Goodbye, Greater Boston League

This year, I'm morbidly thankful for the euthanization of the once-great Greater Boston League.

I'm an Everett guy. Born and raised in the shadows of Veterans Memorial Stadium off Route 16, squeezed between about a half-dozen Dunkin Donuts. I was a freshman in high school when I covered my first sports game for the Everett Leader-Herald. The girls' basketball team lost to Waltham. I typed it on a word processor.

I spent the next few years going to Dilboy, Macdonald, Russell; writing up the results a few days later for the weekly edition of the Leader-Herald. My deadlines got a bit tighter when I started an eight-year run at The Boston Globe, but I didn't leave the GBL—I started off covering Division 1 football.

It had more drama than the WWE. The Malden-Everett animosity made Trump-Clinton look like flirting. When the league voted the GBL down to Division 1A, siding against Medford and Everett (the Mustangs coach was a former Everett assistant), it was clear the writing was on the wall.

And on Thursday morning, when Malden and Medford met for the 129th time, a 41-18 Malden win, it was the final football game for the GBL.

It's hard to pinpoint why the GBL crumbled from Peabody, Waltham, Arlington, Revere, Cambridge, Somerville, Medford, Malden, and Everett to just the latter four at the end. The dynastic Everett football program has always been the elephant in the room, but coach-athletic director John DiBiaso has long said the Crimson Tide would play an independent schedule in football.

Everett's dominance was hard to ignore. Last year's loss to Malden was its first to a GBL opponent since Thanksgiving of 2001 and its first against the Golden Tornadoes since 1991. Medford still hasn't beaten Everett since 1991. Somerville took a nearly 30-year losing streak to the Crimson Tide with it when the Highlanders left.

Longtime Boston Herald-turned-Boston Globe-turned-Patch high school sports guru Bob Holmes thinks the schism runs deeper than on-field reasons.

"I think the thing that killed the GBL was the changing demographics of all the communities, specifically Medford and Malden and Somerville, plus the presence of the Everett football team," Holmes said. "Communities like Arlington, Cambridge—for whatever reason they just felt like they didn't belong with the Medfords and the Maldens anymore. I think the demise of the GBL came because all the individual schools were looking out for themselves."

Well, at least the Medfords and the Maldens decided they still belong together—they'll be continuing their longstanding rivalry in the Northeastern Conference, where Somerville and Everett (and its independent football schedule) will follow. The winter GBL schedule will still be played out this year.

But for a kid who made his bones covering Everett-Waltham girls' basketball, Somerville-Cambridge track, and dozens of GBL football games, Thursday's finale felt like putting down an old family dog who can't get up the stairs anymore. It was time.

Thanks for the memories.