Reported by us | Fairhaven

Fairhaven's understudies rebuilt a state champion, went 8-0 and stretched the winning streak to 15

Four linemen who spent the title season as backups, a first-year starter at quarterback who threw five touchdown passes in one night and a senior who won a game with 21 seconds left carried the Blue Devils to the SCC Gold title and a 15-game winning streak.

By the SC360 Sports Desk | Published Nov. 7, 2026 | Last verified Nov. 7, 2026, 8:48 a.m. ET

FAIRHAVEN Fairhaven won the Division 6 state championship last December, and then its quarterback, its top four ball carriers, its entire offensive line and its top receiver graduated.

The players who took their places went 8-0 in the regular season, won the South Coast Conference Gold title and stretched the program's winning streak to 15 games over two seasons. The run ended Thursday, Nov. 5, when No. 11 Joseph Case beat the sixth-seeded Blue Devils 42-37 in the Division 6 Round of 16 at Fairhaven High School, a game Fairhaven trailed by 11 points with seven minutes left and was still driving for the lead in the final minutes.

The season statistics, the details of who graduated and most of the quotes here come from the Boston Globe and the Standard-Times, which covered the Blue Devils through the fall, and every 2026 final score comes from Fairhaven's posted schedule.

Fairhaven (8-1) still has Thanksgiving, when it hosts Dartmouth at Fairhaven High School on Thursday, Nov. 26, at 10 a.m., and that morning will close out a senior class that includes receiver and defensive back Carter Frates, running backs Aidan Donnelly and Liam Pickup, and the four linemen who rebuilt the front, Samuel McMullen, Nicholas DeAlmeida, Mikyle Hart and Cian Piehl.

"I am proud of the development of our team throughout the year," coach Derek Almeida said in an email to South Coast 360 the morning after the playoff game. "Our kids embraced it and did everything they could to try to win that football game."

What they inherited

On Dec. 4, 2025, third-seeded Fairhaven ran for 410 yards against top-seeded Norwell at Gillette Stadium, 226 of them after halftime, and won 28-14 for the program's fifth Super Bowl title, the Globe reported. It was Fairhaven's third straight state final, after a 26-22 win over Salem in 2023 and a 21-14 loss to Hudson in 2024, by the MIAA's records, and the earlier titles came in 1991, 1994 and 2000.

"Our culture is the weight room, toughness, physicality, knocking people back, and playing with aggression," Almeida told the Globe that night. That month the New England Patriots named him their high school Coach of the Year, and he told WBSM, "To me, it's a team award. Our coaches, our kids, our administration, everyone has put in so much work for so many years."

Almeida came home to lead the program he played for when Fairhaven hired him in August 2020 from Falmouth, where his 2016 team went unbeaten and won the Division 2A Super Bowl. His father, Dana, led Fairhaven to three Super Bowls in 18 seasons as head coach, Derek was a two-year varsity starter for the Blue Devils in 1997 and 1998, and he brought the triple option with him. The Blue Devils had not had a winning record since 2012 when he arrived, and in the seasons since, the program has played in three straight state finals and won two of them.

The understudies

Frates was the only offensive starter who came back from that title team, the Globe reported, and the new line was built around four seniors who had spent the championship season behind the starters, McMullen, DeAlmeida, Hart and Piehl. "Those kids were understudies," Almeida said in October. "They didn't get a chance to play last year but they were competing against elite players in practice and they've led us this year."

The new group announced itself on the first day of practice, Aug. 24, when, just over two hours in, Hart pulled off his helmet and shouted, "Football! We're back baby!" Donnelly, a senior running back, said that day what the rest of the fall would show. "We have a lot to prove," he said. "I think we're better than people think. A lot of us are going to step up."

Eight weeks, eight wins

Fairhaven opened with a 39-7 win over Somerset Berkley, and a week later at Plymouth North junior Jackson Williams ran for 102 yards on eight carries, scored on a 21-yard run and caught a 32-yard touchdown pass in a 35-13 win, the Standard-Times reported. A 42-0 win at Bourne on Sept. 24 made it 10 straight wins across two seasons.

The first real test came Oct. 2 against West Bridgewater, the only team to beat Fairhaven in 2025, which led 13-0 in the second quarter. Fairhaven scored the next 22 points, and its last touchdown capped a 19-play drive that began in a steady rain, when Almeida called a reverse to junior Elliott Grant on third and goal from the 15 and Grant reached the ball across the goal line as he was upended, the Globe reported. "That's my favorite play. When I heard it in the huddle, my ears lit up," Grant said. "Every inch matters." Almeida took the blame for the slow start and gave the finish to his players. "Thank God we have tough kids," he said. "We have a long way to go, but I'm proud of the effort tonight."

Junior quarterback Jackson Ponte threw for 192 yards and four touchdowns in a 42-7 win over Uxbridge on Oct. 9, and Frates caught three of them. A week later came the closest game of the regular season, when Case put 37 points on Fairhaven, the most anyone scored on the Blue Devils all fall before the playoffs, and the night came down to Pickup, a senior who had never scored a varsity touchdown. He returned a fumble 52 yards for his first, then ran 18 yards for the winning score with 21 seconds left in a 45-37 win, while junior Maddox Joseph ran for three touchdowns and Donnelly broke a 76-yard run.

Fairhaven clinched the conference title Oct. 23 with a 56-28 win at Seekonk, where Ponte, in his first season as the starter, went 10 of 12 for 221 yards and threw five touchdown passes, a school single-game record, and ran for 57 more yards. He spread the five touchdowns among three receivers, two to Williams, two to Wes Amarello from 35 and 26 yards and one to Frates from 30, and Williams ran for two more. Pickup ran six times for 116 yards and a score, Jackson Dane made all eight extra points, and on defense DeAlmeida had a sack, Gavin Anderson forced a fumble with a strip sack and Jayce James recovered a fumble.

The regular season ended Oct. 30 with a 47-0 shutout at Greater New Bedford. Ponte threw touchdown passes of 50 yards to Williams and 30 to Frates and ran for 88 yards, Joseph scored twice, Seth Olivier and Logan St. Germain ran for touchdowns, and James returned a fumble 98 yards for a score and made 10 tackles. Frates and Grant each intercepted a pass, and Frates also forced a fumble.

By our count of the posted scores, Fairhaven outscored its eight regular-season opponents 328-105, scored 40 or more five times and shut out two of them. Ponte threw for 1,004 yards and 16 touchdowns with one interception in the regular season, Frates caught passes for 414 yards and nine touchdowns, Williams added 264 yards and four scores, and on defense Frates and Williams combined for seven interceptions. It was a team that could move the ball on Ponte's arm or his legs and score on a reverse at the end of a 19-play drive or on fumble returns of 52 and 98 yards, and that range made the Blue Devils fun to watch from the first week to the last.

The playoff night

Case came back to Fairhaven on Nov. 5 as the No. 11 seed, and the Blue Devils scored on their first drive on a 4-yard run by Ponte. He broke a 44-yard run to the Case 4 on the next scoring drive, a 3-yard run made it 13-0, and Ponte scored again from 5 yards early in the second quarter for a 19-7 lead, with the defense intercepting a Case pass a few minutes later.

Case answered behind senior Aedan Borges, who scored all six of the Cardinals' touchdowns, the Globe reported. Case cut the lead to 19-14 before halftime, took its first lead early in the third quarter and went ahead 28-19 after it recovered a fumbled pitch at the Fairhaven 39. Fairhaven came right back with a long kickoff return, a long run by Ponte and a 1-yard touchdown for 28-25 after three quarters, and after Case scored early in the fourth, Donnelly broke a long run to the Case 32 and Ponte scored on the next play to make it 34-31.

Fairhaven got the ball back at its own 12 with about 10 minutes left and worked out to its 38, where on fourth down a pitch came loose and Borges returned it for a touchdown. Case ran in the two-point try for a 42-31 lead. "I was playing the pitch and the ball just popped right into my hands," Borges said.

The Blue Devils answered at once, when Williams broke a 66-yard touchdown run 79 seconds later to make it 42-37, and then the defense stopped Borges on a fourth-down run to get the ball back. Fairhaven drove to the Case 25 before it turned the ball over on downs.

Fairhaven outgained Case 540 yards to 265, with Ponte running 22 times for 217 yards and Joseph carrying 31 times for 118. Each team scored six touchdowns, and the margin came on the tries after them, where Fairhaven converted one of six. It was Fairhaven's first playoff loss outside Gillette Stadium since 2022 and Case's first playoff win since 1992. "No disrespect to Fairhaven, they're a great team and they're well coached," Case coach Mike Cloutier said, and Case moves on to play No. 3 Abington in the Round of 8.

Read our game story from the playoff night and our preview of the season and the matchup, and every South Coast final is on the Friday Night Scoreboard.

The seniors

Frates came into the fall as the one returning starter on offense and gave the Blue Devils plays on both sides of the ball, as a receiver with 414 yards and nine touchdowns in the regular season, a defensive back with interceptions and a blocker the Globe credited in October with "elite blocking on the edge." He caught three touchdown passes against Uxbridge, scored from 30 yards at Seekonk and again at Greater New Bedford, and in that last regular-season game he also intercepted a pass and forced a fumble.

Donnelly ran for more than 100 yards against Case in October, broke a 76-yard run in that game and broke the long run that set up the touchdown that cut Case's lead to 34-31 in the playoff game. Pickup went from a senior without a varsity touchdown to the player who won the Case game in October with two of them, then ran six times for 116 yards and another score at Seekonk a week later, and Standard-Times readers voted him the SouthCoast player of the week both weeks.

McMullen, DeAlmeida, Hart and Piehl spent a title season as backups and then blocked for an offense that scored 40 points or more five times in the regular season and gained 540 yards in the playoff game, and DeAlmeida added a sack at Seekonk.

The standard

On the morning of the playoff game, Almeida wrote that "this group has continued to build on the standard we've established within our program," and the morning after the loss he looked ahead. "We now need to stay together as a team and continue to move forward," he wrote.

In August Fairhaven had almost none of its title offense left. The job fell to four linemen who had spent a championship season as understudies, a quarterback in his first year as the starter and a senior who had never scored a varsity touchdown, and they carried a champion's streak to 15 wins, put a school record in the books at Seekonk and were still driving for the lead in the final minutes of the night the streak ended. Almeida came home in 2020 to a program that had not had a winning record since 2012, and this fall an offense rebuilt almost from scratch, led by seniors who had waited their turn, kept building on that standard.

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

Notes

Every 2026 date, site and score comes from Fairhaven's schedule on Arbiter Live, read again Saturday, Nov. 7, which also lists the Thanksgiving game; the season totals, the 40-point games, the shutouts and the closest regular-season margin are our count from those scores. The playoff game's scoring plays, field position and clock come from the MaxPreps Scoretracker kept by Fairhaven's scorekeeper and the stadium scoreboard on the NFHS Network broadcast. Season statistics, game details and published quotes come from the Boston Globe, the Standard-Times and WBSM, as listed in Sources, and title history from the MIAA's 2025 championship program. Almeida's comments marked as email come from his emails to South Coast 360 on Nov. 5 and Nov. 6, word for word. We checked each date and weekday against a calendar. Where the Scoretracker and the Globe gave different lengths for the fumble return and Borges' third-quarter run, the length is left out.

Corrections

No corrections to this story. If something here is wrong, tell us. Every correction is dated on the story and listed in our public log.

Sources (24)

1. Arbiter Live: Fairhaven High School Varsity Football scheduleEvery 2026 date, site and result: W 39-7, W 35-13, W 42-0 (Thu Sep 24), W 22-13, W 42-7, W 45-37, W 56-28, W 47-0; Thu Nov 5 6:30 PM vs Joseph Case, L 37-42; Thu Nov 26 10:00 AM vs Dartmouth High School, Fairhaven HS Stadium. Read Nov. 7, 2026, 3:2x a.m.
2. MaxPreps: Case at Fairhaven, Nov. 5, 2026, final and ScoretrackerFinal Case 42, Fairhaven 37; Scoretracker kept by Fairhaven's scorekeeper: Ponte's 4 and 5 yard touchdowns and 44 yard run, the 3 yard and 1 yard scores, the interception, the fumbled pitch recovered at the Fairhaven 39, the onside kick, the punt to the Fairhaven 12, the fourth down at the Fairhaven 38, the fumble return touchdown and the two point run. Read Nov. 5, 2026, 8:4x and 9:5x p.m.
3. NFHS Network: Joseph Case High School vs. Fairhaven High School, Nov. 5, 2026Live broadcast: plays, field position and the stadium scoreboard. Nov. 5, 2026.
4. The Boston Globe: "'We were sick of Fairhaven:' Joseph Case takes down defending D6 champs for first playoff win in 34 years"Published Nov. 5, 2026: Borges six touchdowns and his fumble return quote; Williams 66 yard touchdown 79 seconds later; fourth down stop of Borges; Fairhaven to the Case 25 and turnover on downs; 540-265 yards; Ponte 22 carries, 217 yards; Joseph 31 carries, 118 yards; first Case playoff win since 1992; Cloutier quote. Read Nov. 7, 2026, 3:3x a.m.
5. The Boston Globe: Globe Schools Insider, Nov. 6, 2026Fairhaven "hadn't lost in the playoffs outside of Gillette Stadium since 2022"; Ponte 217 and Joseph 118 in the rushing leaders. Read Nov. 7, 2026, 3:3x a.m.
6. Derek Almeida, Fairhaven head football coach: emails to South Coast 360Thu. Nov. 5, 2026, 10:56 a.m., and Fri. Nov. 6, 2026, 9:23 a.m., from his school address; every Almeida quote marked as an email, word for word. The link is the Globe Division 6 preview of Sept. 9, 2026, which lists him as coach, Carter Frates and Liam Pickup as seniors and Jackson Ponte, Maddox Joseph and Jackson Williams as juniors. Read Nov. 7, 2026.
7. MIAA: Football 2026 Division 6 State TournamentSeeds No. 6 Fairhaven, No. 11 Joseph Case; Round of 16 Nov. 5 at Fairhaven High School; No. 3 Abington in the Round of 8. Read Nov. 5 and 6, 2026.
8. The Boston Globe: Fairhaven 28, Norwell 14, Division 6 Super BowlPublished Dec. 4, 2025: third-seeded Fairhaven over top-seeded Norwell; 410 rushing yards, 226 after halftime; fifth Super Bowl title; Almeida "Our culture" quote. Read Nov. 2, 2026.
9. MIAA: 2025 Football State Championships programFairhaven Super Bowl wins 1991, 1994 and 2000; 2023 state final Fairhaven 26, Salem 22; 2024 state final Hudson 21, Fairhaven 14; roster spellings. Read Nov. 2, 2026.
10. WBSM: "Fairhaven's Almeida Earns Patriots High School Coach of the Year"Published Dec. 10, 2025: the team award quote. Read Nov. 3, 2026.
11. New England Patriots: Derek Almeida named Coach of the YearPublished Dec. 9, 2025. Read Nov. 2, 2026.
12. The Boston Globe: "Derek Almeida returns home, as football coach at Fairhaven"Published Aug. 13, 2020: Falmouth 2016 unbeaten Division 2A Super Bowl; Dana Almeida three Super Bowls in 18 seasons; Derek a starter in 1997 and 1998; no winning record since 2012; triple option. Read Nov. 3, 2026.
13. The Boston Globe: first day of practice, 2026Published Aug. 24, 2026: quarterback, top four ball carriers, entire offensive line and top receiver graduated; Frates the only offensive starter back; Hart and Donnelly quotes. Read Nov. 2, 2026.
14. The Boston Globe: Week 4 games to watchPublished Oct. 1, 2026: the four senior linemen; "understudies" quote; Frates "elite blocking on the edge"; West Bridgewater 47-43 in 2025. Read Nov. 2, 2026.
15. The Boston Globe: Friday's football roundup, Oct. 2Published Oct. 2, 2026: 13-0 deficit, 22 straight points, 19-play drive in the rain, Grant reverse and quote, Almeida quote. Read Nov. 2, 2026.
16. The Boston Globe: Schools Insider, Week 5Published Oct. 10, 2026: Ponte 192 passing yards and four touchdown passes; Frates three receiving touchdowns. Read Nov. 2, 2026.
17. The Boston Globe: Schools Insider, Week 6Published Oct. 17, 2026: Donnelly 76-yard run, 135 rushing yards. Read Nov. 3, 2026.
18. The Boston Globe: Players of the Week, Week 6Published Oct. 19, 2026: Pickup, senior, the winner with 21 seconds left and the 52-yard fumble return. Read Nov. 3, 2026.
19. The Boston Globe: MIAA football playoff previewPublished Nov. 1, 2026: Ponte 1,004 passing yards, 16 touchdowns, one interception; Frates 414 receiving yards, nine touchdowns; Williams 264, four; seven combined interceptions. Read Nov. 3, 2026.
20. The Standard-Times (on Yahoo Sports): Week 2 player of the week ballotPublished Sept. 21, 2026: Williams eight carries, 102 yards, 21-yard touchdown run, 32-yard touchdown catch. Read Nov. 2, 2026.
21. The Standard-Times (on Yahoo Sports): Week 6 player of the week ballotPublished Oct. 20, 2026: Joseph three touchdowns; Donnelly 128 yards; Pickup's first two varsity touchdowns. Read Nov. 3, 2026.
22. The Standard-Times (on Yahoo Sports): Week 8 player of the week ballotPublished Nov. 2, 2026: Pickup won the Week 6 and Week 7 readers' polls. Read Nov. 2, 2026.
23. The Standard-Times (on Yahoo Sports): Week 7 SouthCoast football roundupFairhaven 56, Seekonk 28: SCC Gold title; Ponte 10 of 12, 221 yards, school single-game record five touchdowns, 57 rushing yards; Williams four touchdowns; Amarello touchdowns of 35 and 26; Frates 30-yard touchdown; Pickup six carries, 116 yards, a touchdown; Dane 8 of 8; DeAlmeida sack; Anderson strip sack; James fumble recovery. Read Nov. 3, 2026.
24. The Standard-Times (on Yahoo Sports): Week 8 SouthCoast football roundupFairhaven 47, GNB Voc-Tech 0: Ponte touchdown passes to Williams (50) and Frates (30), 88 rushing yards; Joseph two touchdowns; Olivier and St. Germain touchdown runs; James 98-yard fumble return, 10 tackles; Frates interception and forced fumble; Grant interception. Read Nov. 3, 2026.

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