What It’s Like to Be a Fairhaven Blue Devil on Super Bowl Gameday

What was it like to be a player on the Super Bowl bound Fairhaven Blue Devils?  If you were Captains Cam Burke and Justin Marques, it meant an even earlier wake up call than usual.

"Well, it starts here at Fun 107," said head coach Derek Almeida.  "Build some excitement in town with being on the radio."  The game day Fun 107 appearance has become a "tradition" of sorts for the Blue Devils Football on Super Bowl game days.

"Then, we're going to report to school," said Almeida, "and we've got a little parade around the town to go see all the area schools and get all the kids excited during the day.  We're going to head out and thank all the young kids in Fairhaven and Acushnet that come out and support us.  We're excited for that."

The kids at the Wood School couldn't have been more excited to see the Blue Devils if they were Patriots on a Boston Duck Boat.  Some of the Fairhaven players, like Marques, attended the school as elementary students.  The kids were in utter disbelief as the players hung out of the yellow school bus windows.

"We've got a nice little pep rally planned at the end of the school day," said Almeida, then it's football time.  We'll start our football work at about 3 o'clock, where we get into our walk-through. And we're going to eat together and have some fun and get ourselves ready to play."

Fairhaven fans lined Route 6 to cheer on the team as the Fisher Bus luxury coaches left the school to head up to Foxboro at 5PM.

Almeida said he preferred last year's early start to Wednesday night's 8PM kickoff.  "I just told the guys in the Fun 107 parking lot that I feel like we're still playing tomorrow...it's so far off!  But when we get close, it'll kind of get the blood boiling again, and we'll be ready to go."