How prep school prepared New Bedford's Bill and Billois Sousa for college football

NEW BEDFORD — During the first week that twin brothers Bill and Billois Sousa spent at East Coast Prep in Great Barrington, they felt like fish out of water.

"It was in the woods in the middle of nowhere and that was a big adjustment for two kids from the city," Billois Sousa said. "We were on our own for the first time, 300 miles from home and that took some getting used to. There was nothing to do. We watched a lot of film in our room and took things one day at a time."

A prep school that combines academics and football into a one-semester experience, ECP features a highly structured daily program designed to prepare young men for college in the classroom and on the field.

The daily schedule had a military feel to it, with a team breakfast at 8:30 a.m. followed by SAT/ACT prep work, strength and conditioning training, team lunch, more classwork, team meetings (offense, defense, special teams), team practice, team dinner, independent study, a two-hour recreation period, and lights out at 11 p.m.

"It was the same thing every day and we talked about leaving and going home," Bill Sousa said. "We knew we couldn't quit though, so we decided to tough it out and make the best of it."

Because of the pandemic, the 19-year-old brothers didn't get a chance to play at New Bedford High in the fall of 2020 and they played a shortened season in the spring of 2021. Thankfully, they got to play a full season last fall at ECP, where the Firebirds won eight straight games on the way to finishing with an 8-2 record.

"COVID threw a lot of our plans into limbo and dried up a lot of connections we had to different schools. We didn't have a typical recruiting process, because everything got disrupted," Billois Sousa said. "We knew we needed a little more work to get back up to speed and ECP was a good place for us to do that. Going there gave us a second chance and it was a decision that paid off, because the coaches made us better players. We were linemen in high school, but we came out of ECP as linebackers."

The position change put some extra pressure on the brothers, but both were able to learn from their coaches and turn themselves into players with new-found skills.

"We had to learn the game from a whole new perspective," Bill Soares said. "We had to go from hand in the dirt to being disrupters all over the field. We also had to learn pass coverage, which was something new for the both of us."

Both made steady progress at ECP and they played well enough to catch the eye of Stonehill head coach Eli Gardner, who's taking his team from the NCAA Div. II Northeast-10 Conference to its first Div. I Football Championship Subdivision Season as a member of the Northeast Conference this fall.

The Skyhawks will play seven of their nine regular-season games against league rivals Duquesne, Sacred Heart, Merrimack College, Wagner College, Long Island University, Saint Francis (Pa.) University, and Central Connecticut State. They also have matchups scheduled against Bloomsburg University and Post University.

"We're excited about being part of a program that's taking a big step up and is moving in the right direction," Billois Soares said. "We're looking forward to the competition. You have to play against good players to get better and we want to play at a high level. We're hoping to get a chance to be impact players right away."

Both brothers stand 6-feet tall and they both tip the scales right around 225 pounds. They will follow in the footsteps of older brother Klisman Sousa, The Standard-Times Boys Soccer Player of the Year in 2012 and 2013 who went on to play at Providence College and is still competing as a fullback for Fall River FC.

"They were hard-nosed players in high school and they're good students who come from a good family," New Bedford head football coach Mark DeBrito said. "They both have tremendous work ethics. They're football junkies and weight-room junkies and they're going to fit right in at Stonehill. They're both very coachable and they're going to surprise the coaches up there. COVID hurt their recruiting process, but they're back on track and ready to go. The time they spent at ECP was good for them."

The brothers grew up playing New Bedford Pop Warner football and they've been a two-man team their whole lives. They'll continue that closeness as roommates at Stonehill, where Bill plans to major in electrical engineering and Billois wants to study sports management.

"They tried to split us up, but we were having none of that," Bill Sousa said. "We're going to focus on school a lot more, play some ball, and have some fun. We learned from a young age that you have to fight for the things that are important to you. We know we have to make the most of this opportunity. Getting here was a lot of hard work for both of us, but it was always the plan. Now, what happens from here is entirely up to us."                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

This article originally appeared on Standard-Times: New Bedford's Bill and Billois Sousa will play football at Stonehill