Blue Hills runs streak to 13

Ed Catabia spent the past few seasons grooming Ed Madden to take over for him as head football coach at Blue Hills. Clearly, Catabia did his job well. He retired following the Fall 2 season in the spring, handed the reigns over to Madden and the Good Ship SS Warrior hasn’t skipped a beat. Friday’s 42-14 win over Old Colony improved Blue Hills’ record to 6-0 (13 in a row overall, the second longest active streak in the state).

“Ed (Madden) is a good friend, I had him as a student. He’s been my assistant coach, my defensive coordinator and offensive coordinator. He knows the program and he was ready to take over.

“He’s still a new coach and there is always that learning curve. But the kids have adapted well to the transition from me to him as a head coach.”

Madden hasn’t found the actual coaching itself to be difficult. It’s the extracurricular things involved in running the program that have been a little more taxing than he expected.

“(Catablia) did a great job grooming me for this,” Madden said. “The toughest part is the housekeeping, watching the rosters, the paperwork and making sure to respond to emails as soon as they come in.

“I am just lucky to have this group of kids and my assistants. Ryan Kiff, David Bohane, Bill Polito and our new staff pickup, Kyle Stiscia, are great.”

Madden is not naive enough to believe he’s going to be undefeated for the rest of his coaching career (though he wouldn’t be opposed to it). He knows the day will eventually come and he’s already prepared for it.

“I’ve always believed that you have to stay in the present as much as possible,” Madden said. “When the time comes that we do lose a game, we’ll use it as a learning experience. There is no such thing as failure, just setbacks. I tell the kids, nothing (bad) happens to us, it happens for us.

“In the Old Colony game, we had three penalties on the opening drive. It showed we were not on our game, we always have room to improve and the kids went on and responded from it. When adversity comes, they were able to respond from it.”