By Christy Sheridan Gable
From the Marblehead Messenger, to the Reporter and now to the Current, my family has always opened the paper first to the sports section. We all wanted to know how our local teams fared this week and which Marblehead athletes were a standout in their respective sport.
Oftentimes, it was my father, Coach Bradley Sheridan’s, picture that we saw in the paper, crouched in a huddle or gesticulating wildly from the sidelines.
Let me back up a little and share just some of my father’s accomplishments. Following his graduation from Bowdoin in 1961, he received a master’s degree in education from New York University. In 1969 he joined the faculty at Marblehead High School as a mathematics teacher and coach; he chaired the mathematics and business departments at the high school for many years.
Coach Sheridan was the MHS men’s basketball coach for more than 21 years, golf coach for 16 years and math teacher for 32 years. Coach’s basketball teams recorded more than 250 wins during his tenure. They won the Northeast Conference in 1978 and 1985 and the Division II North Championship in 1978 and 1984.
He was honored as the North Shore Basketball Coach of the Year in both 1975 and 1976; and was the recipient of the 1976 Basketball Officials Board #120 Sportsmanship Award, the Division II Coach of the Year in 1984, and the National High School Coaching Gold Award for Boys Basketball in 1989. He was inducted into the North Shore Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 1998. He was a member of the U.S. Tennis Association and competed on the Masters circuit on the national level.
As the consummate teacher-coach, he was most proud of the scholarship endowed in his name that is awarded annually to a MHS graduate to further their education. To date, more than 50 scholarships have been awarded via the Dollars for Scholars-Bradley C. Sheridan Scholarship.
Local sports were the fabric of our childhood in the days before club sports. We spent hours at Gatchell’s and Seaside park and even more in the gyms of every school in town participating in and cheering on the kids in town. There were highlights and heartbreaks along the way, they were all captured in the pictures and articles of our local paper.
We are offering the Bradley C. Sheridan Sports Match Challenge to keep local sports coverage alive. If your family, like ours, loves our local sports teams, please contribute this week in Coach’s name. We will match every dollar up to $1,500. Please click HERE to donate.
Keep the Current coming and share the thrill of victory of our Marblehead athletes.
Christy Sheridan Gable
