Silver Lake Regional High School is a public, regional
high school
A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...
in
Massachusetts' South Shore region. It is the only secondary school in the Silver Lake Regional School District, comprising the towns of
Kingston,
Plympton
Plympton is a suburb of the city of Plymouth in Devon, England. It is in origin an ancient stannary town. It was an important trading centre for locally mined tin, and a seaport before the River Plym silted up and trade moved down river to P ...
and
Halifax, Massachusetts. From 1955 to 2004, the Silver Lake Regional School District included the town of
Pembroke, Massachusetts
Pembroke is a small historic town in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, United States. Pembroke is a South Shore suburb of the Boston metropolitan area. The town is located about halfway between Boston and Cape Cod. The town is considered rural wi ...
.
History
Named for
Silver Lake, which borders the four towns which belonged to the district for most of its history – Plympton, Halifax, Pembroke and Kingston - and which is situated near the campus, Silver Lake Regional High School opened on September 19, 1955, attended by students from the towns of
Pembroke,
Kingston,
Plympton
Plympton is a suburb of the city of Plymouth in Devon, England. It is in origin an ancient stannary town. It was an important trading centre for locally mined tin, and a seaport before the River Plym silted up and trade moved down river to P ...
,
Halifax and
Carver in southeastern Massachusetts. The school was constructed for $1.7 million, and originally housed grades 7–12. Over ten thousand spectators attended the dedication, which was keynoted by Senator
Leverett Saltonstall
Leverett A. Saltonstall (September 1, 1892June 17, 1979) was an American lawyer and politician from Massachusetts. He served three two-year terms as the 55th Governor of Massachusetts, and for more than twenty years as a United States senator ...
. The original graduating class was 81 students.
Carver left the district in 1959, and its students began attending
Middleboro High School, before joining the
Plymouth-Carver regional school district in 1963. In 1958, the seventh and eighth grades were split off into the former Kingston High School building (which stood behind the current
Kingston Police Department headquarters), which became the first Silver Lake Junior High. In 1968, the region built a new junior high school building on
Route 27
Route 27, or Highway 27, may refer to:
Australia
* Burke Developmental Road (Queensland)
* Zeehan Highway (Tasmania)
Canada
* Alberta Highway 27
* British Columbia Highway 27
* Manitoba Highway 27
* Prince Edward Island Route 27
* Saskatchew ...
in Pembroke.
After the completion of
Route 3 in 1962, the Silver Lake towns – as did the South Shore generally - experienced explosive population growth, well into the 1980s. The Silver Lake campus eventually grew too small for the growing populations of the towns – their combined population nearly trebled between the founding of the district and 1970 – and by 1970, the high school was on split sessions, becoming double sessions by 1974.
In 1974 the district began construction on the Silver Lake-Pembroke Campus on Learning Lane in Pembroke. Construction took two years at a cost of $3.7 million (which was funded by Pembroke residents). At the same time, the original Silver Lake-Kingston campus underwent a major addition which added a second gymnasium, new classrooms and a new vocational wing. Silver Lake–Pembroke was scheduled to open in September 1976, but was delayed until November 1976 due to vandalism and a fire during the summer of 1976. The fire caused the new sprinkler system to flood the building's lower level, and carpeting and sheetrock had to be replaced and repainted. The school eventually housed grades 9–12 of Pembroke residents, while Kingston, Halifax and Plympton residents continued to attend at the original building.
Silver Lake graduated its largest class, of 510 students, in 1981. Attendance peaked in 1980, when enrollment in the high school was 2100 students with just over 1000 students at the junior high. Subsequently, and throughout the 1980s, enrollment declined. In 1991, the region closed the junior high building, and converted the Pembroke campus to the junior high, while the Kingston campus once again became the sole high school campus, housing students from all four towns as it had prior to 1976. Attendance dropped from 2100 in 1980 to 1260 in 1993.
Continued overcrowding in the school led Pembroke (with a population by 2000 half again what it was in 1970) to withdraw from the district and form its own independent school district in 2002; its students remained enrolled in Silver Lake until 2004.
A new high school was constructed on the site of the original building, which opened in 2004. The school is one of the most expensive standing in Massachusetts and is adjacent to the district's middle school, the Silver Lake Middle School.
The 1955 high school building stood until 2005 when it was torn down; however, the original football field, Sirrico Field, remains.
The school was cited in ''Boston'' magazine as being one of the 2008 fifty top schools in eastern Massachusetts.
Athletics
The name for the Silver Lake teams is the Lakers.
Tony Sirrico, who had taught and coached at Pembroke High School in the 1950s became the first athletic director at Silver Lake. He also coached football and baseball at Silver Lake. In 1955 Silver Lake was a Division III school in the South Shore Conference. In 1966 it moved up to Division II and joined the Old Colony League. In 1986 it moved to Division I. The school has a football program (1980 Division III Super Bowl Champions) and was regionally known for excelling in basketball (in which it won a state title in 1960, coached by future
Boston Celtics assistant coach
John Killilea
John P. Killilea (June 19, 1928 – January 27, 1996) was an American basketball coach and scout. He served as the assistant coach to four National Basketball Association (NBA) team; the Boston Celtics (1972–77), the Milwaukee Bucks (1977–198 ...
), hockey (in which it reached the Division II Eastern Mass Finals in 1977) and soccer (in which it won a state title in 1988).
In 2005, after the withdrawal of the town of Pembroke, Silver Lake began competing in Division II. The Lakers now compete in the Patriot League of southeastern Massachusetts.
For most of its existence, Silver Lake's chief rival was
Plymouth-Carver High School, until the breakup of Plymouth-Carver into three separate high schools in 1988; thereafter, until the district's demerger, its chief rival was
Bridgewater-Raynham Regional High School Bridgewater Raynham Regional High School, founded in 1961, is a regional high school in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, shared by the City of Bridgewater and the Town of Raynham. The high school, commonly referred to as B-R, relocated to a new building ...
. The most notable current school rivalries are with
Pembroke High School and
Duxbury High School.
Notable alumni
*
Vinny deMacedo
Viriato Manuel Pereira de Macedo (born October 16, 1965), also popularly known as Vinny deMacedo, is a Cape Verdean American politician, and was the Massachusetts State Senator for the Plymouth and Barnstable District, which comprises the com ...
, class of 1983 - former Massachusetts state legislator.
*
Ben Edlund
Ben Edlund (born September 20, 1968) is an American cartoonist, screenwriter, television producer, and television director. He is best known as the creator of the satirical superhero character The Tick.
Background
Edlund was born and raised in ...
, class of 1986 - creator of ''
The Tick'' comic book series, co-creator of science-fiction television show ''
Firefly'', and former writer and executive producer on the television show ''
Supernatural''.
*
Eric Flaim
Eric Joseph Flaim (born March 9, 1967) is an American former speed skater. He became a world champion in 1988, as well as capturing Olympic silver medals, namely in speed skating at the 1988 Winter Olympics and in short track speed skating at ...
, class of 1985 - four-time Olympian (1988, 1992, 1994, 1998), two-time silver medalist (1500 meter long track, 1988; 5000 meter short track relay, 1994); first American to medal in two different Winter Olympic sports.
*
Tim Murphy Timothy Murphy may refer to:
Politics
* Tim Murphy (American politician) (born 1952), American Republican Party politician from Pennsylvania
* Tim Murphy (Canadian politician) (born 1959), Canadian politician
* Timothy J. Murphy (1893–1949), I ...
, class of 1974 - Harvard football coach.
*
Joe Proctor
Joseph Edward Proctor (born August 10, 1985) is an American mixed martial artist who most recently competed in the welterweight division of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. A professional competitor since 2008, Proctor was also a competitor o ...
, class of 2003 -
UFC
The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is an American mixed martial arts (MMA) promotion company based in Las Vegas, Nevada. It is owned and operated by Zuffa, a wholly owned subsidiary of Endeavor Group Holdings. It is the largest MMA ...
fighter.
*
Pat Seltsam, class of 1982 - World Cup silver medalist speedskater.
*
Kevin Stevens
Kevin Stevens (born April 15, 1965) is an American former ice hockey player and current scout in the National Hockey League (NHL). He played left wing on a line with Mario Lemieux during the Pittsburgh Penguins' Stanley Cup championships in ...
, class of 1983 - NHL All-Star left winger, two-time
Stanley Cup champion with
Pittsburgh Penguins
The Pittsburgh Penguins (colloquially known as the Pens) are a professional ice hockey team based in Pittsburgh. They compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Metropolitan Division of the Eastern Conference, and have playe ...
.
*
Buddy Teevens
Eugene Francis "Buddy" Teevens III (born October 1, 1956) is an American football coach and former player. He is the head football coach at Dartmouth College, a position he held from 1987 to 1991 and resumed in 2005. Teevens also served as the he ...
, class of 1974 - Dartmouth and Stanford football coach.
*
Cleon Turner, class of 1963 - former Massachusetts state legislator.
References
{{Coord, 42, 0, 55.1, N, 70, 47, 8.5, W, region:US, display=title
Kingston, Massachusetts
Schools in Plymouth County, Massachusetts
Public high schools in Massachusetts