Massachusetts
Ranking the top 25 MIAA high school football teams in Massachusetts ahead of Week 9
Meet the Week 8 High School Football Player of the Week candidates
These baker’s dozen candidates were cooking in Week 8. Vote for the Daily News High School Football Player of the Week.
Our No. 1 stayed firmly in place. After weeks of coming close, St. John’s Prep grabbed the top spot in our poll from Catholic Memorial with all four first-place votes and a unanimous 100 points last week. The Eagles stayed firmly in place following a convincing 37-15 win at Malden Catholic last Friday night.
This is the final week of the regular season before a much-anticipated MIAA tournament, and teams across the commonwealth are staking their places in league standings and the statewide power rankings.
Kyle Grabowski (MetroWest Daily News), Jason Snow (The Patriot Ledger), Tim Whelan (Gannett New England) and Chris McDaniel (Gannett New England) will collectively rank the top teams in the state every week this season. These are the rankings heading into Week 8.
Watch MA high school football on NFHS Network
MA high school football top 25 rankings
1. St. John’s Prep- 100 points (4 first-place votes)
2. Springfield Central – 96 points
3. Xaverian – 92 points
4. Catholic Memorial – 88 points
5. King Philip – 84 points
6. Natick – 79 points
7. Methuen – 73 points
8. Central Catholic – 70 points
9. Bishop Feehan – 63 points
10. Tewksbury – 61 points
11. Barnstable – 60 points
12. Marshfield – 54 points
13. Scituate – 53 points
14. Foxborough – 50 points
15. Mansfield – 49 points
16. Andover – 39 points
17. North Attleborough – 37 points
18. Shawsheen Valley Tech – 31 points
19. Milton – 30 points
20. Winchester – 23 points
21. Bridgewater-Raynham – 14 points
22. Abington – 9 points
23. Canton – 8 points
T-24. Hingham – 7 points
T-24. Hanover – 7 points
Other receiving votes: Leominster (6), Duxbury (6), Archbishop Williams (5), Wachusett (5), Bedford (1)
Who jumped into the top 25?
Hanover (5-2) moved into the poll after a 42-21 victory over Quincy, the Hawks’ fourth straight win.
Other notable activity
The top eight remained the same as last week, but Bishop Feehan moved up three spots to #9 after a 27-21 win over a tough Franklin team. North Attleborough, meanwhile, moved down seven spots from #10 to #17 after a 24-14 defeat to Mansfield. The Hornets moved from #20 to #15 with the Hockomock League Davenport triumph.
Massachusetts
Swimmer pulled from Houghton’s Pond after search
A teenager was pulled from a pond in Milton, Massachusetts, after he went missing while swimming Saturday night.
The Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office said the teenaged male was taken to a Boston area hospital following the incident at Houghton’s Pond. It’s unclear how long the teen was under water, and there was no immediate word on his condition.
State police had said earlier that they responded to the pond shortly after 7 p.m. for a person who entered the water and didn’t resurface. State police divers, detectives, troopers, and the Milton Fire Department were all on scene involved in the search.
The DA’s office is conducting an investigation with state police that remains ongoing. Further information is not being released at this time.
This story will be updated when we learn more
Massachusetts
Mass. man charged with posing as teen, exposing himself to 12-, 13-year-old girls
A Massachusetts man is facing multiple charges for allegedly engaging in inappropriate communications and exposing himself to children.
Orate Kyle Graham, 20, of Bridgewater, was arrested this week on two counts of disseminating obscene material to a minor and one count of accosting or annoying another person.
Bridgewater police said they were made aware Tuesday of allegations involving interactions between several girls age 12 and 13 and an individual known to them only as “Jay.” The individual said he was 17 years old during conversations with the girls through FaceTime and in person.
Through an investigation, police identified “Jay” as Graham, and also found that he had regularly engaged in interactions with the minor victims. During those interactions, he allegedly exposed himself and asked the girls to expose themselves to him.
He was arrested Thursday and taken to the Plymouth County House of Correction, where he was held on $25,000 bail. The case remains under investigation by Bridgewater police and the Plymouth District Attorney’s Office.
Massachusetts
Fisherman reels in white shark off Massachusetts, then snags the hook from its toothy mouth
BILLERICA, Mass. (AP) — Elliot Sudal didn’t need a bigger boat, but he did need to find a way to get a hook out of a shark’s mouth.
Sudal, a veteran angler and boat captain, reeled in the nearly nine-foot shark — also commonly known as a great white shark or a great white — on June 7 on Nantucket. White sharks are a protected species in the U.S. and must be released immediately when accidentally caught.
That presents a nasty problem for a fisherman because the white shark is a formidable apex predator best known for the 1975 movie Jaws, in which Roy Scheider utters the famous line “You’re gonna need a bigger boat” upon seeing the big fish. Sudal, who caught the shark while fishing from shore, decided to use his encounter to demonstrate how to respond to such a situation.
Sudal posted a video of himself removing the hook to his social media accounts. In the video, Sudal climbs onto the back of the shark, secures the fish in the surf, and removes the hook from its mouth. By the end of the short video, the shark is back in the water.
White sharks typically have about 300 teeth arranged into five rows, so speed was key.
“Hooks out and back on her way in 15 seconds, not sure how to do it better,” Sudal wrote in an Instagram post that included a video of the shark release.
Sudal is no stranger to sharks, and has caught and tagged hundreds of them over the years. He said in a social media post that this month’s encounter with a white shark was the first time he has ever caught one of them in more than a decade of the work.
Sudal’s practices have sometimes attracted the attention of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, such as in 2017, when the agency investigated his handling of a smalltooth sawfish, an endangered species, in Florida. The agency said in 2018 that it sent Sudal a letter “informing him of the Endangered Species Act issues and the safe handling protocol for sawfish.”
White sharks are not listed under the federal Endangered Species Act, but are subject to special federal protections. The International Union for Conservation of Nature considers them vulnerable globally.
Sightings of white sharks off New England have ticked up in recent years, and some scientists have pinned that to the greater availability of the seals that they prey on. Dangerous encounters between white sharks and humans are extremely rare, and only a few dozen fatal white shark bites on people have ever been recorded.
___
Whittle reported from Portland, Maine.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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