Here’s Why Fairhaven Football Stars’ Names Were Hilariously Butchered by Announcers

Even with the early 3 o'clock start, the Fairhaven Blue Devils had quite the crowd at Gillette Stadium for the Super Bowl matchup against the Salem Witches last night.  Those that couldn't get out of work early were able to tune in on the Patriots' YouTube channel for some really nice coverage from Andy Gresh and Brendan Glasheen from Sportsradio WEEI.

Glasheen was a solid play by play voice while Gresh was absolutely outstanding as an analyst, the busy pair announcing 6 Super Bowl games over the course of two days.  That's a lot of high school football.

It's not easy walking in and calling a high football game filled with players you've never heard of before.  Unlike the NFL, there were no pre-game production meetings with players or coaches.  There was no way to get much background on the players at all, which is why Gresh's on the fly analysis was so impressive.  Many viewers likely thought Gresh and Glasheen were familiar with the players, which they weren't (for the most part).

Marques and Duarte

For the first quarter or two, SouthCoast viewers of the Fairhaven/Salem game were probably doing a lot of wincing.  Common SouthCoast names like Marques, Duarte, Vieira and Lague were butchered repeatedly by Gresh and Glasheen, and as it turns out, it seems that the savage butchery wasn't their fault.

The word is that Gresh and Glasheen were given cue cards with phonetical spellings of the players' names so that they would pronounce them correctly.  However, those cards apparently had inaccurate pronunciation, causing the hilarious pronunciations of Justin Marques as "Mark-WEZ" and Jayce Duarte as "Doo-ART-tay."   The high profile quarterback and running back's names were mentioned incessantly during the webcast, and it was straight up painful.

According to Beth David, the owner and publisher of Fairhaven's Neighborhood News, Gresh and Glasheen were given inaccurate info.  It's funny to think that a few of the most common names on the SouthCoast are so foreign to people in other parts of the state.