When Christian MacDonald stood in the tunnel, just moments before kickoff, what he had accomplished really started to hit him. The Hopkinton High School graduate, a sophomore at Texas Christian University, made the football team as a walk-on this fall and was about to...
Chris Villani
HHS field hockey adjusts to new rules
The motto for the Hopkinton High School field hockey team this year: Play smarter, not harder. The ongoing pandemic has imposed changes on many high school sports this fall, but perhaps no sport has been as upended as field hockey. Not only do players have to wear...
HHS girls XC prepares for unusual 2020 season
In a normal year, the Hopkinton High School girls cross country team already would have started by the middle of September and would spend the fall gearing up for the big meets at the end of the season. But nothing is normal about 2020, and instead Hopkinton will run...
Hillers boys XC ready to run
Despite not having a league or district meet to look forward to this fall due to the pandemic, the Hopkinton High School boys cross country team is determined to make the most out of the modified and shortened fall campaign. “I think a lot of them came in with a...
New era for HHS golf as Phaneuf takes reins
For the first time since the beginning of the Hopkinton High School golf program, the Hillers will not have Dick Bliss as coach when the 2020 campaign begins. Bill Phaneuf is taking the reins after Bliss guided the team to multiple state titles and sent players to the...
McCann’s virtual Boston Marathon debut long in works
Kayla McCann has been thinking about running the Boston Marathon ever since her family moved to Hopkinton and she started seeing the seminal racing event depart from her town each spring. With the COVID-19 pandemic forcing the race to a virtual format, she had to...
Hopkinton moms prep for Boston Marathon
A Boston Marathon turned virtual has not kept a pair of Hopkinton moms from continuing to train and fundraise for youth sports as if they’d be running down Boylston Street this fall. Ali Balster and Amy Dorfman are running to raise money for Hopkinton Boys Youth...
HHS adjusts to new sports schedule
The governing body for high school sports in the state unveiled its plan for competition in the 2020-21 academic year, putting forth a four-season sports schedule that moves football to the late winter and aims to get everyone in action during the COVID-19 pandemic....
Departing HHS players cap summer baseball stint with title
Hopkinton’s foray into the Central Mass. Senior Babe Ruth League may be short-lived, but for this summer the season has given Hopkinton High School 2020 graduates who saw their final baseball season scrapped by the pandemic a chance to take the field one more time....
Army’s Simoes swings big bat in short summer stint
After having his college season cut short and amid a busy training schedule at West Point, Hopkinton’s Tim Simoes was more than willing to drive halfway across the country for the chance to get in a couple weeks of summer baseball. Simoes spent two weeks with the...
Uncertainty abounds in preparing for post-pandemic sports season
Hopkinton High School athletic director Rich Cormier is not entirely certain what high school sports will look like when they return in the fall — assuming they do — but he’s confident there will be significant changes compared to when the last HHS teams suited up...
Coutinho caps college career with Fulbright
Hopkinton High graduate Mia Rose Coutinho earned a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship this spring, putting an exclamation point on a stellar collegiate career at Lafayette College. The award will take her to Spain, a place where she has lived and studied in the past....
Town addresses surge in unemployment fraud
When Hopkinton Police Officer Phil Powers opened his mail and saw that he had a letter confirming his unemployment filing, he knew something was amiss. He had not been laid off from the Police Department and therefore had not filed an unemployment claim. His is one of...
HHS baseball plans summer return via Babe Ruth League
The senior-laden Hopkinton High School baseball team never had the chance to take the field this spring due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so when coach Steve Simoes saw an opportunity to get the group one more opportunity to play together, he took it. “I never get...
Chief Bennett: Pandemic breeding ‘tension’ in town
As the COVID-19 pandemic stretches into mid-June, Hopkinton Police Chief Joseph Bennett said the town is on edge and his officers are seeing residents getting angry and frustrated with one another after weeks of largely staying inside. “There is a lot of tension,...
Chief hopes to keep town’s support for police
Hopkinton Police Chief Joseph Bennett says he hopes the community will continue to show support for him and his officers following the “disgusting and appalling” death of George Floyd while in police custody in Minnesota and the worldwide protests and vigils that have...
Hopkinton’s Balarezo chairs Against the Tide event
Kristina Balarezo is not letting the COVID-19 pandemic keep her from a cause near and dear to her heart. The Hopkinton resident is serving as chair of the Massachusetts Breast Cancer Coalition’s Against the Tide, a multi-fitness event that raises funds to support...
Hopkinton woman spearheads DIY mask project
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and it seemed like things were “falling apart,” Shova Sharma did not want to sit on the sidelines. The Hopkinton resident, joined by just a handful of others at first, helped launch a do-it-yourself project to make masks for people at...
HHS grad Sasha Sloan’s singing career takes off
Sasha Sloan has always wanted to call music a career, and now the Hopkinton High School graduate is seeing the success she has dreamed about since she was a little girl. After a successful stint writing for other artists, Sloan, now 24, broke through as a performer in...
Josh Hanna leaves HHS for principal’s job in Franklin
After seven years as an assistant principal at Hopkinton High, Josh Hanna said he is excited to take on the new challenge of leading Franklin High School as the new principal. “This was obviously a professional goal of mine, to get to the point where I could be the...