Cape Tech Begins Season As Defending Voc Champs With Crosstown Win; Monomoy/St. John Paul II Enters Second Year Of Co-Op With New Coach

PLEASANT LAKE – It will be the quote of the season for the Cape Cod Tech Crusaders: The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance.

The message delivered by head coach Calvin Castillias to his football team is pithy yet pertinent. Last year’s Cinderella run to a vocational small school state title certainly could have produced the presumptuousness that Castillias is wary of. Only about a month ago, not long before the start of preseason camp, the team received championship rings.

But last Friday against Monomoy/St. John Paul II in the season opener, Cape Tech didn’t play ignorantly or arrogantly, putting away the crosstown visitors 39-0. Like last year’s Harwich Hoedown, the Crusaders pitched a shutout behind a high-scoring offense. (For more than 15 years, Harwich and Cape Tech operated as a co-op football team; the partnership was shuttered a few years before the formation of the Monomoy Regional School District.)

Prior to the game, a student-organized ceremony remembered the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. On the first drive of the season as defending vocational champs, Cape Tech forced a three-and-out. Then in three plays, senior running back Thomas Allen brought the Crusaders to the end zone. He finished the night with three touchdowns.

“It was truly incredible for students to put this thing together, but I'm happy that we didn't lose that focus,” Castillias said. “We were able to rebound from that delay and have ourselves one hell of a game.”

Senior quarterback Daniel Handville ran in for a score, as did junior back Reilly Ross. The Crusaders defense had two interceptions.

Cape Tech led 31-0 after one half. Reaching back to last year, the win was their ninth in a row.

“Just getting back out there after last season was great,” Allen said. “We had such a good season, and we wanted to come out strong because last year everybody called it a fluke. Everybody still thinks we're just Cape Cod Tech, but we showed what we can do, and I'm proud of the team.”

Castillias was extremely proud of the group “for coming out, understanding the message, rising to the occasion,” he said. 

If there was one minus to the Crusaders’ performance in their first game, it was penalties. The team racked up a number of flags and accrued a sizable amount of penalty yardage. Still, there’s always going to be much work to do after Week 1. 

And Cape Tech knows as well as anyone now that it’s a long, long season with plenty of time to grow, improve and become the team they want to be.  

“We know what we're capable of,” Allen said. “We know what we can do. We saw it last year. We know that we can win games.”

After what they achieved in 2025, Cape Tech’s expectations for the follow-up are understandably high. They recognize, and remember, how far they can really go.

“The road to glory started today,” Castillias said he told the team. “Destiny is in their hands.”

They just need to remember that the only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance.

“It's to keep them focused because I know the potential that they have and what they can do, but so easily can that be lost with just the loss of some focus,” Castillias said. “I'm excited for what these guys can do, and I know what they can accomplish. It's just showing up, correcting the mistakes, getting better every single day, and we'll see what they can do.”

When the announcement first went out earlier this year that Chuck Allaire was the new head coach of the Monomoy/St. John Paul II football team, the congratulatory messages came flooding in for his father, not him.

The confusion was fair; the two share the same name. And Allaire the elder was also a football coach (Allaire the younger served on his staff at Greater New Bedford, adding to the likelihood for mix-up).

But it’s also exactly why Allaire, in part, took the position in Harwich — why he’s crossing the bridge daily on a commute from Rhode Island to lead the program.

“I'm trying to get out of the shadow a little bit and create my own culture,” he said.

Allaire, who grew up in Fairhaven, has an experienced football resume. He started watching film as a middle schooler, when his father was an assistant coach at UMass Dartmouth. He was brought up on a football field yet at one point didn’t think the sport was a path he’d pursue — again, in order to separate himself as an individual.

But he did end up in football, successfully at that. He worked as a defensive and offensive coordinator with his father at Greater New Bedford, where the team won multiple vocational state championships.

Thereafter, Allaire was the first official head coach of the club football program at Johnson & Wales University. An eventual move to Division III was considered but didn’t end up transpiring, but Allaire’s duties were truly collegiate nonetheless. He’d fly to places like Miami to recruit players.

“It was a blast,” Allaire said. “Two years later, I didn't recognize my own daughter, and so I took a step back and went back to high school athletics.”

Allaire went into Rhode Island high school football, most recently working as the defensive coordinator at Davies Tech, which won a first-ever state championship in 2024. Then arose the opportunity at Monomoy, which he couldn’t pass up. 

And so he drives from Rhode Island to Dartmouth, where he teaches, to the Cape and back. Perhaps this program, a budding co-op team that went 1-9 last season, seems on the surface different from Allaire’s other stops. But high school student-athletes are high school student-athletes, he said.

“You coach the kids you have, and you work to identify areas they need to improve, and you work to accentuate their strengths that they have already and build from there,” Allaire said. “I feel that we are heading in the right direction.”

Numbers are the prominent challenge for Monomoy/St. John Paul II in their second year as a football partnership (Former head coach Rob Sliney stepped down after four seasons, citing work and family commitments).

For the season-opening matchup against Cape Tech for instance, Monomoy/St. John Paul II’s roster listed 30 players; The Crusaders had 38 (plus junior varsity and freshman teams). 

Most of the players hail from Monomoy, with a critical handful of contributors (including junior quarterback Dylan Smith) from St. John Paul II. And of those 30 players, 14 are freshmen. Three are seniors, which is without question the fewest Allaire has ever had, he said.

“Obviously, we are still very, very thin,” Allaire said. “Our numbers are a problem. That's not going to be a secret.”

On offense, Allaire has installed the triple option — a switch from the West Coast style the team played in last season. 

Allaire recognizes that, currently, Monomoy/St. John Paul II is a program other schools schedule for their homecoming games. And while the focus stays week to week — working every day to get 1 percent better, understanding that some days might bring regression while others may see a 5 to 10 percent improvement — the overarching goal is to become a program that schools, in fact, do not want to see at their homecomings.

“That's a cultural mentality,” Allaire said. “Whether we can win those games or not, we want to be tough outs both offensively and defensively.”