As the winter season comes to an end, the accolades come rolling in for Braintree High School. One team that has been highly successful and has received many honors is Braintree High’s wrestling team.
“Great history of Braintree wrestling, but I think a lot of it is the continuist buy-in of kids who join the team and understand this is a sport that has been around for 60 years at Braintree High, and we want to continue that winning tradition.” – Head Coach Brian Cafelle was asked about the known success of the Braintree High School wrestling team.
Besides the individual athletes, Coach Brian Cafelle received his own accolade this season: his 100th win as a varsity head wrestling coach.
When asked about his success in winning, Cafelle said, “Ultimately, I am a product of the team, I can not go out there and do what the kids do.”
During his time in high school, Coach Cafelle could be caught on the mat as he, himself, was a wrestler in high school as he attended and competed for Canton High School, just 7 miles away from Braintree.
“I played basketball for a while and wasn’t really great at it and I wanted something to do in the winter and so I kind of jumped in [wrestling] my freshman year [high school], and I never looked back.”
Coach Cafelle attended Norwich University to not only continue his academic studies but also to continue his passion of wrestling. Cafelle knew when he graduated from college that he still had something more to do in the wrestling world; that was when he was offered a job back at his stomping grounds, Canton.
“There was a part of me that said you know what something is missing, like a part of who I am.”
Coach Cafelle had spent time under the Canton coaching staff as an assistant coach prior to getting the head coaching job.
“My old high school coach was still at Canton, and he asked me to come back and coach.”
Coach Cafelle took this as an opportunity to get to be with a team and transition from being a player to now being a coach. Cafelle fell in love and felt like this was, “his purpose,” to coach and help athletes.
For his first three years, Cafelle was a volunteer, under his high school coach. In 2010, when the head coach retired. Coach Cafelle took over the high school wrestling team and coached there for ten years.
Coach Cafelle came to Braintree as Coach Dundon, the former head coach, asked him to come join the program as he was beginning to lean towards retirement.
“I joined Braintree Staff for one year as an assistant, and then I took over in 2021-2022.”
For sixteen years, Coach Cafelle has been coaching as a wrestling coach.
As a head wrestling coach, you gain a win under your name when your team wins a team meet, or dual meet, not individual athlete’s wins. Coach Cafelle was not able to start his road to 100 wins untill he was given the title of head coach while in Canton.
“The bulk of my coach wins were at Canton because I was there for so long…it transitions over [to Braintree].”
Besides being the head coach at the high school for wrestling, Brian Cafelle is involved in the town in other aspects, as he is also a physical education teacher at Braintree’s East Middle School.
You will be able to see Coach Cafelle on the side of the mats until he no longer feels “excited” when it is that time of year again to get the wrestling season started, as for Coach Brian Cafelle, he truly loves wrestling.
