Pass the Torch is the informal name of a new tradition started by moms of Smithfield High School’s football players.
Friday, September 27 was Homecoming Night for Smithfield High School, and it was an exciting evening for several reasons. Not only was it Homecoming, but it was being played on the new synthetic turf at the Boyle Athletic Complex that everyone in town is so proud of. Additional upgrades to the school’s sports complex include a new scoreboard, bleachers, running track, and track and field event spaces. The Sentinels won their homecoming game decisively, pummeling Toll Gate High School 42-7, a game in which Aaron Archambault, Smithfield’s senior running back, broke free for two big touchdown runs, one good for 55 yards and another for 70 yards. This was the first win for Kyle Purvis, the Sentinels’ new head coach.
But this is not a sports story. The focus of this article is what happened before the game started. Before the opening kickoff, the graduating seniors on the Smithfield High School football team, along with senior school athletes from other sports, lined up on one side of the field. On the other side of the field were kindergarten children from elementary schools all around town. The seniors and the kindergarteners met in the middle of the field where the athletes presented token gifts to the youngsters in the form of small footballs, baseballs, and soccer balls. Printed on each of them was “2037,” the year the kindergartners will be graduating from high school. The football team’s cheerleaders also made an offering of pom poms and green and gold bows to the youngsters.
This was more than just a photo op juxtaposing high school teenagers and adorable five and six-year-olds, it was a symbolic gesture of giving to one another within a community. The graduating students will soon be leaving the town’s public school system behind and entering adulthood, while the kindergarten students are just beginning their journey, becoming the stewards of the town’s future. With the gesture, the seniors are not only wishing these children well, but the youngsters are accepting that stewardship, and one day, if this tradition holds up, as the Past the Torch-founding moms hope it will, the kindergartners who received gifts prior to this year’s homecoming game will be on the other end of the field in 2037 presenting gifts to kindergarten children representing the class of 2049.
During this year’s exchange between a full generation of Smithfield students, Kenny Chesney’s “Don’t Blink” played in the background. The song about how fast time goes by was heartwarming and poignant.
Robyn Williams, whose son plays on the school football team, produced the idea and when she floated it by some of the other moms, they were fully onboard. The thought had occurred to Robyn only a couple of weeks before homecoming, so they had to work together to make it happen in such a short period of time.
Motivated moms are a formidable force, and Robyn had the help of Jenn Trainor, Sherri Buteau, Jess Sala, and Michele Costanzo.
“We first brought it to the attention of Mr. Geraghty, the school principal, and the A.D., Mr. Castiglia,” Robyn says. “Then we ran it by the kindergarten teachers at each school. Everyone thought it was a wonderful idea, and we were able to put it all together in two weeks.”
The moms thought it was important to involve all senior Sentinels, not just the football team. The support was overwhelming, as attested by the dozens of students who came together at midfield before the start of this year’s homecoming football game.
The energy was amazing all night among the large crowd who came to cheer on their team, and it certainly seemed to transfer to the entire Smithfield squad by the way they played.
“It was an incredible night,” Robyn says. “All the moms were great in getting this organized. The teachers, school principals, and of course the seniors and the kindergartners. They all had fun. Something they will always remember fondly.”
