Thanksgiving 2012: Danvers, Gloucester: two teams looking for a happy ending

The Danvers Falcons football team will seek to change its recent fortunes against rival Gloucester at home Thanksgiving morning.The Falcons are 5-5 and the Fishermen are 3-7. Even though the Falcons had a better record, Danvers coach Sean Rogers knows he has not had the best of luck against the Fishermen.”I have been coaching Danvers for seven years now, and since I have been on the sideline my team has not won the Thanksgiving matchup. I do not know how long the actual losing streak has been, but I really feel good about my team this time around. We seem to be clicking at the right time and hopefully that will be the case on Thursday,” Rogers said.Danvers won two of its last three games. The Falcons have had one Achilles heel throughout the season, and that is the turnover bug.”The big bugaboo for us all year long has been the turnovers,” Rogers said.”We have to limit the interceptions most definitely. When we have not turned over the ball and won the turnover battle, we have had great success. Unfortunately, when we have self-inflicted mistakes we seem to build holes we can dig out of. Emotions will be running high and I hope my boys can use that emotion as a positive.”Hopefully they can have controlled aggression and take that out on the Fishermen,” Rogers said.The season as a whole has been a success for the Falcons. Danvers finished with a 2-2 record in the league, and will be looking to have an above .500 record in both league play and for its overall record.For Gloucester, the Fishermen had a very young team this year.Gloucester started the season with a tough stretch against some tough Division 1 schools, but the Fishermen became better team for it. Gloucester coach Tony Zerilli was pleased with his team overall.”I feel we have slightly underachieved. In Gloucester we expect to win every game and anything less is underachieving. My team did progress as the season grew old and I am happy to see them finish as well as they did,” Zerilli said.Gloucester throughout the whole season has leaned on senior quarterback Santo Parisi.Parisi has never played that position before, but it was a position that the Fishermen needed to fill.Fellow senior Devin Hemeon was a dominant force on both sides of the ball for Gloucester as well.Zerilli believes the key to the game is Fisherman pride.”We have been talking a lot about playing with Fisherman pride over the last few weeks, and that is what Thanksgiving is all about.”We want to keep the trophy in Gloucester and the only way to do that is to take pride in everything we do, in every play we run,” Zerilli said.Gloucester is coming off a two-game winning streak against conference foes in Salem and Swampscott.The Fishermen won those games by an average of 15.5 points.