BIO

Humility… Fortitude of mind, body and spirit… A relentless devotion to the Red
& White… An unbending, unyielding loyalty to his teammates and school… an unbreakable will to win.
These are just a handful of words and phrases that would best describe the legacy forged with blood and sweat that was laid out by his father before him, and those same words best describe the precise legacy Michael J. Duffley Jr. left behind, intact, when he departed the hallowed halls of Barnstable High School in 1996.

Few people – teachers, administrators, coaches, student-athletes – have ever poured into a single brief time frame the type of devotion to success that Duffley did. It was much more than some mere statistical success, but more importantly it was the escalation of Barnstable High School athletics to a new level and to be frank, it was Duffley and his teammate and football co-captain Jon Sproul who spearheaded the BHS students’ drive to save athletics from the fiscal chopping block.

Born and bred on a steady diet of Red Raider football, an old-school, grind-it-out, smashmouth version of all that is pure and sacred with the game, Duffley took to heart and embodied the lessons one can only learn from lacing them up. A three-time varsity football and two-time varsity baseball letterman, Duffley’s presence on William Leo Shields Memorial Field was at one and the same time as vivid as it was remarkable. As the co-captain of arguably the greatest team ever fielded in the 120-year history of Red Raider football, Duffley helped steer from his fullback slot an offense that scored an average of 27.5 points per game, amassed the third-highest single-season team point total in school history (301) and he concluded his senior year as one of only eight Barnstable High School running backs to amass over 1,000 yards rushing in a single season (1,019).

He is also one of just three Red Raiders who’ve ever scored five touchdowns in a game.
But few of those milestones mattered to a young man whose pride depended upon a defensive mindset. As one of the most vicious and unrelenting linebackers in the history of Barnstable High School football, Duffley’s defensive unit allowed just 72 points in that vaunted, 11-0, undefeated season, including an 11- 0 shutout of New Bedford in the Division IA Super Bowl championship game.

A Boston Globe All-Scholastic and Shriners South All-Star, Duffley’s accolades were well-earned, each and every one, but to this humble and unassuming off­the-field gentleman and on-the-field workhorse, few marks mattered more than having the ability to say that he had played on the first-ever Barnstable Silver Bullets championship team, as well as the first-ever Massachusetts State Football Champion in one of the state’s oldest and most prestigious football programs. He was inducted Into the BHS Athletic Hall of Fame, Nov. 24, 2012.