Former football star's story to hit the big screen

Some kids grow up dreaming of seeing their names in lights, their lives portrayed up on the big screen. Sean Stellato is very close to seeing that come to fruition. His book, ‘No Backing Down,’ which chronicles the 1994 Salem High School football team, is close to being made into a movie.

Stellato was a junior when he quarterbacked that team to the Super Bowl. But the team was caught in the middle of an ugly and acrimonious 11-day teachers’ strike. Ken Perrone, the long-time head coach, and his staff continued to coach the team, with the blessing of the teachers’ union but defying Salem school superintendent Ed Curtin’s edict that he stay away from the team.

Stellato spent six years researching and writing the book, which was published in 2014.

“This is a human triumph story on three levels,” Stellato said. “My personal story, our team and coach, supporters that overcame much adversity. Our team relied on each other to find strength. We banded together and watching (Perrone) overcome this was our victory.”

On their way to the Super Bowl, the ‘94 Witches went undefeated in the regular season, including dramatic last-minute wins in the final three games. But they lost to Whitman-Hanson Regional, 13-0, in the Super Bowl, ending their star-crossed season.

Perrone, who put together an impressive 151-62-8 record, was fired at the end of that season, ending his 22-year coaching career at Salem.

The conflict between Perrone and Curtin became so rancorous that, in a televised interview, Curtin compared Perrone with “Jim Jones and Waco” – the former a cult leader who led more than 900 followers to a mass suicide and was responsible for the murder of Congressman Leo Ryan, the latter a reference to cult leader David Koresh and more than 70 people who died in a siege of their Texas compound in 1992.

For Stellato, the episode was like a modern-day witch hunt.

“I look at this story and what I’m trying to do, the witchcraft trials were a major part of American history,” Stellato said. “They do a great job 324 years later preserving those 20 innocent people. I’m doing the same. I’m trying to preserve, I feel, a major part of New England history, with preserving this story and telling it, as maybe it hasn’t been told before.

“So that’s another goal I look at with this entire story, preserving something special, something that happened, something that can educate and teach people [from first -person account]

where you don’t make these same mistakes.”

The feedback he has received from the book has been overwhelmingly supporting, he said. But, he knows there is a faction that is not happy. He attempted to speak with Curtin for the book but the former superintendent declined. (Curtin could not be reached for comment for this story.)

“If you look at (Perrone’s) job description and the collective bargaining agreement, it had no relevance to him being a coach,” Stellato said. “It was two separate contracts. He was picketing the line with his fellow teachers and then he was going to coach afterwards. So it’s not like he was missing anything.

“I feel like if anything, he was looking out for the kids.”

Stellato also wrote ‘4th and Long, the Odds: My Journey’ in 2005, which he calls a memoir for his family. ‘No Backing Down,’ though, is his way of repaying his former coach.

“That means an awful lot,” said Perrone, now 81, who also coached baseball at Salem State University for 30 years before retiring in 2012. “Those kids were like family to me. All the kids that I’ve ever coached are like family. You don’t become rich as a coach. I think my coaching staff was very, very underpaid, and our richness comes from the families, the great families that we’ve met along the way and the great kids that we had the opportunity to coach. And I wouldn’t trade that for the world. I always tell my wife that if I died tomorrow and God said take 30 days off and go back and do anything you want, I’d definitely do the same thing. I’ve enjoyed my life as a coach and as a teacher.

“It’s kind of a legacy for my grandkids. When you leave this earth you’d like to leave something so that you’re not going to be completely forgotten. This is a real nice thing that Sean did not only for me but my whole coaching staff and all the kids that played on that team.”

Stellato, who is now 40 and lives in Danvers, is a sports agent with several NFL clients – including Nate Ebner who played for the U.S. Olympic rugby team during a sabbatical from the Patriots. Stellato went on to play football at Marist College and in the Arena Football League. A father of three young children now, he believes his experiences can offer life lessons for others.

He thinks about that Super Bowl often. It’s hard to avoid the ‘if onlys,’ and ‘woulda, shoulda, coulda.’ He was a heartbroken teenager when that team lost. But now, as an adult, he sees the value in that.

“A lot of times I think we learn more from losing, “ he said. “It molds us. It gives us a tutorial that sometimes we don’t want to see. I definitely took a lot out of that game. I know our team hurt afterwards, but seeing our coach put everything on the line and not taking a step back, a lot of players looked to Coach Perrone as a father figure and to see him step up and make a statement, he knew the impact it would have on some lives, guys that didn’t have fathers in their lives.

“Losing that game in a sense might make the movie even that much better.”

Despite the bitterness of that time, those who lived through it appreciate the life lessons they learned. Matt Bouchard was a junior linebacker on that team. He is now entering his third season as Salem High’s head football coach.

“I think as a young kid there were a lot of components to all the events that were happening around us that I think a lot of us didn’t’ truly understand,” Bouchard says. “Now I think being a little older looking back, it was pretty miraculous, all the different obstacles we had to overcome during that time period. And to actually not only deal with the obstacles but to also persevere I think says a lot about the coaches, the players, and the community at that time.”

As the head coach, he’s also wondered what he would do if he were ever caught in a similar situation.

“Yeah, of course,” he said. “I think that’s something I reevaluate a lot and think about a lot of those situations. I have a great deal more admiration for Coach Perrone and his staff and what they did for us now, being that much older now and being a coach and being part of high school athletics. It definitely impacted my life. So I’m very appreciative.”

Stellato is now turning his passion project over to screenwriter Angelo Pizzo – whom Stellato calls “the Tom Brady of screenwriters” -- whose credits include such iconic films as ‘Rudy,’ ‘Hoosiers,’ ‘My All-American’ and ‘The Game of Their Lives.’

“I get a lot of sports stories sent my way and I look for a sense of place to play a part in the movie,” Pizzo said. “Indiana was a character in (‘Hoosiers’). Notre Dame was a character in ‘Rudy.’ Texas was a character in a movie I just did. And Salem is a unique place. It has a unique history. I was taken by the fact that the team was called the Witches, and what transpired in the story had some echoes of the original story,

“One of the things that’s interesting about Salem is it’s a town that still is known by a series of strange circumstances that happened – what, how many years ago? It was a defining time for a city.

“But more importantly, it was a story of heroism. And I’m always looking to have a protagonist like Coach Perrone and a team. I think this is always a metaphor for any great story when you open up and things are not good, and the sense of -- especially with sports teams -- there is a metaphor for our community. It’s a community fragmenting over an issue, and there were a lot of fear-driven issues. There were a lot of weak-kneed decisions made. And yet there were some heroes that stood up against the establishment, and they did something that still is talked about today.

“That is an example that we could use today. The interesting thing about that team is that there was a mix of black, Hispanic and white, and various different backgrounds, and if there’s anything we need today it’s to show how we can all work together to build something more positive.

“It’s a healing mechanism, and I love stories about sports teams that bring communities together.”

Stellato hosted a launch party in July for the movie, with several of his NFL clients, as well as Perrone and his former Salem teammates in attendance.

For Stellato, it’s all a little bit surreal. But, he believes, there are lessons – and healing – in his story.

“It is surreal,” he said. “It’s exciting. That’s the beauty of life is if you dream, if you work hard, if you’re a good person, you just never know. It does feel surreal at times. But I’ll always be the kid from Salem with a ball, with a dream, I love helping people. I just know what this movie is going to be able to do for kids and people with hardships and dreams and goals. We all get one paint brush and one canvas, and what you do with that is up to you. I’m a product of the Salem school system, I’m a product of Salem and I’m very proud of that.”