MIDDLEBORO — When Garrett Perry stares out into Battis Field, three decades of memories flash before his eyes under the stadium lights. 

Perry played his last game on the home field of the Middleboro Cobras on Saturday, Sept. 28, marking the end of a 35-season career with Middleboro’s semi professional football team. He’s been on the team longer than any player in the Cobras’ history. 

Perry’s retirement ceremony, held during halftime of Saturday’s championship game, was “one of the most monumental nights of [his] life,” he said, second only to his wedding day and the birth of his children. 

Being a member of this team for so long, he noted, has felt like “one long hug.” 

He could have never imagined when he was 19 that his run with the team would span over three decades. And if he’d known, he’d have told his younger self: “You have no idea how special this is going to be.” 

Playing for that long is “a gift,” he said. “I feel extraordinarily grateful that this has been allowed to happen.” 

The team framed Perry’s retired jersey as well as a plaque listing all of his career accomplishments, which was given to him at his retirement ceremony. 

The word that comes to mind when he looks at that jersey is “proud,” he said. 

He’s proud of the program as a whole, of “a century of winning,” and “hundreds and hundreds of teammates,” he noted. “It's a very tight-knit brotherhood that sweats together and bleeds together,” he said of his fellow Cobras.  

The team was founded nearly 100 years ago, making the Cobras one of the oldest semi-professional football teams in the nation, according to coaching staff. 

Perry came to play for the Cobras after an unsuccessful attempt to go pro, though he does not see this as a failure. 

“I found to my surprise that I had never enjoyed playing football more than when I knew that this was the last place I was going to play,” he said of the minor league team. 

“I don’t have a single regret,” he said. 

And what he’s gained as a member of this team is far more than friendship. “It’s love. I love these guys,” he noted, fighting back tears. 

Behind the tackles and tough plays, he said, are a group of men that “say and do really kind things” for each other. 

Perry, who’s made it to the playoffs 35 times, and played in 18 Super Bowls and eight championships throughout his career, recalls past tenured players he admired. 

They gave everything they had for the team and the team responded with love, he said.

That same sense of admiration came through as players Kevin Pesa and Norman Burns talked about Perry. 

“When he leaves, I want him to pass the torch to us and know we’re going to carry that thing as high as we can and try and do what he did,” noted Pesa. 

Burns shared how Perry “is the example we all try to follow.”

“He’s what draws people to this team,” said Burns. 

Perry knows that what will follow the decision to retire is uncertainty. “I’ve never not played football,” he said, adding that his “unusual longevity” with the team means he is “unusually sad.” 

“My entire life with a family has been here,” he said, sharing how the woman who would become his wife was at his first Cobra’s game as a youth cheerleader. His two daughters grew up coming to games. 

Though he will no longer be taking down opponents on the field, Perry plans to stay in his current role as president of the team’s board of directors and remain involved in the team’s operations. 

“I hope [to] operate the team with our board until the day I die.”

He’s not looking to leave behind competition altogether, however. Perry said he plans to continue competing in the pro wrestling league he’s a part of and has considered getting into competitive weight lifting. 

Once an athlete, always an athlete.