SWAMPSCOTT — Today, a large contingent from the town will pile into buses or cars and make the trek to Gillette Stadium in Foxborough to see the Big Blue football team play.
However, some of the brightest lights of the Swampscott football legacy might not be able to make it. Their daughters and granddaughters will be playing basketball in the town league.
“I’d go,” said Peter Beatrice Jr., who, like his father and brothers, played football for Swampscott. “But it’s the first day of basketball and we’ll all be there.”
So will Kevin Rogers, and so will Walter Costello.
It may be basketball season, but these girls, many of them offsprings of Swampscott’s illustrious progeny did something unusual in a different sport. In their first year of existence, the all-girl team rolled through the town’s 10-and-under flag football league schedule, running the table against the rest of the town, whose other teams consisted of mainly boys.
“I’m not sure the boys liked it very much,” said John Tripp, who coached them. “But the girls sure did.”
Those players who thought they were running up against a “bunch of girls” didn’t do their homework. These girls — Greta Siefken, Lyla Rogers, Elle and Eve Byrne, Cecelia Tripp, Caroline Reen, Victoria Pierro, Lia Beatrice, Jenny Sanchez, Olivia Quagrello — are year-round athletes and teammates. And if some of the surnames look familiar, it’s because they should be. Lia Beatrice’s father is Peter Beatrice Jr., whose father, Peter Beatrice Sr. was one of the Swampscott High luminaries in the 1960s.
Similarly, Lyla Rogers’ father, Kevin, was a pitcher on Swampscott’s state championship baseball team of 1993.
But wait. There’s more. Greta Siefken is the granddaughter of Bob Jauron, whose family, collectively, helped write the Swampscott legacy; Elle and Eve Byrne are twin granddaughters of Walter Costello, another star from the era of Stan Bondelevitch, the legendary coach whose leadership resulted in a phenomenal period of success that began in the 1950s and lasted well into the 1970s.
And quarterback Olivia Quagrello’s grandfather is Tom Iarrobino, who may not have grown up in Swampscott, but whose children went to the high school. His daughter, Anne, was an all-star field hockey player and cheerleader captain.
The idea of these girls with their famous parents and grandparents coming together in this way is ironic, Iarrobino admits.
“It’s certainly a coincidence,” he said. “This group of parents and grandparents we kind of chuckled about it during the year.
“What’s kind of nice is seeing all the parents and grandparents at the games,” he said. “Every game, we had a great time.”
They all stress that the girls are best friends, and that one of the things that made them formidable in a relatively new sport for them is their familiarity with each other.
“They’re always playing together,” said Tripp. “They play soccer and basketball too. So when I asked them whether they’d like to join the flag football league, they were very enthusiastic.”
Swampscott is in the North Shore Flag Football League, and each community has its own division. The girls, who were on the Cardinals, went undefeated in the U10 division of the town’s league. Tripp entered them into the Tournament of Champions in Reading, and they dropped their first game of the season there.
“There are a lot of girls on this team who are related to the history of Swampscott,” said Beatrice, who was the assistant coach. “But it was exciting for us, as parents and grandparents. And it was fun to watch them play.”
“I think it’s great,” said Jauron. “Swampscott has a football tradition, and a sports tradition in general.”
“The funny part about it,” Costello said, “is that I don’t think anyone expected them to do as well as they did. When they finished the season undefeated, I think everyone was kind of shocked.
But they really know each other. They’ve been playing soccer together for four years, and that’s why (Tripp) said, ‘let’s get them to play flag football.'”
But, he said, “they had some familiarity with the game. They were executing plays better than anyone else. They really had a sense of the game.”
But neither he nor anyone else put it together that this may be the dawn of “Swampscott: the next generation.”
“Did I ever put it together — probably not,” Costello said. “It never crossed our minds.”
Rogers said the parents and grandparents “tried not to look at it as any more than what the whole experience of playing meant to their daughters and granddaughters.”
And once it ended in October, it was onto basketball.
“That’s the gift of being a kid that age,” Rogers said. “You go from flag football to basketball, from basketball to indoor soccer, from indoor soccer to outdoor soccer. On any given Saturday they could be doing anything. They love to compete. And they compete ferociously. They are really a special group.”
Steve Krause can be reached at [email protected].
