As Pembroke girls’ hockey coach Bill Flynn taped up a pair of pucks at Hobomock Arena, all he could do was smile. It was the knowing smile of a coach who knew there would be a few more pucks to tape up by the time the high school career of his junior center, Jennifer Birolini, comes to and end. “Three more until the school goal record,” said Flynn, the longtime Pembroke coach. “Still some work to do until the points record, but she’s got time.”

Three months ago, if Taunton head coach Blair Bourque was asked who might start a potential state championship game on the mound, he’d have to go a ways down the list before naming Johnny Escobalez. But Sunday night, Escobalez toed the rubber for the second-seeded Tigers’ most important game of the season — a rematch with Hockomock rival and top-seeded Franklin in the Division 1 title game. The sophomore — who started the year on the JV team — delivered a complete-game gem.

Most catchers don’t hit in the leadoff spot. The prototypical build for a leadoff man — fast, offensively-minded, an on-base machine — is hard for a catcher to match with the defensive burdens of playing behind the plate. But most catchers aren’t Luke Shliger.

Williams, who spent four seasons in the USHL with the Muskegon Lumberjacks, entered in 2018 as a scorer who, by his own admission, just wanted to play “offense, offense, offense.” By the time he left, after serving as captain this past year, Williams was a complete 200-foot forward.

Linus Ullmark started Games 1 and 2, allowing four goals in each on 57 total shots. With the Bruins down, two games to none, and needing to find a way to slow down Carolina, Cassidy will turn to the rookie Swayman to get the job done.

After twenty-six years at the helm of the Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox, Scott Pickler now stands alone on the Cape Cod Baseball League coaching mountaintop. With a 5-3 win over the Cotuit Kettleers Saturday night at Lowell Park, Pickler is now the all-time winningest coach in Cape League history with 540 wins. He passed longtime Chatham field manager John Schiffner, who held the record since 2007.

In May, after the Franklin girls’ volleyball team capped off the tumultuous Fall II season by winning the Hockomock Cup, first-year coach Samantha Redmond got married. Sitting in the front row of the outdoor ceremony, her players were their coach’s biggest cheerleaders. “We had been through so much together. With all the ups and downs of last year, that group of girls, we were all family,” Redmond said. “That’s what Franklin volleyball is in general, it’s a family, not just a team.”

573 days. When all is said and done, that’s how long Maddie Mills will have gone between collegiate hockey games. Between Cornell’s loss to Princeton in the 2020 ECAC Championship game and Northeastern’s 2021 opener at Holy Cross, Mills hasn’t played in an official game. To make matters worse, she’s been ready to go the whole time.

In a two-day span last week, Occeus matched up with two of the best players in the CAA and finished the week with the upper hand, and a CAA trophy for his team. After a year of dominance on the defensive end of the floor in 2017-18, most expected the 6’4” wing to pick up right where he left off in 2018-19. In many ways, he did — but he did so in significantly fewer games.

Tyler Madden is by no means a man devoid of confidence. The freshman forward, dubbed “Mr. Bright Lights” by the Northeastern faithful after his overtime goal and subsequent press conference against Boston University in the Beanpot, is coming off a regular season that saw him unanimously named to the Hockey East All-Rookie Team. He totalled 28 points on 12 goals and 16 assists in 35 games.