INTRODUCTION:
This is a collection of records and stats on the history of the Howe High School-Billerica Memorial High School football team.
The start of the team came about during the early years of the 20th Century. No piece of documentation has been found as to just when the first season and first game was played. According to one former player, the late Robert Jacob’s of the class of 1924, there were no athletic teams at the old Howe School, nor were there any during the first year of Howe High School (1916-1917). Jacob’s reported that a team excited in his freshman year (1920-21), and he was not permitted to play until his sophomore year.
The records and stats in the following pages are from 1935 to 2008 (There was no team in 1933 or 1934). Records and stats from prior to 1935 are very difficult to locate. Any and all stats prior to ‘35, that have been found, are included in these pages only if they still stand as a school record. Any game scores from before 1935 are listed on the score pages.
Over the years Howe and BMHS have battled in over 800 games and won seven Lowell Suburban/Merrimack Valley Conferences titles and three Massachusetts state titles.
Over the years, some fine people have coached the Indians, from Victor Adams to Peter Flynn. The most successful coach for Billerica was the late Charles ‘Chuck’ Lampson; he passed away during the 1995 season and coached the Indians for 21 non-consecutive years.
Lampson came to Howe in 1941; he became football coach the next year and led the green and white to its first championship. After serving in the army for the next three years, he returned to HHS, in 1946, and coached the football team until 1965.
Today, Billerica has one of the most successful teams in the Merrimack Valley Conference. As these pages of records, stats, and scores will show, Billerica is in the middle of what could be the most successful period in school history since the 1940s.
The reader should bear in mind that since the records prior to 1933 are incomplete and hard to locate, these records and stats can change rapidly if or when more information from the early years are found.