Good morning!
Deerfield Academy sends students to college, not war, but Paul Lufkin did both. Lufkin, who died earlier this year at age 78, was born and raised in Gloucester and did a PG year at DA in 1960.
Six years later, he was in Vietnam with the 1st Marine Division at Chu Lai. Prior to enlisting, he’d been at Boston College on a hockey scholarship and later he played briefly for the U.S. National Team.
Almost 15,000 Marines were killed in Vietnam, but Lufkin returned home safely and was honorably discharged at the rank of captain. He returned to Deerfield to coach hockey and teach algebra. There were many smart algebra students on Old Albany Road, but I wasn’t one of them. Recognizing how hopeless I was at figuring out x from y, Lufkin made me write a term paper. It’s a safe bet I’m the only student who ever passed an algebra class by writing an essay called “Education from Confucius to Communism.”
Lufkin’s entire life revolved around sports, mostly hockey. He was a head coach at Yale but lasted only four seasons, scouted for the Edmonton Oilers and became a New York Islanders’ television analyst. After a stint in NASCAR, he founded his own sports agency, Lufkin & Associates.
He retired in 2019 and lived with his family in Dataw Island, S.C., until his death in January. Lufkin only spoke of the war once in class, about his first night back on campus when the church bell chimed and he dove in the bushes. I never saw him again after Deerfield, but I’ve always been grateful to him for giving me the break that helped me graduate.
The Florida Panthers promoted Brett Peterson last month, making him the first Black assistant general manager in NHL history. The 39-year-old Peterson played schoolboy hockey for coach Steve Jacobs at Cushing Academy in nearby Ashburnham.
“I’m so proud to be a Cushing alum,” Peterson told “Hockey on Campus” host Bernie Corbett. “Coach Jacobs was such a great guy.”
UMass hoops are scheduled to open Wednesday at LaSalle (time TBA) before a noontime tipoff at Northeastern a week from Sunday, but the Minutemen won’t play their first home game at the Mullins Center until Dec. 30 against George Mason.
USA Today’s Jeff Sagarin ranks UMass 147th, wedged between Little Rock (2-1) and Southern Illinois (0-0).
While the 10-1 Chiefs were dismantling the 7-5 Bucs in Tampa Bay on Sunday, Jim Nantz made an observation to sidekick Tony Romo. “The Raiders were absolutely dreadful today at Atlanta. Why were they able to beat Kansas City in Kansas City, and almost beat them for a second time last week?”
Familiarity within the division, answered Romo: “When you play against a head coach a lot and a team a lot, you’re able to always adjust and you kinda know the rules, right? But when you don’t see Kansas City very often, and you don’t know their speed until you play them, you think you have a good design, and then you show up and and it’s not so good.”
Discussions like that are what separate good broadcast teams from the not-so-good.
POWER 5 QB AT UMASS? The less said about the UMass football team’s 0-4 record and its anemic offense the better.
Oh all right, the Minutemen were outscored 161-12, and two of those points came by virtue of a safety. Coach Walt Bell gave all four quarterbacks a chance, and they combined for one touchdown pass and five interceptions.
The good news is that UMass has an incoming quarterback who’s regarded as a Power 5 recruit (meaning he could play in any of the top five conferences). Brady Olson of Milford High School is 6-foot-3, 190 pounds and still growing. “Brady’s got a big-time arm, sees the field well and has great pocket presence,” Milford coach Dale Olson (Brady’s uncle) told Milford Daily News sportswriter Tommy Cassell.
Now the hope is that Bell can get some offensive linemen who can block. Last week, former UMass guard Ray Thomas-Ishman helped anchor a University of Buffalo front five that enabled ball carriers to rush 54 times for 515 yards and 10 touchdowns in a 70-41 win against Kent State.
Thomas-Ishman was suspended in Sept. 2019, sat out the season, got his degree and left for Buffalo to play as a grad transfer.
RED SOX PRIME PUMP: Back when they were stinking up the AL East and en route to the fourth-worst record in MLB, Red Sox president Tom Werner promised that come December, the non-tenders would be stacked high and deep on his desk. Doomsday has come and passed, and not a single arbitration eligible player was non-tendered, including Ryan Brasier, Matt Barnes, Austin Brice and Kevin Plawecki. All are signed through 2021, including southpaw Eduardo Rodriguez.
The last we saw of Rodriguez was March 12 against Tampa Bay when he struck out eight of nine Rays in three innings. E-Rod was coming off a 19-6 season with a 3.81 ERA, but then came the shutdown, his COVID-19 diagnosis and subsequent cardiomyopathy. He was done for the season, but the Red Sox rightly feel good enough about him to sign him to a one year, $8.3 million deal for next season.
“A lot of people don’t know Tommy Heinsohn spoke at St. Kaz,” said Turners Falls’ George Bush, referring to the great Celtics forward who passed away on Nov. 10. “It was the late ’60s or early ’70s. We sat around and somebody asked his greatest game. He said it was the seventh game against the St. Louis Hawks in 1957. He scored 37 points and had 23 rebounds and fouled out in overtime.
“I was at that game with my brother Frank,” added Bush. “The Celtics led 125-123 and Bob Petit got the ball on the last play and his layup rolled around the rim and went out and that was that.”
SQUIBBERS: Deerfield Academy is building an outdoor hockey rink off Old Albany Road that will cost $600,000 and give student-athletes the opportunity to compete this winter. The school’s in discussions with Northfield Mount Hermon and Williston Academy to have a 14-game schedule. … Bernie Carbo’s biographer Peter Hantzis is mourning the loss of Tom Seaver within weeks of Bob Gibson’s passing. “Two of the top 10 pitchers in baseball history, both gone,” wrote Hantzis. “Bernie told me that Gibson and Seaver were so competitive they’d throw at each other.” … Arizona’s Andy Isabella made a Julian Edelman-like catch in the fourth quarter of last week’s game against the Patriots. At UMass, opposing teams couldn’t couldn’t stop Isabella and he was their only weapon. He holds the record for receiving yards with 3,526, or slightly over two miles, and was the Cardinals’ second-round pick (62nd overall) in the 2019 draft. … Tampa Bay beat writer Ira Kaufman to Sirius-XM’s Chris Russo: “Tom Brady is out of sorts. He’s ornery. We got problems here.” …. Sports talkshows on television are rife with snake oil ads for low testosterone and enlarged prostates, but the most irritating of them all is the guy in the baseball cap who stares balefully into the camera and says, “I’m not ready to lose my hair. Not now…” Just wondering if Bill Belichick’s lining up son Steve to take over the head coaching reins, mullet and all. … Carson Wentz has been sacked 46 times and thrown 15 interceptions this season, tops in the NFL in both categories. … The last quarterback to win a game with a QB rating lower than Cam Newton’s 23.6 on Sunday was Mark Sanchez in 2012, according to the Boston Herald’s Tony Massarotti.… In three consecutive nights at the Maui Classic this week, former NMH hoopster Kellan Grady scored 14 points in 34 minutes in Davidson’s two-point loss to Texas, 17 points in 36 minutes in a one-point loss to Providence and 22 points in 38 minutes in a four-point win against UNLV. … Unless it was copy edited, three weeks ago I referred to the Liberty University football team as the Flame, but they’re the Flames. The Flame was the name of a seedy bar in Detroit that Yankees pitcher Jim Bouton tricked two rookies into visiting, as told in his book “Ball Four.” … Bet you didn’t know the first singing group to record “Mr. Moonlight” prior to the Beatles in 1965 was Dr. Feelgood and the Interns. … No word whether Connecticut’s Mark Stewart Greenstein will run again for president in four years. Greenstein’s lone platform was bringing the Whalers back to Hartford. … Given the one-sided losses, Walt Bell needs to come up with better quotes, funny quotes, perhaps take a cue from the late Spike Dykes who said after his Texas Tech team got blown out: “Oh, we played about like three tons of buzzard puke this afternoon.”
Chip Ainsworth is an award-winning columnist who has penned his observations about sports for four decades in the Pioneer Valley. He can be reached at chipjet95@yahoo.com