In 1988, head football coach Donald Herman had just started coaching at Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School and was unfamiliar with the Island Cup, the annual rivalry football game between the Vineyard and Nantucket. The game was scheduled to be played on Nantucket that year, so he went over to “the other island” early with the junior varsity team, meeting up with the Nantucket coach.

At 5:30 in the morning on a recent Saturday, Yann Meersseman parked his minivan outside of the Steamship Authority building in Vineyard Haven and dropped a few tokens into the yellow Boston Herald display box. He pulled open the box and changed the front copy of the Herald, placing a short stack of newspapers inside the box as he did so.

Success doesn’t materialize out of the thin air, and in the case of this year’s varsity football team, now 6-4 as they head into the Island Cup, the groundwork was laid four years ago, when the current seniors took their first starts for the junior varsity squad.

“We’re building the foundation,” junior varsity head coach Mike Magaraci said in a Gazette interview. “And then junior and senior year, you build the house.”

On Sept. 21, the Framingham State University football team shut out fellow Division III opponent Bridgewater State University 16-0. It was the lone loss of the season for Bridgewater, which went 9-1 this year, earning a place in the NCAA tournament.

The playoff runs of field hockey and boys’ soccer ended this week, leaving football and cross country the only Vineyard teams still in action. Football takes on league opponent Coyle-Cassidy in an away game tomorrow at 1 p.m. Cross country travels to the Eastern Massachusetts Divisional Championship meet, held in Wrentham, tomorrow.