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Fire from the Start: The Early Years of Conval Football



Flag football was all the rage in Conval's first year, 1970.


There were no goalposts, stands, scoreboard or lights, but they let school out early that November day in 1970 to see a football game at brand new Conval High. Local newspapers reported more than 500 students and townspeople watched a thriller in the championship of Conval’s first Intramural Flag Football League. It was won by Guidance Counselor Paul McCarthy’s Patriots over Assistant Principal Chick Hamel’s Giants, 32-27. (Both administrators not only coached, they were passionate participants.)


The seeds of football enthusiasm at Conval never faded, and 22 seasons later, the school fielded its first interscholastic team, playing a JV schedule for the 1992 and ’93 seasons. Like the first flag football-fanatic Cougars, passion for football was undeniable, and big crowds came out to cheer. Conval tied Souhegan (then a brand new school) 30-30 in their first game in 1992 as quarterback Tim Vance scored with no time remaining. In fact, they surprised Division 3 that year by winning two games.


After another year of JV play, Conval decided it was time to move up to varsity in the 1994 season. And that was a whole other ballgame as a freshmen-dominated squad took on long-established powerhouses. They went 0-8 and fell in their opening game to Laconia, 54-0. The Cougars could have been discouraged but they never gave up. Fans kept following them, home and away. The team went nuts when quarterback Vance scored and completed a two-point conversion to give Conval its first varsity points ever, in a 35-8 loss to Monadnock.


In that game, a player who would one day become Conval Athletic Director—Kevin Proctor—earned high praise from Coach Bob Marshall. “Kevin is a very good athlete. If he plays well, he opens up many options for us.”


Quarterback Tim Vance, 1993 season.


The 1995 season began the same way, with Conval losing its first three games. Finally, the Cougars broke through with a pulsating 8-6 win over Stevens High of Claremont. In that game, running back Nick Lanthier stunned everyone by racing to a 96-yard touchdown. “It was the biggest hole I’ver ever seen—I haven’t seen one like that since I’ve been playing here,” Lanthier said. “Everybody blocked and I just headed to the goal line.”


Conval later upended Pelham 8-6 to finish the season at 2-6. After an injury-riddled 3-6 campaign in 1996, the Cougars finished the ’97 season with a 4-5 record—the best to date at that time. But in those early years, nothing came easy. In fact, off the field, despite numerous enthusiastic attempts before voters, the team remained funded solely by individuals and businesses. (In May of 1998, that trend shockingly disappeared when the school board went against voters’ wishes and voted 6-5-1 to fund all sports.)


A Conval predecessor, the 1926 Peterborough High football team, could relate. The squad attracted 27 boys—a significant portion of the school’s male population. Like Conval, the local boys found competition only from larger and established powerhouses. Like Conval, the Peterborough boys were supported privately, by the Rotary Club. And like Conval, fan support was tremendous through thick and thin. Their first-ever win against New Albany (MA) Academy in the fall of ’26 was long remembered for its celebration by the town long after the game ended,


But even then, while football was a lot of fun, it was hard. Really hard.


In fact, the Peterborough Transcript tempered the enthusiasm of local fans by cautioning: “The general belief is that it takes five years to establish a sport of that basis.”


Van Gould, on the run in 1993.


Words passed along to the generations, because it took six years of varsity play for Conval High to break through and show that it could compete with the state’s powerhouses. On September 30, 2000, Conval had its “biggest win in school history” according to Coach Steve Bartsch, upsetting Kingswood 21-19 to move to 3-2 in Division 3. It marked the first time in history that a Cougar football team defeated a New Hampshire powerhouse.


Conval finished 4-5, but unlike the other 4-5 seasons, they competed with the best in the state. It was a year for record-breaking performances, including 12 by running back and current Conval assistant coach Brad Davis. In the stunning win over Kingswood, Davis ran for two touchdowns and secured the win with 19 seconds left with an interception at the Conval four yard line.


This week, Coach Davis posted on the Conval Football Family Facebook page the undying optimism of Conval football players some 25 years after his record-breaking season: “Unprompted, some of the guys put their team goals down for the season on the weight room white board the other day. Let’s help these guys meet their goals this season. It starts tomorrow and it takes the whole village!”


Back to a rugged D2 schedule this season after two post-COVID years in D3. And why not? Because at Conval, football is a lot of fun, but it’s hard.


And full of optimism...


Team white board, 2024.

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