did not connect on what we needed to. The shining part of the game was definitely our run game.”

Forest excelled with 140 yards on 16 carries and junior Andrew Felice emerged as a running threat with 73 yards on 10 carries. Arzigian also had a 1-yard rushing touchdown at quarterback. “Our O-Line blocked well allowing us to have the success we did running the ball,” Euglow said.

“Our defense looked solid again,” he said. “We were just put in bad positions constantly. Our Offense had three turnovers, and we definitely played more defense than offense. We need to do a better job protecting the ball, and we need to develop a passing game.”

Win or lose, the captains said there’s a right way to play football and a right way to act as a representative of Blackstone-Millville. “We try to instill a winning spirit,” he said. “We want our team to play tough, but also have a good attitude in school. We want to feel we’re all one team. That’s important to us.”

“I definitely have seen an improvement with the freshmen as the days have been going on,” Bernard said. “Especially today, I heard a lot of good things from the teachers, because I ask the teachers, ‘tell me how they’re doing?’ just to make sure they’re doing certain things in class and in the halls that best represents Charger football. Today, they were definitely better and we’ll make sure they keep getting better.” 

Blackstone-Millville Regional

High School Football

At a Glance

Nickname: Chargers

Affiliation: Dual Valley Conference

Colors: Purple and Gold

2021 Record: 0-2

Captains: Caiden Bernard, Zach Castonguay, Dylin Chicoine

Coach: Joshua Euglow (Ninth year)

Assistants: Adam Bernard, Ruben Costa, Kevin Cruz,

        Nick D’Eletto, Daniel Garcia, Gregg