South Shore high school football coach resigns following historic season

The Carver High football team will have a new head coach this fall.

Ben Shuffain announced his resignation from the position on X on Monday after two seasons leading the Crusaders, the latest featured the team's first winning season since 2015 and a Division 8 Super Bowl appearance.

Shuffain confirmed via phone call Wednesday morning that he will be the new head football coach at Sharon High, his alma mater. A formal announcement from the school is expected on Wednesday.

"I have resigned as Head Football Coach of Carver," Shuffain wrote in his social media post on Monday. "I wish the coaches and players years of continued success."

Shuffain, a 1999 Sharon High graduate, was a football captain and three-year starting quarterback for the Eagles. He came back to serve as the team's J.V. and quarterbacks coach from 2002-05 and now returns as the head coach and a physical education teacher at the school.

Shuffain takes over for Dave Morse, who held the position since 2011 but stepped down in December following the team's 4-7 season this fall.

"When you get an opportunity to coach the team you grew up playing for and move back to your hometown, it’s tough to pass up," said Shuffain.

Bouncing back after a 3-8 season in 2022, Shuffain led Carver to undefeated run against league competition this fall and the team earned its first South Shore League Tobin Division crown since 2000. Spearheaded by the school's all-time leading passer Tyler Lennox, a UMass Dartmouth commit, the offense posted 40-plus points in 10 of 12 games (excluding a 56-0 loss to Middleboro on Thanksgiving in which the starters rested ahead of the Super Bowl).

Shuffain was named the New England Patriots Coach of the Week in October after Carver's 42-39 overtime win over Cohasset, a thriller that snapped a 17-year losing skid against the rival Skippers. The Crusaders finished the season with a 41-7 loss to top-seeded West Boylston in the Div. 8 Super Bowl at Gillette Stadium in December.

“It’s always going to be special because it was my first head coaching job," Shuffain said of his two-year tenure at Carver. "What we did in a short amount of time, I’m going to use this as an example of how to build programs. … There’s so many things I could pick and choose from over the course of two years here that I’m going to use forever.”

Shuffain doubled as the Crusaders' baseball coach this spring. In Carver’s second game of the season, the team played a road game against Sharon, where the Eagles debuted a new baseball facility dedicated to Shuffain's former baseball coach, Joel Peckham. Peckham, a Massachusetts Baseball Coaches Hall-of-Famer, coached at Sharon for over 40 years and died in 2022.

Shuffain was one of four guest speakers at the ceremony.

“Speaking at that, speaking with my old teammates and coaches, it triggered the ‘There’s no place like home’ memories,” Shuffain said.

This is a developing story. This page will be updated.

This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: South Shore high school football coach resigns following historic season