Middleboro students meet in the middle
Senior and kindergarden students meet in the middle of the Middleboro High School football field Sept 19. Photos source: Middleborough Public Schools
From Left: Kindergarten teacher Carly Paling and students Collin Bertram and Willow Norvish speak during the Middleboro meet at the 50 event. 
Senior Natalie Corey addresses the Class of 2038. 
Senior students pose during the event. 
Kindergarten students line the end zone in preparation to meet the seniors on the field. 
Middleborough classes of 2026 and 2038 pose together on the field.
Senior and kindergarden students meet in the middle of the Middleboro High School football field Sept 19. Photos source: Middleborough Public Schools
From Left: Kindergarten teacher Carly Paling and students Collin Bertram and Willow Norvish speak during the Middleboro meet at the 50 event.
Senior Natalie Corey addresses the Class of 2038.
Senior students pose during the event.
Kindergarten students line the end zone in preparation to meet the seniors on the field.
Middleborough classes of 2026 and 2038 pose together on the field.
MIDDLEBORO — The youngest and oldest Middleboro students met on the Middleboro High School football field to celebrate new beginnings.
The graduating class of 2026 and the class of 2038 — currently in kindergarten — met at the field’s 50 yard line for a Middleboro meet at the 50 event before a Friday night football game Sept. 19.
Prior to the game’s coin toss, the seniors lined up in one end zone and the kindergarteners in the other. Each group walked hand in hand down the field to meet in the middle.
At midfield the senior students gave their younger counterparts pennants and under-eye tattoos adorned with school imagery.
“The meeting symbolized their special journeys at Middleboro — one just beginning and the other kicking off the culminating year of their time as Sachems,” said kindergarten teacher Carly Paling . “It was pretty powerful to watch.”
The idea came at a basketball game in winter of 2024, during a conversation between Paling and high school Principal Paul Branagan. They had both seen a video of a school doing a similar event and wanted to replicate it.
“We laughed, and said ‘This has Middleboro written all over it,’” she said.
She reached out to Branigan and Athletic Director Ryan Silvia at the beginning of the school year to plan the event, and she said they were both immediately interested.
Natalie Cory as the senior representative, and Paling and two of her students as kindergarten representatives, spoke before the walk.
Paling said the event was well received by the town and a highlight for her kindergarteners as well.
“We’re hoping that this is a new tradition of connection and community going forward,” she said. “We can’t wait to plan the next one.”
