NEWTON UPPER HILLS, Mass. When Greg Flormitzer learned that his previously top-ranked team had fallen first to number 4, then to number 8 in the polls, he did what any other highly-competitive coach would have done. “I went into my office to throw a tantrum,” he says with a grim face that shows he still isn’t over the disappointment.
But first he prepared himself, just as he prepares for every game on his schedule. “I put on 14 ounce boxing gloves, a helmet and put in my mouthguard,” he says. “Then I propped a pillow up against a wall and I punched it as hard as I could.”
Flormitzer is Safety Coach in this suburban town with a heavy concentration of academics, physicians, lawyers and other professionals for whom risk-aversion is as much a religion as Friday-night football in Texas. “Our kids will be working in highly-paid sedentary jobs when they grow up,” says Emil de Lisle, a city councilor. “We want to prepare them for a future where the most danger they’ll face on any given day is being caught ogling the models on the L.L. Bean website.”
Flormitzer was brought in eight years ago from Shawnee-Mission, Kansas, where he had turned around a program that was in disarray and led it to a state championship. “When I got there, kids were getting paper cuts reading Harry Potter books,” he recalls, shaking his head. “We introduced seat belts on tricycles, and changed hopscotch to walkscotch, substantially reducing hopping-related injuries.”
With their new coach’s can-do attitude and off-season conditioning, Newton Upper Hills vaulted past local competitors and began to attract notice from national safety magazines. “By 2020 we were number one in the AP, UPI and Coaches Poll,” Flormitzer recalls proudly. Then came a doping scandal in 2022 that set the program back, as five third-graders tested positive for Lik-m-Aid, a powdered candy that is used to mask Ritalin, a drug that sedates hyperactive kids so they can sit in beanbag chairs without fidgeting.
An investigation by the Mass. Interscholastic Safety Association led to a one-year suspension from post-season competition, and the loss of top prospects such as Evan “Look Out!” Franklin, a highly-recruited seventh grader who uses a two-handed grip on handrails while walking down stairs. “We could have hung our heads and moped,” Flormitzer says reflectively. “But the kids really sucked it up.”
The team came roaring back last year and began its schedule as pre-season favorites to run the safety table in the tough MetroWest Conference, but they found instead that other towns had been playing catch-up ball. “We went to Needham Heights for our opening game and they had guardrails on the sinks in the restrooms so kids couldn’t fall in and drown,” Flormitzer notes. As his team walked off the field following its traditional Thanksgiving Day game with archrival Wellesley Falls, the look of disappointment on the player’s faces foreshadowed their coming slide in the rankings. “The Wellesley kids had belts, suspenders, jock straps and condoms,” Flormitzer says bitterly of the more-affluent community. “There’s no way we can compete with the richer towns unless our budget is substantially increased.”
Flormitzer’s contract has one more year to run, and he is playing coy about his future. “At some point every coach wants to move up to the next level,” he says. “I’d like to see if I could make it at a Division I school, where Friday-night binge drinking can make your kids forget about flossing.”