By Dakota Antelman, Contributing Writer
Photo/submitted
Westborough – After a successful season at home, five local football players took their talents to Florida last month as members of the highly selective Football University (FBU) Massachusetts team.
Ryan Miller, Sean Keaveney and Andrew Evanoff of Westborough, Seamus Murphy of Hopkinton and Andrew Dufault of Milford had all played on the Westborough Youth Football sixth grade team before they won spots on the FBU team this fall.
The FBU team, made up of sixth grade students from across Massachusetts, would go on to win the Northeast region and earn sixth place out of the 64 teams who played in the national tournament that culminated in Naples Fla.
“To finish sixth out of 64 [teams] is pretty good; we’re really proud of our guys,” said Paul Keaveney, Sean’s father. “It’s not local so nobody knows about it the way they would if it were a local thing but they did well. It was a pretty good showing not only for Massachusetts but for Westborough as well.”
The boys all had to earn their spots on the team at a series of tryouts earlier in the fall. Upon making the team, the players attended a series of practices at Xaverian High School in Westwood and Boston College to prepare for the tournament.
After making it through the regional bracket without allowing a single point, Massachusetts faced the Dallas Metro team in quarterfinals of the national tournament. Though they lost to Dallas in that game, and, as a result, saw their championship run come to an end, Ryan Miller, one of two quarterbacks for the team, was proud of the group’s effort.
“The level of play was a lot higher than most of us were used to [in Massachusetts],” he said. “It was a more physical game than we’re used to but we handled it well. I think we did pretty good against Dallas.”
Keaveney noted that many of the FBU families would not have even been able to get their sons to that game in Florida without a series of donations from the Westborough community. In particular, the team received, according to Keaveney, large donations from area restaurants including JP’s Restaurant Pub, the Westborough House of Pizza, Central House, and Arturo’s Ristorante.
“Everybody doesn’t have the money to make a trip like this. We have to raise money to do it,” Keaveny said. He later added, “The owners as well as the patrons and the staff of those places were really generous to these kids.”
After being able to attend the trip, Ryan Miller’s dad, Chad, who is also the the town team coach, is excited to see how the Westborough boys will apply their experiences from the FBU Championship to their football futures.
“The number one thing these kids learned is confidence — confidence that they can compete with teams from around the country. We beat South Dakota. We beat Long Island. We beat Rhode Island. These are areas of the country that are known for having good players and we were competing with them,” he said.
“I can’t wait for the fall to start and I hope these kids are ready to compete again, it’s going to be a lot of fun,” he added.
