Morgan Perry’s life revolves around the game of football. The 2015 Nantucket grad works at the Wannacomet Water Company, where he has daily conversations with Wannacomet Director and varsity football defensive coordinator Mark Willett, is the son of varsity head coach Joe Perry, and just completed his first season as the assistant head coach of Nantucket’s middle school football team, which just finished their season 7-0 while outscoring their opponents 201-70 this season.
“The end goal on the field is to win a super bowl but off the field it is to be a true student athlete, represent the community well, and really spread that Whaler pride,” Perry said. “These kids are special. They are really good kids, great players, and if these kids stick together throughout high school they really could win a Super Bowl. They are that talented.”
Along with Perry, Whaler football alum including Fervon Phillips (’15), Tyler Anderson (’21), and RJ Moore, who played on Nantucket before finishing his high school career at private school in 2019, have been coaching these young Whaler football players under head coach Fred Tilton with the goal of getting them to become as passionate about the game as these four were when they were teenagers.
Anderson, who moved to the island in middle school, lived in several different towns prior to making it to Nantucket. He says the island is one of a kind and he fell in love with the unity football brought to the community.
“This is the only place I have lived where I really felt like everybody was together,” Anderson said. “People talk about small communities and what they are all about, well, that is a real thing. The island community needs Nantucket football. It gives the community a reason to come together. The Island Cup is a big deal. Everybody comes down to the field and they support. This group, if they keep it up, they are in good shape moving forward and are as well prepared for high school football as any group in a while on Nantucket.”
The foursome leading the way for these players has been able to create a balanced approach to coaching, with one being more stern than the rest, who like to keep it light at practice and mess around with the kids.
“It is a balance man and I’m not trying to point one person out as being the most serious but Morgan is definitely, without a doubt, the most serious of us four,” Phillips said.
“Morgan is the most serious,” Moore said as Perry was going over his team’s defensive game plan to our right. “When he is in his zone, he is Coach Belichick. He gets locked in.”
Phillips added that he can flip the switch when it is time to bring a serious tone to practice.
“If we have a game the next day you’ll see me with that serious face getting these boys ready to go,” he said. “If we have a bad practice I’ll say make them sprint and I’ll facilitate it. I feel like it is a great balance of personalities on this staff.”
Phillips has always loved working with kids from his time as a camp counselor for the Nantucket Community School’s ACKventure camp to now, where he is a teaching assistant at the Cyrus Peirce Middle School. He said he uses football to his advantage when he is working with kids during the school day.
“Every day they have to see me,” Phillips said. “It has been pretty seamless working with these kids in school to the field. The biggest way I keep these kids focused in school is through football. I use that to my leverage. I have some sixth graders who I work with and I say ‘it starts right here. You can’t play football right now but it starts in the school.’ It gets them motivated to do well in school so they can come play with us.”
Phillip’s passion for kids was something Moore wasn’t sure he would be able to match when he was asked about joining the coaching staff.
“I was telling Ferv before we started doing this ‘dude I don’t like kids like that I don’t know if I can do this,’” Moore said. “He told me I’d be fine and sure enough here I am, loving what I am doing. These kids definitely grew on me.”
The connection between the players and these coaches began last March during the fall two season. The middle school team didn’t play any games, but 12-14 players would get together with Perry and Phillips next to the booster shack down by Vito Capizzo Stadium to go over routes and talk football.
“Fast forward to this year and now it is just drills and realizing the obligation we have as coaches,” Phillips said. “It is more than teaching football. We got to teach them to respect their teachers, the community, and just being a good kid. The impact we have on these kids is something I don’t think I took for granted but I have really begun to see it after this year.”
Each game the Whalers played, the opposing coaching staff would routinely be made up of parents and adults in their 40s. On the Whaler side, it was made up of three coaches in their 20s and a 19-year old.
“Everybody we play has coaches that are a lot older than us with kids on the team,” Phillips said. “I look at these kids as my little nephews. We give it everything we got. We may have had to throw everything together at first but I think us four got better as the year went on. We always try to come in with a good game plan. But we just want these kids to have fun and enjoy playing football. That is how you build that football culture up.”
Perry and Phillips said they have no plans to stop coaching, while Anderson and Moore are both expecting to go to college beginning in January. Perry and Phillips said they both love their jobs, which give them the time and ability to be around for practices and games.
Moore said he will do anything possible to keep a presence with this group, even if it means limiting his time with them to an occasional practice.
“I am going to really miss this,” Moore said. “I think a lot of these kids have grown up a lot. One of the really cool things about this experience was their difference in behaviors. On day one you couldn’t tell that one kid anything. Now they listen to everything you say and sit down to have conversations.”
