Jackson Ponte and 8-1 Fairhaven visit Middleborough in their first game since a 15-game streak ended

FAIRHAVEN Fairhaven's defending Division 6 champions return to the field Friday night at Middleborough, eight days after Joseph Case ended their title defense and a winning streak that had stretched across two seasons.

Fairhaven (8-1) plays Middleborough (5-4) at 6 p.m. Friday, Nov. 13, at Middleborough High School, a game the MIAA placed on its Week 10 non-playoff list, and the NFHS Network carries it on Middleborough High School's page for subscribers.

For Fairhaven it is the first of two games left in a season that opened with eight straight wins, with Dartmouth coming to Fairhaven on Thanksgiving. Middleborough went 4-7 a year ago, by its MaxPreps record, and has won two straight this fall, so a win Friday would give the Sachems their sixth before they host Carver on Thanksgiving morning.

Fairhaven coach Derek Almeida looked ahead to this week the morning after the playoff loss. "We now need to stay together as a team and continue to move forward," he wrote in an email to South Coast 360 on Nov. 6, adding that the Blue Devils would "be a better team next week and on Thanksgiving."

Fairhaven's road here

Fairhaven opened with a 39-7 win over Somerset Berkley on Sept. 11, won 35-13 at Plymouth North and 42-0 at Bourne, then beat West Bridgewater 22-13 on Oct. 2, the team that handed the Blue Devils their only loss of 2025, 47-43 on Oct. 10, 2025, MaxPreps results show.

The Blue Devils beat Uxbridge 42-7, held off Case 45-37 on Oct. 16 in the closest game of their regular season, won 56-28 at Seekonk and closed with a 47-0 shutout at Greater New Bedford Voc-Tech on Oct. 30. They went 4-0 in league games, first in the league on MaxPreps, and outscored their eight regular-season opponents 328-105, our math from the posted scores, which works out to about 41 points a game.

Counting the last seven games of 2025, a run that ended with a 28-14 win over Norwell in the Division 6 final on Dec. 4, Fairhaven had won 15 straight before the playoff rematch with Case. The MIAA's final regular-season power rankings put the Blue Devils sixth in Division 6 with a rating of 6.68, and they hosted No. 11 Case in the Round of 16 on Nov. 5.

Ponte, a junior who wears No. 12, scored on runs of 4, 5 and 32 yards that night and broke a 44-yard run to the Case 4 to set up another touchdown, and Fairhaven led 19-7 early in the second quarter. In the fourth quarter senior Aidan Donnelly, No. 42, broke a long run to the Case 32, and Ponte scored on the next play to cut the lead to 34-31.

With about seven minutes left, Fairhaven fumbled on fourth down at its own 38, and Case returned the loose ball 36 yards for a touchdown. Fairhaven scored once more, and the stadium scoreboard read 42-37 with 2:12 to play. Case went on to lose 36-7 at Abington on Thursday night in the Round of 8.

Every score from the playoff night is in our story on Case 42, Fairhaven 37, and the 8-0 regular season is in our look back at the Blue Devils' fall.

Fairhaven's playmakers

Ponte has given the Blue Devils a quarterback who can beat a defense with his arm as well as his legs. By The Boston Globe's count in its Nov. 1 playoff preview, he threw for 1,004 yards and 16 touchdowns with one interception in the regular season, while senior Carter Frates caught passes for 414 yards and nine touchdowns and junior Jackson Williams added 264 receiving yards and four scores. On defense, Frates and Williams combined for seven interceptions by the same count. The paper's Week 7 players of the week had Ponte going 10 of 12 for 221 yards and five touchdown passes in the 56-28 win at Seekonk, with 57 more yards on the ground.

Frates, Donnelly and senior Liam Pickup played on last year's title team as juniors, and Ponte, Williams and junior Maddox Joseph as sophomores, by the roster Fairhaven gave the MIAA for the state final. Nicholas DeAlmeida, Mikyle Hart, Samuel McMullen and Cian Piehl, linemen on that roster, are seniors this fall, and Fairhaven's 2026 MaxPreps roster also lists senior quarterback and free safety Jackson Dane and juniors Gavin Anderson, Kyle Soares and Logan St. Germain.

Fairhaven players to know (2026 numbers, and the positions for DeAlmeida, Hart and Dane, from Fairhaven's MaxPreps roster and its Nov. 5 scoring; numbers marked 2025 and the other positions from the roster in the MIAA's 2025 state final program)

Player	Class this fall	No.	Positions
Jackson Ponte	Junior	12	QB, DB
Carter Frates	Senior	11 in 2025	WR, DB
Aidan Donnelly	Senior	42	RB, DL
Liam Pickup	Senior	6 in 2025	RB, DB
Jackson Williams	Junior	32 in 2025	RB, DB
Maddox Joseph	Junior	28 in 2025	RB, LB
Nicholas DeAlmeida	Senior	60	DE, T
Mikyle Hart	Senior	78	DT, G
Jackson Dane	Senior	10	QB, FS

Middleborough's season

Middleborough lost its opener 21-13 to Apponequet on Sept. 11, then won 14-13 at Dartmouth and 42-6 at home over Worcester Tech before losing 20-14 at Dennis-Yarmouth and 40-24 at home to Abington, its MaxPreps results show.

The Sachems won 34-7 at East Bridgewater on Oct. 17, lost 42-28 to Norwell, then won 39-26 at Rockland on Oct. 30 and 20-14 at Whitman-Hanson on Nov. 5. They went 2-2 in league games, third in the league on MaxPreps, and have scored 228 points and allowed 189, about 25 a game for and 21 against by our math.

Middleborough finished 23rd in the MIAA's final Division 4 power rankings, outside the 16-team tournament field, but its schedule rated tougher than Fairhaven's by the MIAA's own measure, with opponents rated at 2.12 to Fairhaven's minus 5.95. Three of the Sachems' four losses came against Division 6 tournament teams, top seed Norwell, No. 3 Abington and No. 9 Dennis-Yarmouth, by 14, 16 and six points.

The Boston Globe's preseason guides, published Sept. 9, listed Pat Kingman in his 16th season at Middleborough with a 91-70 career record, which makes him 96-74 now by our math, and a spread offense with junior Jacob Landers as the new quarterback. The guides put junior Chris Butler and senior Ryan Tullish at running back, three-year starter Johnny O'Brien at the head of the receivers and seniors Jeremy Nee and Ronan Pyne at linebacker. The same guides listed Almeida, in his seventh season, at 55-13 with Fairhaven, which makes him 63-14 now, and named Frates the lone returning starter on offense from the title team.

Tale of the tape

Fairhaven and Middleborough, side by side (MaxPreps and Arbiter Live results, MIAA final regular-season power rankings, our math)

	Fairhaven	Middleborough
Record	8-1, 4-0 in the league (first)	5-4, 2-2 in the league (third)
Coach	Derek Almeida, seventh season	Pat Kingman, 16th season
Points scored and allowed	365 and 147	228 and 189
Per game	40.6 scored, 16.3 allowed	25.3 scored, 21.0 allowed
Shutouts	Two (Bourne, Greater New Bedford)	None
Closest win	Won 45-37 over Case, Oct. 16	Won 14-13 at Dartmouth, Sept. 18
MIAA final power ranking	Sixth in Division 6 (rating 6.68)	23rd in Division 4 (rating 1.37)
Opponents' MIAA rating	Minus 5.95	2.12
Last game	Lost 42-37 to Case, Nov. 5, Division 6 Round of 16	Won 20-14 at Whitman-Hanson, Nov. 5
Thanksgiving, Thursday, Nov. 26, 10 a.m.	Hosts Dartmouth	Hosts Carver

Our read

Fairhaven has scored at least 22 points in all nine games, and its option pitches and quarterback keepers put Ponte's legs to work as much as his arm, as his three rushing touchdowns against Case showed. Middleborough has held four opponents to 14 points or fewer but gave up 40 to Abington and 42 to Norwell, the No. 3 and No. 1 seeds in the Division 6 tournament. That makes Friday the Sachems' toughest defensive test since Oct. 23, and their spread offense, which put up 34 at East Bridgewater and 39 at Rockland, will likely need a night like those.

The teams have played no common opponent so far this fall, though they met in a preseason scrimmage at Fairhaven on Sept. 4, Fairhaven's Arbiter Live schedule shows. In the games MaxPreps has on file since 2004, they met twice in the regular season, and Middleborough won both, 28-0 in 2005 and 30-8 in 2006. Dartmouth links their seasons, since Middleborough beat Dartmouth by a point in September and Fairhaven hosts them on Thanksgiving.

How to watch

Kickoff is 6 p.m. Friday at Middleborough High School, 71 East Grove St. Middleborough has sold tickets to its home football games this fall through GoFan at gofan.co, and the NFHS Network streams the game on Middleborough High School's page for subscribers. South Coast 360 will have the final Friday night.

Fairhaven hosts Dartmouth at 10 a.m. Thursday, Nov. 26, and Middleborough hosts Carver at 10 a.m. the same morning, both teams' MaxPreps schedules show.

Label: Reported by us, from the town's posted records.