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How you doing, fellas?
How you doing on, uh--
You get those assignments done?
Yeah.
-All of 'em? -Not all of them, I--
Well, what the hell you waiting for?
I'm about done this one. How's that feel, Brady?
Good? Like water skis, buddy.
Football's pretty simple. Like, there's eleven people.
Ten of them win, and one lose, you can go backwards.
So, it takes all eleven.
Fellas, have you ever heard me say "Bad things happen"?
You will hear me say it a thousand times a year.
"Bad things happen." What are you gonna do?
That's-- I mean, that's it.
That's life. That-- That's everything that we do.
Bad stuff happens, what are you gonna do?
We're the smallest school
playing football in the state of Massachusetts.
All right, fellas.
Bring it right over here, let's go.
Guys, I've asked you all yearlong to be leaders, right?
Something bad happens, step right up,
we'll outweigh to it, right?
Believe it in your heart, we will get it done.
I wanna be the most physical team
on this football field tonight.
Leave no doubt in central Mass.
-Understood? -Yes, coach!
Here we go. Team on three. One, two, three.
Team!
Here we go, fellas.
Let's go!
The boys did the work. They lifted the weights.
They were just as committed
as everybody else that led before 'em.
But what we quickly learned was,
the weight that they had to worry about wasn't
in the weight room, it was on their shoulders.
They were carrying the weight of the world on them.
What was that weight?
Some people will say it, some won't. I'll say it.
They're carrying the weight of the school.
Since the 1960s, enrollment at catholic schools
in the United States has fallen by more than 50%.
A dozen catholic schools
have closed in Massachusetts.
Catholic leaders say this is the largest number
of closures this state has seen in almost 50 years.
In just a few short months,
the well-loved school will have its last day in session.
Everyone was engaging in the conversation of,
quote, unquote, saving the school.
They weren't sure where the school was going.
No one was. You could feel it in the teachers,
you could feel it in the kids.
We heard all talks of, "Well, if the school doesn't
have enough money, we're gonna have to close.
This is the last year."
Everyone in the community,
every family that was enrolled-- The fear was there.
We always face adversity.
In games, in practice, and this is the situation in real life.
It was time to step up.
Our school is on the verge of closing.
And then as a team, we had to come together
to try to win the state championship.
This wasn't supposed to be our year to win it.
We definitely, as a team
and as a unit, really felt that it was up
to us to save the school, or we were not coming back.
In 2019, we were all in.
From our alumni, from our principal,
right down to our freshmen football player.
That football team was the glue.
It was the rallying point for the community.
The underdog, the little engine that could,
that's what they were.
Team on three. One, two, three.
-Team! -Whoo!
Whatever it takes, right? We're all in.
In Fitchburg, the working-class heartland
of central Massachusetts, this plucky
little catholic school is the last of a dying breed.
St. Bernard's Central Catholic.
A diocese in high school,
founded on a mission of faith and service.
Named for the patron saint of mountain climbing.
Since its doors first opened in 1920, St. Bernard's routinely
sent graduates to good colleges, good careers, and good lives.
A legacy of Bernardian alumni that spans a range
of success stories, including three NFL players,
and five Fitchburg mayors over the years.
Vestiges of the school's heyday,
and the soulful connection to better times.
St. Bernard's High School is part of the community,
part of our fabric.
Part of why, uh, we have the great city that we have.
There are generations of families that have come here.
My mother came here, my husband's mother came here.
There's a lot of that.
My sister went there, my mom went there.
I've had family go to St. Bernard's ever since 1946.
My grandfather played in 1970 through '73, '74.
My dad played here in 1996.
Same positions, full back, middle linebacker.
He was the lonesome senior captain that year. Now it's me.
Tyler Thibodeau and I,
we kinda grew up together on this field.
It was almost like we were little brothers
to everyone on the team.
Growing up, you see how much
this team really means to people.
The sense of family that comes from the school
is greater than any other school, I would say,
just because we are that small school in Fitchburg.
Not many people know about it,
but it's been happening for 100 years now.
At the turn of the last century, these hallways
and classrooms were teeming with a student body.
It numbered as high as 500 kids.
Approaching its centennial, however,
this bedrock of a community is fighting
for survival after years of attrition.
In the fall of 2018,
there were only 143 total students in the school.
The decrease in enrollment
came in dribs and drabs.
It wasn't one dramatic year, or two dramatic years.
That was really a 15 to 20 year process.
In 2010, I believe the senior class
was in a little over 100.
And then in 2018, you had 30 some odd seniors.
And I'm thinking to myself, "Okay, okay.
We are in the midst of an economic downturn.
We're on our way back. It's gonna rebound."
"The numbers are gonna rebound."
It didn't rebound.
There was some good news
in one area at St. Bernard's.
Even as enrollment plummeted,
the football team built a steady winner.
The Bernardians were routinely undersized
and undermanned, yet always played bigger
than the numbers, led by a coach who preached
resilience in the face of adversity.
You know, some days I pulled
into this parking lot and, you know, before I get out
of my truck, I'm taking a deep breath
and get myself ready to be dialed in.
And then you get out of your truck,
and you see 'em all coming at you.
And their faces, they're looking at you, ready to go.
-How we doing? -Great.
-Little nervous? -Yes sir.
I'm loose as a goose.
Good.
Well, you will remember tonight.
Like, go out there, and fly around the field.
I promise you, this is probably the most
physical football team on the field. Good things happen.
-Understood? -Yes, coach.
We fly around, having fun.
Let's go, everybody up. Ready, let's go.
Let's go!
Let's go. One, two, three.
-Let's go! -It's game day, boys.
St. Bernard's has had one heck of a year.
Tiniest school at Gillette Stadium
of any of the games.
In 2018, St. Bernard's, the smallest
football school in state in terms of enrollment,
had just 82 boys in the entire school.
34 of those boys played for coach Tom Bingham's
football team, and defied the odds to reach
the state championship game, as a determined long shot.
When we sing on the football field,
"Bad stuff happens, what are you gonna do about it?"
If we embrace that and go right back at it,
we feel like we can change the outcome of the game.
When we won in '18, Pope John was more athletic.
They had tremendous team speed.
They were very big, they were well-coached.
I think they won every game by 30 that year.
They had never seen adversity.
Cuevas. Keeping the play alive.
Honestly, if we played Pope John ten times,
we'd lose nine times out of ten.
Like, that day, we out coached them,
and we just outworked them.
Second quarter.
More Bernardians, Dominic Cuevas rolls out,
cuts it up, breaks the play after the conversion.
St. Bernard's up 16-14 at the half.
They went back and forth, back and forth.
Managed to hold them off in the fourth quarter.
Now the fourth. Marty.
Showing off the athletic ability,
hurdles it toward the tackler.
It's like a big "holy shit" moment.
St. Bernard's, looking to ice the game,
and they call on Morales.
He gets the first down in a lot more.
36 yards for the junior.
St. Bernard's gets the state championship 46-35.
First day of practice, we told coach
state championship, you know what? We delivered her.
For everyone who's wearing STB jerseys,
this is for all those people.
You know, it was almost like, tears of joy.
Like, like, we actually did this,
and we actually put school on the map.
In 2018, Saint Bernard shocked
everybody by winning the state championship.
As it turns out, winning was only the beginning
of what they had to fight for.
One, two, three.
-Root. -Aw, man.
-Hi. -Hey,
-principal Anderson. -Hi, how's it going?
Good.
I was wondering, could we ask you 65 questions?
That's a really strange number of questions.
You certainly can.
Are you ready for this?
I don't know.
My name is Linda Anderson.
I am the principal of St. Bernard's High School.
How about three things you can't live without?
Uh, my family.
Um, a sense of purpose and lots and lots of coffee.
How would you define yourself in three words?
Um, curious. Um, persistent, AKA stubborn,
and compassionate.
What's the best piece of advice you've received?
My college professor told me that if you can recognize
a problem, then it is your responsibility to help solve it.
I started here in 2010 as a teacher.
I came in pretty much fresh out of college
to teach Latin and writing, which was amazing.
But I left in 2015.
My daughter was just born and, you know,
I wanted some time with her,
but also I was getting a little burnt out.
So, I took some time off, and I stayed home
with my daughter for a bit and did some odd, odd jobs.
What's your favorite color?
Green.
Do you like surprises?
No. No. Not at all.
In 2018, I got a-- I got a call from a former
student who said that one of-- one of--
one of my former students and her former
classmate had-- had taken his life.
And I will never forget that day.
It's not rational, but I felt like
if I had been here, you know, if I hadn't left,
could I have been in a place where he talked,
or the next person, you know, and just--
it really just dawned on me that I had abandoned my post.
That's what it felt like.
I remember coming home and telling my husband,
"I'm not done with St Bernard's.
And I don't know what that means,
I just know I'm not done."
So I looked-- There's a-- there's a website
where you look for teaching jobs.
And I pulled up the website.
The very first job, Latin teacher,
St Bernard's High School.
What's your favorite Latin phrase?
Okay, let me see if I can remember it right.
It's from Terence.
It's, um, "Homo sum, nihil a me alienum puto."
Which means "I'm human,
therefore, nothing of human beings is foreign to me."
Anderson got the job, of course.
Then, midway through her first year back, amid the hard times
St Bernard's was facing in its finances,
the diocese unexpectedly presented
this curious, caffeinated Latin teacher
with a bigger opportunity to turn things around as principal,
starting in the school year to come.
So, they made my announcement,
and it was probably the scaredest I've ever been
because I have never been in any kind of spotlight.
And all of a sudden, you're seeing your face in newspapers,
and you're seeing the comments on social media.
"How old is she?"
As a complement to her relatively short resume,
the diocese also promoted
a new dean of students, Paul Constantino.
-Mr. C-- -Yes?
Can I give you my paper now?
-Do you have it now? -Yeah.
Constantino spent 20 years
as a corrections officer and coach in the area,
before retiring to become a theology teacher
at St Bernard's.
Constantino would be a voice of experience
in a new administration that became
a beacon of hope for the future.
We were like, "Wow, they-- they are serious about this.
They are going to do something about this.
They've made the commitment."
Let's try this for a year.
We'll give you a shot for a year,
and we'll see how this goes, right?
And if you can show that there's a corner
being turned, you know, we can make this work, right?
It's an easier sell.
But if you can't, well, at least we tried, right?
We did something." And so to me, that was fair, right?
That's a fair runway.
A year. It's a short runway, but it was fair.
What does our catchphrase
"All in" mean to you?
Um, it means that you put your whole self
into this place that we all care about,
and you don't give up.
I'd just like to talk a minute about the season
and what these guys accomplished.
We are 32 football players and eight coaches,
and we stood there and talked about winning
a state championship.
When we went down there, and we went on to Gillette,
and you looked at all the personnel and security,
and they're looking at us and looking at that other team.
I don't know if there were many people
in that place that thought you would do what you did.
Well, you did, and I'm proud of you for it.
Three, two, one. Go for it.
Whoo!
Whoo-hoo!
January 2019. As the Bernardians celebrated
that surprising state championship,
the community seemed to be on top of the world.
But behind the scenes, pressure was mounting
as the kind of financial troubles that plagued
other schools, like St Bernard's,
were becoming increasingly dire.
Despite the feel-good story of the smallest school
in the state winning the football title,
its first in more than 20 years,
the Diocese of Worcester was weighing a major decision.
The rumors had started when I started in 2010.
But now they were more than rumors.
Now they were-- They were realities and everyone knew it.
When you first hear the rumors,
it's kind of like, "Oh, this happens every year."
So, nobody really, I think, took in that the school
was actually really close to closing.
I was pretty surprised 'cause, like,
I thought things were going good here and like,
we had just won a championship, too.
I was like, really, more pumped up
for another football season more than ever,
and I was just worried that it wasn't going to come.
At once the whole school figures out,
there's a serious danger of us closing,
and that's the last thing any of us want.
When I was growing up here in Fitchburg,
in the '80s, we had St Joseph's, St Anthony's,
Holy Family, then we had Notre Dame.
They all had since closed.
I'm not gonna go into a whole, you know,
family values speech, here.
But the less filled the church was on Sunday,
the less likely they were to pay tuition
to send their child to a private Catholic school.
The issue was Catholic education
is a nationwide problem, and a lot of these 100-year-old
entities are falling on hard times.
The diocese survives
on money coming from the parishes.
The first 10% of collections that come into these parishes
has to be immediately sent to the diocesan office.
That's what the diocese runs off of.
And if the diocese is going broke,
they can't supplement the revenue
of a failing school any longer.
My thought was, what's next? How is this gonna happen?
What is gonna happen to this program?
You take away Saint Bernard's,
you take away the fabric of the community.
The road to the end of St. Bernard's, however,
would have to go through a hard-working,
free-thinking football man with building in his blood.
Hey, good morning.
It's Tom Bingham up at Bingham Lumber, how are you?
Tom Bingham is a former University of Maine
lineman and St. Bernard's parent.
When he's not moonlighting as coach
of the Bernardian's program, he runs Bingham Lumber.
Before it moved to this 17-acre facility,
it was a Fitchburg sawmill opened
by his great-grandfather, Don Bingham Senior, in 1946.
We have enough stain for this stuff?
Tom Bingham took over in 2001 and has spent
the years since with two items on his daily agenda.
Running the family business and thinking about football.
Sometimes I'm looking for Tom, and--
that's the running joke around here,
"Anyone know where Tom is?"
We have security cameras everywhere, and he's learned
where the dead spots are for the security cameras.
So, it takes us longer to find him.
And he takes calls from other coaches,
from the administration at the school.
It's constant, and he constantly flips that,
you know, that role.
Business owner, coach. Business owner, coach.
You know, on the other side, there's still texture.
I would describe my father as 110% all the time.
He doesn't really know how to take a day off,
or a practice off, or anything.
He's working seven days a week.
He just does everything for everyone else.
And never for himself.
Some guys golf, other guys fish.
They have hobbies and stuff,
and I enjoy the hell out of coaching football. I just do.
In his labor of love at St Bernard's,
Bingham built the small school
into a competitor in his own industrious image, literally.
In fact, it's Bingham Lumber and Labor
that the team's locker room's made of.
Coach Bingham also built the program, running a system
from another area, the Delaware Wing-T.
A system invented in the 1950s as a way
to leverage a team's lack of size and numbers.
We're coming at you, and you can't do anything about it.
It's pretty old-fashioned, you know?
It's basic hand-off, it's a lot of misdirection.
Everything is based on play action, deception.
Three plays look the exact same
in the backfield and the defense can't prepare for that.
Wing-T philosophy is you don't make mistakes,
you're ball-controlling.
It's basically just smash mouth football.
We just run the ball up the middle almost every play.
But we don't really care if they know
what play we're running as long as we block it right,
nobody's really stopping the Wing-T.
We'll have Nico Mancini,
"Speed Lightning"
Mancini's coming in in your living room.
We'll have him just hit the corner, then he's gone.
Then there's Ty coming through, laying a shoulder into someone.
Tyler T. With a head of steam.
Just making them not wanna be on the football field.
You're playing Iron Man football.
That's eleven kids on both sides of the ball.
Pretty much for 44 minutes of football.
That's pretty tough. At 15, 16, 17, 18 years old.
You know, we're a small school.
But in the locker room, we know that we're not underdogs.
We'll have a shot against any team.
And no matter what, it doesn't matter
who we're playing, we are gonna fight.
It's not gonna be easy to win the prize,
It's-- We're gonna have to work for a win.
If you can drive someone down the field, knock him backward.
He's a "“pound him in the mouth,
run the ball and get"” type of guy, and it works.
He's about discipline, hard work and teamwork.
He'll tell you, too. Without eleven guys
working and tugging on the chain, we fail.
Okay, fellas. Enjoy this one, right?
-Yes sir. -Enjoy it. Our father.
Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name;
Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done
on Earth as it is in Heaven.
As the 2018 season drifted into a cherished memory,
the coach and his returning players
started to envision their title defense.
Excitement about the school's future
grew stronger, despite rumors to the contrary.
But as winter darkened,
then turned to spring, something changed.
It was mid-May at four o'clock in the afternoon,
and I received a phone call from Superintendent Perda.
He said, "Hey, we want to, um, we wanna convene a meeting.
I wanna talk about the school. Wanna talk about the future."
And it struck me as odd. It was out of the blue.
I said, "David, I don't understand. What is this about?"
Um, you know, "We've hired a new principal,
we have a new Dean of students.
Things are looking up."
He said something like, "Well, you know,
the finance guys are running the show."
I immediately called T.J., I said, "Boy, this is not good.
They want-- they wanna get together
with everybody at the end of the month."
On May 29th, a Wednesday,
church leaders scheduled a meeting
at the Doubletree Hotel in Leominster,
a neutral site on the route from Fitchburg to Worcester.
I happened to come across
my handwritten notes that I kept from the Doubletree,
and I remember the title: "The Future
of Catholic Education in North County."
My understanding of the meeting was-- it was,
just to present some plans, some possible suggestions
of what Saint Bernard's could look like in the next few years.
We were sitting around a U-shaped table
in a function room or a conference room,
and Bishop and his, I guess we call them bean counters,
his financial people were around him.
It was my first meeting
representing the principalship, right?
Like, I'm, I'm still a teacher.
It's May 29th.
I'm administering final exams.
and I'm going to the Doubletree
as the principal of St. Bernard's.
Just felt, like, completely, um, unprepared.
You know, for-- for what-- what then happened.
They had this PowerPoint presentation.
A lot of it was why is St. Bernard's
not attracting the students over the last decade.
What has led to the, you know, continual decline since 2010?
But as it went on, you can tell that--
to me anyways, the tenor of that whole meeting changed.
It wasn't the future of Catholic education
in North County anymore.
It was, "What's the future
of St Bernard's as a high school?"
It started out as kind of hopeful.
Superintendent Perda got up
and kind of proposed a couple plans,
and it kind of involved
sort of connecting with the elementary schools,
and it was clear that they didn't really want that.
That wasn't happening.
The minutes went on, and you could say,
"The future of St. Bernard's really is in jeopardy."
The bishop kind of made it clear that this was kind
of the only option, was to close the school.
They had been losing huge amounts
of dollars every year keeping us open.
And it was just clear.
The room just got-- the air just got sucked out of it.
Someone basically asked,
"Are you gonna open the school in the fall?"
As in, like, three months later.
And again, we're all laboring under the presumption
that we have a year, we've got a year to fix this.
And the question, it wasn't answered.
I remember looking at a lot of different people,
thinking, "Oh, wow.
This is it, right?"
Months ago, we just announced
this new leadership team who is fantastic,
who I believe in, and they're gonna change things.
That school's gonna get better under that leadership.
And I just feel like it's gonna get pulled out
from right under us.
And that was the first time I'd ever heard that I might
not get the chance to-- to try to fix it.
It was just a shock.
It was tough to hear. It was extremely tough to hear.
You're talking about 15-year-old kids whose--
whose lives are about to get uprooted, and a 100-year-old
institution that is gonna disappear.
We left that meeting and I remember getting
in my car and thinking, "The school's going to close.
How do I tell the kids this? Who's gonna tell the kids this?
How do I tell my husband that I'm now unemployed?"
You know, all these things are going through your mind,
but then as soon as I got
over those questions, I just, "What can we do?
Can we-- can we save it?"
So, as soon as you kind of get over
the original hump of shock, I immediately started thinking.
And I'm researching, you know, charter schools.
Like, could we-- could we turn it
into a charter school and get public funding?
Would that help?
Like-- And I just-- I don't know what to--
My brain is just screaming, and I'm thinking
of a million things, and, you know,
I don't think I slept a wink that whole night.
I'm just, you know, like,
what can we do? Is this really it?
My phone rang 6:30 the next morning,
and Keith Boissoneau and T.J. Fluharty,
and, you know, we all slept on it.
How emotional were those--
or irrational are those thoughts?
It, like-- Why can't we do it?
Why can't we go on our own?
What's it going to really take?
What are the numbers? What does it need?
Tom comes walking down the hallway of the school
to my room and said, "You know, this isn't over yet.
You know, there's some things going on even now."
This is Thursday morning. So, this isn't even 12 hours.
It was before first period.
Tom called Linda because we wanted to make sure
Linda was with us, because if she wasn't with us.
We weren't doing it.
We said, "Well, the worst thing that can
happen is that they come out today, can we get 24 hours?"
So, we got 24 hours and then 24 hours led
into a meeting that next day at the Pinard's house.
Friday night, May 31st.
With hopes of preventing
the worst-case scenario, a group of community leaders
met at the home of Mark and Cassie Pinard,
local business people with two Bernardian
students in the family, including lineman Jonny Pinard,
then a junior.
So, my dad's like on the board.
Him and a bunch of other parents started--
decided to have a meeting to save the school, basically.
Honestly, I didn't know the extent
of how bad, like, everything was,
'cause, like, they didn't tell me anything.
We kind of all assumed it was
something going on, because obviously Jonny,
it was his house, so I was texting him, and he said that
there was something going on with the school,
but they kept kicking him out of the room.
I would ask them, and they wouldn't tell me.
Honestly, I think it's 'cause they didn't want me to worry.
I was scared at that point.
I wanted to know exactly what was going on,
and not knowing was the worst thing
that could happen at the time, in my mind.
We didn't get much information that night.
It was definitely something they didn't want us to know about.
The rumors might be for real.
Well-known Catholic school
may soon be closing its doors for good.
Pope John the 23rd High School
announced last night that it will not reopen in the fall.
The St Bernard's faithful
didn't have to look far to see the future.
That very day, news about another
struggling school was breaking just
an hour away in the town of Everett, a suburb of Boston.
The headmaster at Pope John the 23rd High School
sent a letter to families announcing
the school's closure after 53 years.
Pope John was more than one million dollars in debt,
and all efforts to save it, including a fundraising campaign
by parents and the community,
had come up short.
The news meant that both schools
that had played in the 2018
Division Eight High School Super Bowl,
would be closed at the end of the year.
Everyone keeps saying, "Hope for a miracle."
That's really all we're doing right now.
That's what we're doing, we're hoping for a miracle.
Praying for a miracle to happen.
We're waiting for fundraisers.
It was kinda weird, almost, that the two Catholic schools
that made it to the D eight state title,
were closing at the same time.
It was-- It didn't really make sense,
but it was kind of, like, they couldn't make it.
We have to.
Back at the Pinard's,
the group formed a vision of a grassroots campaign.
A steering committee of parents and administrators.
A coach, handful of alumni and school trustees.
Some were small business owners.
Others were finance professionals
like T.J. Fluharty, and Keith Boissoneau.
Together, they aimed to do what few other
struggling Catholic schools around the country
had ever been able to do.
Raise enough money for the community
to take over the school and run it independently.
And that's when it first started.
The energy, that I knew we had as a community,
started to develop in that living room.
It reminds me of how, like, America was formed,
where you have a group of people just meeting
in someone's living room or at a bar, you know,
and you're just chatting about what could be.
I just thought, "We can do this."
We've got a great group of people.
They're all in, and we can do it.
I called my first assembly.
I wasn't principal yet.
And I had basically asked,
you know, "We need to bring the kids together.
We need to make sure they understand what's happening,
and we need to talk them through this
because this is gonna be really scary for them."
When Mrs. Anderson brought us all
into the auditorium, the whole school,
we kinda knew it was real at that point.
And we were like, "All right, this is it."
And I'm like, "Wow. Like, where am I gonna go?
Am I gonna have to go to another private school?"
I was definitely worried.
I asked them if they were comfortable
to hold hands and to pray.
And I just explained, like, "We have to hold on
to each other, or we're not gonna make it through this.
Can you guys do that for me?
Can you hold on to each other?"
We're gonna ask you to have faith,
we're gonna ask your parents, your families, to have faith.
That's when she asked me to speak.
I said, "We're all in."
We need them to understand
that we are fighting and that we're not done.
So, we need them to not be done.
Over the next week, two things became official.
The first, on June 6th, was the Diocese of Worcester
formally announcing its decision in a letter
from the school superintendent, Dr. David Perda.
Due to the steady decline in enrollment
and an overwhelming financial deficit
of at least $600,000 for the following year,
Saint Bernard's was to become the latest Catholic high school
casualty in the state, effective at the end
of the academic year.
They gave us an advance copy.
We attempted to negotiate what we could,
uh, but it was difficult.
The letter did, however, offer a set
of conditions that, if met,
would keep St. Bernard's doors open in the fall.
Primarily, an enrollment threshold
with a strict deadline of July 15th,
just weeks after the end of the current session.
Amid a climate of uncertainty,
it seemed improbable,
if not impossible, to prevent a mass exodus.
If enrollment dips below 100 students,
there will be no St. Bernard's in 2019.
100 kids is one thing.
At the very last, at the very end said,
"Oh, by the way, if the school does close,
we'll offer free bussing for any kid
in the area to go to St Peter-Marian or Holy Name.
The school of your choice."
I said, "David, you can't-- you can't put that in.
That-- that's a death knell for us."
They were offering to bring our kids to one
of their schools, which helps their budget situation.
We knew this letter was coming.
Then Linda had her letter ready to go.
That was the other announcement,
a Facebook post from Linda Anderson.
In her first public act as principal,
she described the Declaration
of Independence forged at the Pinard House.
She explained how that small group of concerned
community members formed a steering committee to work
with the dioceses to explore the viability of re-imagining
St. Bernard's as a private Catholic school.
In the post, she also invited and welcomed community support.
More now than ever, in the form of feedback,
contributions or prayers.
The steering committee also christened
the mission with a rallying cry: All in.
The bishop basically said, "If you can prove that you can
run the school independently, I will let you use the building,
and operate as a Catholic school."
And then, of course, the proof was what had to come later.
And it felt like there was a ticking clock.
All right, everybody.
Thank you for coming today.
I really appreciate your interest
and your passion for St. Bernard's.
I'm David Perda, I'm the superintendent
of schools for the Diocese of Worcester.
Naturally, there were big questions to answer.
On June 10th, families were invited
to a town hall at St Bernard's Auditorium.
Administrators sat on stage alongside leadership
from the dioceses and members of the new steering committee.
Catholic education is going through a tough time.
Just this year, over in the Archdiocese
of Boston, you may have heard about
a catholic school in Everett had to close.
Superintendent's up there,
and it seemed like every other meeting.
And quickly, I realized that the audience was angry.
The Catholic Church is about people helping...
You guys need to step up.
I know it's a lot of money, but you know what?
A life, a kid's life, a future, it's worth ten million dollars.
Because some parents were concerned,
as we all were, we're concerned for their children.
What are we gonna do with that student?
We wanna stay here.
They don't want to spend the money on St. Bernard's.
This is shameful. This is wrong.
We have to set our priorities straight,
and keep St. Bernard's open.
But with Dr. Perda who's, you know, resolute
in his, "We can't guarantee more than one year."
That is a traumatic thing to happen to a kid
to have to go somewhere for one year.
That can't happen.
I understand your comment,
but I'm gonna be honest with you, sir.
The diocese just doesn't have the money.
But I think lots of parents were really considering
just pulling their kids out right then and there.
It was a big decision for a lot of people to make.
Even the prospective freshman,
I mean, every group had their own issue.
Can anyone expand a little bit
on the plan to increase enrollment
for the beginning of the school year?
What are we doing to reach out to potential families?
Their own, you know, their own set of tension and anxiety.
Uh, so if we could all rise, and please
close the meeting tonight with a Hail Mary.
Thank you all, have a good night.
That's when the phone calls started.
So, we divided up a list of everyone in the community,
every family that was enrolled and everyone got
like 20, 20 people in the next two months.
You were checking in with your people.
If it wasn't once a week, it was twice.
You're just, "How's it going?
Can I answer any questions?"
The fear was there.
We gotta get the troops together,
We're gonna rally them.
The list was broken down to who you knew,
who you could call.
So, you could have that open conversation instead
of cold calling someone making a difficult decision.
"Hey, you're going to send your son back
to St. Bernard's, even though they might close?"
It's a tough decision.
You might get the click on the end of the phone.
You're on your weekend.
The grocery store.
making calls, and you're just,
you're just constantly communicating.
Parents calling parents, having conversations
and basically explaining to them, "This is what we're doing.
Trust us. Give us a chance.
Stick with us, and we'll get it done."
This is Amy Maynard calling from St. Bernard's High School.
We're just calling everyone to see if, um, if you're in.
And we will talk to you soon.
It was nonstop.
I mean, I had like three daily calls every morning
for-- for months.
At one point, we were below 100.
We're shitting bricks.
Pardon my French.
Um, it was scary. It was really scary.
We had to walk this incredible tightrope
of not conveying any fear or any urgency.
And while all that's going on,
we're building our strategic plan.
So, what are we doing when this is ours?
We met every week during the summer.
Despite vacations, right?
We used to meet on Monday nights,
and then Nick took a picture of the clock, right?
From here, in the Bernard eating room.
And that, for us, symbolized what this was all about.
Just juggling all these different things at once.
But as the community worked
behind the scenes, the football team went
into the summer break with its work cut out, too.
11 of the 34 players, one third of the championship
roster, were lost to graduation.
And soon enough, amid the school's turmoil
came word that five other contributors,
all rising seniors, were transferring or leaving
the team as part of an exodus
that the "All in" campaign was trying to prevent.
To see kids back out and be like, "I don't wanna do this.
Like, I wanna be in a school that's definitely
to be open" was hard.
Like, we're losing kids by the minute.
We need to get everyone to stick together
and be in this together.
In the football aspect of it, we were looking at it,
like, next man up.
Think we all came to the conclusion
that we can't fix that, and we can't change that.
So, we'd really like to focus on things
that we can fix for ourselves.
You know, Linda Anderson,
she did her best to let us know that we're gonna be okay,
and that you just have to have faith through this all.
You have to trust people.
Just go on, do your everyday work.
Try not to worry about what's going on.
I knew all my friends were gonna stay,
and that's kind of what mattered to me.
I wouldn't wanna go anywhere else. I never gave it a thought.
I always had faith. I never thought
that I would have to make another decision.
We've seen in this area what a good football team
can do to your school and your morale.
And we've seen what can happen to schools
who just don't have the enrollment.
Keeping that number above 100 was a major focus.
It went right to July 15th.
In fact, if I recall properly, Tom Bingham was
actually down in Whistler on the 15th going student
by student because we didn't wanna leave it
to chance that they were gonna be off by one student,
or they were gonna consider them not enrolled,
but where we knew we had confirmation
with the parents that they were enrolled.
-So-- -Well, we didn't trust them.
I mean, I hate to say that.
But we didn't trust them.
There was stress leading up to the 15th.
I think that's something that I carried,
maybe it being part of the transition team
and knowing a little uncertainty there.
Hey, what's up?
The question that no one really wanted to ask,
but we felt obligated to ask is,
"Okay, so we hit 100 on the 15th.
What happens if somebody bails the 25th?
And five other people go with them?"
You know, and I don't know if there was ever a clear answer
there, in four or five jumped at the last moment.
I didn't have confidence that we're gonna open.
In August, just two weeks
before the scheduled start of the school year,
the team made its annual pilgrimage to Camp Mass,
two hours away in rural New Hampshire.
Unlike previous sessions, this trip was about a lot more
than practicing football because the earlier departures
meant that compared to last year's roster
of 34 players, the 2019 edition would be a young team
filled with new starters, learning Coach Bingham's system,
and little margin for error or injury.
Move it, move it. Let's go.
It is so much more work, you know.
I mean, there is no book on how to be successful with 27 kids.
There's positives and negatives to it.
You know, some of the challenges is,
we got to work harder.
Everybody has to play. Even the freshmen.
I suggest hauling your head out
of your backside, and getting it together.
But one of the benefits of having
a smaller team is everybody comes together.
You are family.
There's no senior freshmen, it's just we're a team.
-Hey, let him in. -Get inside.
D-line on three. One, two, three.
D-line!
I think 2018, we were a much more serious team.
We were more into the game and into the sport.
In 2019, like, the locker room was so much more different.
Hey, Rocco.
Camp brings everyone together.
If we weren't on the football field,
we were outside playing basketball
with the music going and everyone having a great time
but WWE at night, it was like, it was so fun.
The dead man is up!
John Cena standing up.
It really helped us bond as a team.
We were just living in the moment.
Camp is a lot of work, and it's about, you know,
them experiencing something
that they really don't even realize how important
it's gonna be until down the line.
Come on. Great job. That's the way to end.
Team on three. One, two, three.
Team!
We were at camp and every time
my phone rang, and this isn't being dramatic,
this was an honest to goodness concern,
was taking a look at it, "Is that a work call?
Is that someone from the school?"
'Cause no one calls and bothers us when we're up there.
And I was waiting for a call from principal Anderson
and saying, "Hey, we have an issue,
get them off the field." And that was that entire week.
It was just-- it was just there.
Until that first day and those doors opened,
and the kids were in there
and the bell rang, I didn't feel safe.
I really didn't.
As the sun set on the summer, all the hours
of phone calls paid off as St. Bernard's opened
its doors with an enrollment that surpassed the threshold.
A total of 104 students.
The football players among them would
get to mount their title defense.
Expectations were high and heavy.
Every day we come into the building,
we knew that we were an important
factor of the school staying open,
'cause Ms. Anderson always tells us, like,
"You guys are the face of the school."
The kids understood that if things didn't go well,
that it was gonna be really difficult to raise money.
Indeed, the "All in" campaign
had turned from its focus on enrollment
to its next goal, fund-raising.
The money needed to secure St. Bernard's future
as a private Catholic school,
independent of financial support from the church.
Basically, we needed a million dollars.
They needed to know, and we needed
to know that this wouldn't happen again.
That whatever we had raised, it was enough
to get us through the next few years.
And so, so it had to be a million dollars.
That's what we needed.
One of the first big wins that we had was an anonymous donor.
It was connected to someone in our community.
We still don't know who it is, which is just amazing to me.
This person offered us an opportunity, I'd call it.
Challenge Match, which means if they provide $250,000,
if Bernardians would step up and match the other $250,000.
And if we put the blood, sweat and tears in to make it work.
Keith called me and said, "Hey, we've got a chance.
What do you think?"
'Cause I was kind of the alumni person, I kind of had my finger
on the pulse of what, what kind of alumni we had.
And I've always known we've got thousand--
10,000 alumni out there that are doing very, very well.
But they haven't been engaged
over the course of decades, many decades.
And so, I basically said to Keith, "It's out there.
The money is out there.
We've just got to go get it."
Local realtor Nick Pelletier, a 2005
St. Bernard's alum and treasurer of the Bernardian
foundation, took the lead in that effort.
When you're fundraising, you're looking to capitalize
on people's emotional attachments,
and you're looking to capitalize on them believing
that they can help push something forward.
And in our case, we had to fight to fundraise
for something that people felt like was failing.
It's really the worst situation to be in as a fundraiser.
We didn't have the storyline,
and we weren't ready to fundraise.
Good morning, guys. Fantastic to be back.
We've, we've found our way to football season again.
I love a good cliché, so it's kind of like,
you know, hope springs eternal.
Once again, it's football season.
Coach Tom Bingham said to me
in a conversation yesterday.
He said, "All the questions he fielded
were about how small his roster was."
We returned to school and realized
like, like, wow, this is happening.
We really need to help and,
you know, kind of put the school on our back.
We started the football year thinking--
everyone was thinking this, no matter how many times
Coach Bingham said, "Don't think about the repeat."
That's the first thing everyone was thinking about is,
"How are we gonna get back to where we were last year?"
Measuring state games.
Find out where you are after a long pre-season
training camp and find out where you stand,
maybe, in the state.
St. Bernards and Murdoch's.
St. Bernard's here defending Division Eight state champs.
It was week one.
Probably two minutes into the game, they started
to realize that, "Wow, we're playing a team
that's playing way above who they normally are.
They're taking their best shot at us defending state champ.
We're going to get everyone's best punch
and we're gonna get it early.
Um, and we learned that week one.
The pass is deflected and Damian Jones
picks it off and Jones is just beginning.
Stays on his feet, down the sideline, stays inbounds.
Now he's picking up some blockers.
Look at Jones. Weaving through the defense.
And he does go all the way in for the touchdown.
And they're all pumped on the bench.
St. Bernard, though, gets the win. 36 21, your final.
Week two was very demanding.
We were playing a team with 100 kids on it.
Um, we had a Tripoli mosquito scare.
So they decided that, "You know what,
we shouldn't play at seven o'clock at night.
You have this big, beautiful new turf field,
why don't we play at three o'clock on Friday afternoon?"
It was 92 degrees out.
And they just started coming at us quick,
two-platooning, and ran us right into the ground.
Then, to close out the month
of September, St. Bernard's hosted
a more experienced team from Narragansett regional.
In a game with larger meeting.
All right. Well, you're talking
about those big games up north.
Both coming off of losses.
They want a rebound here tonight.
We knew, not that you would ever look ahead,
but the kids know the road to the playoffs
is gonna have to go through St. Bernard's
or gansett and our division up here.
What's at stake if we lose is that,
there's a good chance we won't make playoffs.
After a potentially disastrous
Dom Cuevas turnover near the goal line,
with under two minutes to play.
Narragansett held a 28-21 lead,
needing only to run out the clock.
I was angry 'cause I felt like I just lost us the game.
They were literally on the foot yard line.
They could've either taken the safety or just got
enough because there was, like, 30 seconds left, not even.
And then we stacked the center.
We stacked everyone on our D-line pretty much
on the center, and I was on the outside.
And then Matt Smith
and Ben Golesby, blew the center up.
The ball goes in the ground,
the ends crashing 63 Pinard.
He sees the ball and he went on it and,
like, we're waiting for the call, and I'm sure
it was a half a second, but it seemed like a lifetime.
The arms go up.
"Jonny's got the ball. Jonny's got the ball."
We're hooting it out, and Linda Anderson's, like,
four, five feet jumping up and down, hands flaring.
I was, like, "No way, did I just score a touchdown?"
'Cause I've, like, never scored in my life,
'cause I'm a lineman. So, it's like crazy that I scored.
Capping Pinard's opportunistic touchdown,
Cuevas ran to redemption
with a two point conversion to secure the comeback win.
I'm laying on the ground looking at him and I see him get over.
And I was like, "No way.
We just won this game with 29 seconds left."
And I've never been so happy after a game.
Looking back on it, it was probably
one of the most important series of the season.
If something bad happens, what are you gonna do?
And they win by a point. 29 to 28.
St. Bernard's needed that early season win
because the next few games
were a rollercoaster that put the season on the brink.
The lopsided loss at West Boylston Tahanto,
a powerhouse from a higher division.
Dropped the Bernardians to two and two.
That loss was followed by a resilient
home field effort against rival Nipmuc.
The Bernardians made the best of a botched extra point.
Kicker Vaughn Randall turning a bad snap
into a two point conversion for a comeback win.
St. Bernard's defense,
coming up big again, gets a dramatic victory, 21 to 20.
But then came the unexpected,
a demoralizing blowout shutout loss at Leicester.
Three and three.
We're the defending Division Eight champions.
You're having a hard go with it, so far.
The schedule makers didn't do St. Bernard's any favors.
We already had high expectations.
Already those high expectations made it rough,
and we see what everyone's saying
about us, you know, "Oh, they can't repeat.
They can't-- They're a one-hit wonder.
They're a fluke.
They can't do-- They can't do what they did last year."
And I would say that was our lowest point.
I think at that point in time they started
hearing and giving the same questions out.
I was getting is, "Are you guys gonna be okay?
Are we making the playoffs?"
Like, no one ever asked that question before.
I truly believe that they started
to feel there was a little bit of weight on them,
on what direction was the school going.
This whole time, you're trying to make sure
that the boys don't know that.
You know, that it really, it really is on their shoulders.
Think we all really took on a responsibility
to have a good year and try
to bring in more students and bring as much money
as we could for the school.
We never wanted Coach Bingham to know,
or Miss Anderson to know that we were feeling pressure
'cause we know how they would feel about that.
But we definitely, as a team and as a union,
really felt that it was up to us to save the school,
or we were not coming back.
The Leicester loss only intensified the physical
and emotional pressure, as the football
and fundraising campaigns continued side by side.
It all came to a head after the team returned
to practice that week.
Pick up the pace, pick up the tempo.
Get into a rhythm, let's go. Rocco, move. Come on.
So we were coming off a bad practice after
going three and three, so our morale was already low,
and we have a horrible practice and coaches are yelling at us,
so we're even more down on ourselves.
We were fumbling snaps, missing blocks,
not remembering our rules, walking out of our stances.
And he, he lost it.
D-line is standing up.
Wake up.
Coach Bingham actually left from that practice in anger.
He left the practice and said, "I'm done."
It was the first time I walked
off the field in 24 years.
Unbelievable.
The reason I walked off the field
wasn't out of irritation or frustration
that we weren't practicing well.
It was-- I was completely frustrated
and annoyed that they weren't talking to me.
Normally, he can drop things when we go home,
but that was something that I'd never experienced.
I've never seen him walk off the field before.
After we got yelled at, like, ripped to pieces,
we went to Matt Smith's house for a team dinner.
We were all cramped in this small living room.
There was, like, one couch, and we're all cramped in there.
We all kinda banded together and decided
that we had to do something.
I remember I was eating pancakes.
It was like a pancake breakfast dinner type of thing.
Um, very good food. Thank you, team mom.
And Dom says, "Okay, guys, we got to talk."
I had a whole speech prepared in my head.
Like, on the ride there, I was, like,
talking to myself like, "This is what I'm gonna say.
This is what I'm gonna say."
I was like, chugging a gallon of chocolate milk
while you were talking.
And I get up there and try to talk,
and it just crumbles automatically.
I don't even get a whole sentence out
before kids are just joking around.
We were like, "All right, time to, like, stop.
We need to get our stuff together.
And like, like actually try."
And then we were like, all, like, serious.
And then we just started joking around again.
"Yeah, Dom. Come on, you gotta get serious."
Like he's-- Dom can't stop laughing
'cause we're all laughing.
And it was, it was good for us, you know,
it loosened us up, and it made us realize
that we are gonna be okay because we have each other.
Then we start the chants. The chants get going.
Yes! Yes! Yes!
So, the guy from the WWE, he goes, "Yes, yes."
Yes! Yes!
So, we're just like, "Are we gonna win?"
And then everyone's just like, "Yes, yes."
And we're literally, like, shaking his house.
We were just chanting so loud.
And then now, like, before every game,
we chant that.
Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!
Team on three. One, two, three.
Team!
That was a big turning point in the season.
Tom goes into the clubhouse.
We shut the door, and we sat down, and we talked.
And they said that, "Coach, we feel like
we have the weight of the world on our shoulders."
And it was almost a sense of relief, like, from them.
And it was, like, it was a relief for both of us
when they got it off their chest.
He picks up a marker, and he writes
two words: "Your choice."
And he said, "Fellas, your destiny is what you make of it.
If you can go into the tournament,
and it's five and three, you've got a good chance."
We're three and three, and moving on to our schedule.
We can't lose another game or else
we're not gonna make playoffs.
And I think once we start to pick our heads up,
and we started to go back to work, basically, and, you know,
there's not much time to feel bad for yourself.
You got a game in a couple days.
It felt like every game was a must win,
but I think that pushed us hard.
A bad thing was happening, and it was time to step up.
Then once you got them going, they kept going.
Which is even better.
Nico Mancini for a touchdown.
Into the end zone.
We knew we could get a win against Sutton,
and that would clinch us at least a 4C in the playoffs.
The pass. Picked off by Antonio Mancini.
And look at him go.
St. Bernard's wins at 42 to 8.
But we ended up getting a higher C.
We were there to stay and make a run at it.
We got this ball rolling,
and then we saw how that impacted the boys.
And it was sort of, you know, now they're
energized, and they wanna fight, too.
And then seeing them fight made us wanna fight
harder, and then seeing them win made us wanna win.
For all the momentum on the field,
the fundraising effort had yet to hit full stride.
By mid-October, the "All in" campaign reached a total
of more than a half million dollars in pledges.
In a scheduled status report, the fundraisers
presented the promised donations and more,
hoping in earnest that their progress might prove decisive.
October 17th was an infamous day.
It was the day that we had to provide an update
to the diocese on everything we had
accomplished over the last three months.
We still had to get the final approval from, um,
from Bishop McManus to open the school.
They wanted that proof before
they would give us the final blessing.
We presented pledges to date.
We presented a pipeline of gifts,
and we presented an enrollment update and plan
that we thought proved we were successful.
The pressure was just tremendous.
You know, we were optimistic, but we weren't stupid.
We know how hard this is.
And, you know, frankly, we knew we still had to sell it.
And then there was a point where it was
clear that they were...
they were invested, but it didn't seem like
they were ready to give us the official "Okay."
So, it's probably about a week later that the email
popped in my inbox from Superintendent Perda,
representing the Worcester diocese,
basically saying that at this time,
we had not done enough to prove our financial viability.
They didn't wanna count your 250.
Yeah. They said, "Oh, your 250 is imaginary."
It's actually a great point, right?
So, they wanted to verify funds.
They wanted go to an anonymous donor and verify the funds.
This philanthropic person who stepped up
at the very beginning, the dioceses didn't feel
that that was valid funds
because they couldn't verify it.
And as I told Nick, and anyone else of the diocese,
I was never going to share the anonymous donor's name.
It was not going to happen.
Every step of the way, the goalposts moved.
-Yeah. -To make a football metaphor,
the goalposts moved and things change.
Other hurdles and obstacles came,
and we didn't know if at the last second
there'd be a change of decision by the diocese,
or if someone would make a final decision,
or it's just, you know, it's not gonna go.
We were fundraising while our football team
was running for the race of their lives.
So, these two races were running in parallel,
but they were directly connected.
Never drop-kick the champion.
St. Bernard's getting pumped up
to take on Narragansett in a big playoff match.
First round of the central Mass playoffs,
we had a rematch with Narragansett.
The Bernardian's defense playing
big dog as they trip up Damian Cuomo on fourth down.
If you just wanna watch two high school teams
playing mistake-free football,
and just slug fest back and forth,
that's a great football game.
Nico Mancini. St. Bernard's wins 34 to 30.
The champs are still alive.
For me, these are the bigger games.
This is who is your central Mass champs.
Monty Tech and St. Bernard's.
Monty Tech comes in to this central Mass final.
They think they may have a shot.
So, those kids were pumped up, 'cause they like
that-- that inner-city rivalry with St. Bernard's.
There are three high schools
in the city of Fitchburg.
Us, Fitchburg High and Monty Tech.
I think that Monty Tech game was really big for us
to be like, "Yeah, we're the best team in Fitchburg.
We wanna be the best team in the city."
Thibodeau. Power runner. Contact. Spinning.
Whoa.
Plows into the end zone.
St. Bernard's is a champion again in central Mass.
49-22.
Let's go!
Whoo!
The football team's state
semifinal game couldn't come soon enough.
The team left early for the Saturday afternoon
game at a neutral site, Westfield State University,
90 minutes away.
Driving through Worcester, and I'm paying
attention to how these kids are focused.
Just silent. They're quiet.
And I think I'll remember that for the rest
of my life, just how focused they were.
You could hear a pin drop on that bus because if you lose
this game, you don't get to defend the title.
You don't get to go for back to back.
You win this game, you get to go down to Gillette again,
to the house that Tom Brady built.
St. Bernard's and Lee. The champs are here.
How about coach Bingham--
The champs are here.
Lee gets the ball first and they score.
The first drive of the game,
it is Lee getting on the board.
Jimmy Purcell hits Luke Martelo
for the touchdown, six nothing Wildcats.
But the thing about St. Bernard's,
you just can't stop one guy.
Here comes the Bernardian right-back,
Tyler Thibodeau.
With a big run.
So if you're gonna key in on Tyler Thibodeau.
Oops, there's Nico Mancini.
Mancini barreling forward.
Not gonna be taken down by one, two, three,
four, five defenders.
Nico Manzini! Nico Manzini!
Nico, like, in the beginning of the season,
I would say first couple of games,
it seemed almost as if he was really nervous.
But as the season went on, you could see he got
mentally tougher, physically tougher.
Thibodeau. Right up the middle.
Breaking tackles, dragging piles.
Our best defense is a great running game.
Tyler's so physical, he wears the team down himself,
having to tackle that big body.
He does not have the ability to cut
at all, like he just doesn't see it.
Thibodeau, untouched up the middle.
Well, he's coming at him around the leg there.
We were like thunder and lightning that afternoon.
With that, there's also Dom, and Dom can run.
He can throw it like he's a threat, too.
Cuevas. On the QB sneak for the score.
It just got to the point where Lee couldn't stop them.
St. Bernard's is returning
to Foxborough to defend their title.
44-14, over Lee.
They got back on the bus.
They're about to pull away, I hear from the back:
Back to Gillette, bro!
And everyone explodes. Then the singing starts.
Country road
Take me home
To the place
Where I belong
They were off-key the entire night.
Off-key. And then I posted that to Twitter.
Like, this is, this is hilarious.
Take me home
To the place
Where I belong
Riding high, St Bernard's then played
its annual Thanksgiving week game just four days later.
A late season tradition outside the playoff bracket.
Coach Bingham gave some rest to his top players,
but the game was a physical and emotional
gut check at a time when everyone needed a break.
Both players and volunteers,
who had been working almost nonstop.
As the playoff run and campaign were coming together.
All in, they were on the brink of another
Super Bowl and pushing past $750,000 in pledges.
We were running out of gas.
You know, we'd been going strong since June.
And it was, it was six months of stress
and, you know, working till midnight every night.
You know, some-- We'd have meetings
in here till 11:30.
I would go home, and I'd still be, you know,
doing research, writing emails, drafting 100 page,
you know, strategic plan proposals.
We were all just tired.
Fundraising was going very well,
given the circumstances, but we hadn't really hit
our breakthrough and, uh, and we knew that.
The season was almost over.
Financial deadlines were looming,
and even counting every dollar pledged to date,
the "All in" campaign was still well short of its goal.
It was difficult only because I knew
what was going on behind the scenes.
I knew the uphill battle that we were facing.
It was just like a marathon,
and someone would hand the torch,
and you when you get tired and burnt out,
and you just, you needed a spark.
T.J. Fluharty always would say, "You gotta have faith."
To come that far against
all these obstacles that got thrown at us.
To come that far
and to say, "Okay, no, we're not gonna do this."
Now, the real work had to start.
And at the end of the day, the last thing I wanted to do
was to make this team feel like
they were responsible for the school continuing to go.
But I knew that story, to be able to tell my donors
that this school had won a second Super Bowl,
was a key story.
And I needed that right when it happened.
We welcome you here live
from Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts.
The Division Eight Super Bowl,
played between the Wildcats
of West Bridgewater and the St. Bernard Bernardians.
I remember everything about December 6th.
I remember the temperature. I remember the snow.
It was cold.
There was no breeze, but there was just the gentle
snow falling and, you know, and the sun was down.
So, the stadium was lit up. It was just, it was amazing.
And then you start seeing our families pop up,
and the kids pop up.
We all knew how much that game meant.
You're looking up. You see the lights
of the stadium, you see the snow falling.
It's one of those moments you dream about as a kid.
And we kind of had that silent confidence
in us that we were like, we were ready.
We've been here. It's time to go to work.
Honestly, going into that game,
I wasn't as nervous as I was the 2018 season,
as we had already faced so much adversity
throughout the year that, you know,
like, we don't have much to lose here.
Like, yeah, we can go on and win and that'd be awesome.
But if we lose, we weren't even projected to win that game.
The first five, ten minutes that you're there,
you take everything in.
It was nerve wracking, like, 'cause you're just waiting
to get out there and just get on the field and play.
When you're walking down the stadium,
they have posters on the walls and, of like,
Tom Brady when he was playing there.
And then when you walk onto the field itself
and just taking it all in.
You could just feel the energy there, um,
and then, you know, then the boys came out
and it was just, it was real. It was, it was happening.
Let's go!
That right there is-- it's-- it's big.
There was confidence.
They just-- they were ready to go.
They were ready to peak.
And I feel like they had something to prove.
Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!
...with the perfect season up until this game.
Not about to go down without a fight,
and lots of fans from West Bridgewater.
It's not that cold because the adrenaline
is pumping through you at that point, like,
you're getting amped up, the music starts to kick in.
We show up with 28, 27 kids.
They had 64, I believe, dressed.
So they came out, they were looking pumped up, huge.
And they probably gave us a look of like,
"This is easy." They were 12 and 0,
the pressure was on us 'cause we're the defending.
You're dialed in, you're looking across
the field, like, like, these guys
are really gonna get what's coming for them.
We know how to win here, and we're gonna do it again.
This was a good West Bridgewater team.
Probably the one time that I did play a little cliché
underdog, well clearly, you're hoping the defending
state champions doesn't matter to the Boston Bakers
because, you know, they're 12 and 0.
Seven shut out, I don't even know if we even belong here,
we shouldn't have been playing with them.
I feel like we were all on the same page
before they even knew it was coming.
able to snag it,
rolling to his right quarterback sweep, and he is lit up.
Second play of the game when quarterback's running
around and then Banchs just fills the hole and hits him.
You could hear the thud.
And like, when the kid hit the ground, like, I don't know
if he'd lost the wind, but Banchs hit him hard.
Yeah. Boom. That's all I have to say, dude.
Yeah, that had mentally set the tone.
From that point, it was business.
Four down linemen with two outside linebackers.
They toss it to Mancini.
He's looking for the outside, but he is tracked down.
The teams traded defensive blows
in a scoreless first quarter.
But a storm of thunder and lightning was gathering
in St. Bernard's patented Wing-T offense.
Led by an experienced quarterback
and blockers paving the way
for a tandem thousand yard running backs.
Tyler Thibodeau!
We had a lot of ups and downs throughout the year,
but when it came to the biggest game,
that's when we hit our peak.
Gave it to Thibodeau off the right side.
He has the first down.
Plenty of space down the right sideline.
to a Wing-T offense.
The bread and butter for St. Bernard's
is a jet sweep.
So, you're handing that ball off
to Nico Mancini, and he's going off the end.
Midway through the second the Bernardians
struck on an eight yard Nico Mancini run.
Cuevas. Gives it to Mancini.
Misdirection to the left side. Mancini looking for the corner.
Looking for the pylon,
and Mancini heeds in for the first score of the game.
West Bridgewater got to know Nico Mancini pretty well.
Not the front of him.
The back of his jersey quite a bit.
On St. Bernard's next drive, Mancini struck again.
They're gonna give it to Mancini
off the right side. Space off tackle.
Mancini jumps over one tackler. Lavoy.
Broken tackle there from Mancini.
Mancini stays inbounds down the sideline, and--
And Mancini will go to the house.
We were the smaller and younger team.
So, we, we had a lot to prove.
By second touchdown,
it felt like, "Okay, all right."
I'm taking pictures.
I'm looking at this experience as a fundraiser.
That's what I'm doing.
I'm looking for every opportunity I can
to capture moments, capture video,
and make sure that our donors are
gonna see and share this experience with me.
West Bridgewater broke the ice
to make it a one score game at the half.
Gives the football to Gorgantis,
and he is fighting forwards looking for the goal
line, and Gorgantis carried five Bernardians
across the goal line for the first touchdown,
and will go into halftime with a six point lead.
But the Bernardians came
charging out after the break.
Keeper there by Cuevas,
he slips through inside the ten.
A shoestring tackle, but is just short.
Cuevas dashed for the goal line
in a long run, chased by a touchdown saving
Wildcat defender and an intensely
excited fan on the far side line.
You know, Principal Anderson went
from a full sprint to sideways and just out
of bounds, and then clicking her heels down.
It was absolutely hysterical.
It's just pure energy.
I am not athletic, but it was just--
you get so swept up in the moment.
My heart was right there with them.
Mancini then sprinted through
a huge hole for his third touchdown of the day.
Gives to Mancini, and he hops into the end zone.
STB! STB! STB!
It wasn't countable until, you know,
till the start of the fourth quarter.
And a fourth quarter touchdown by Tyler Thibodeau
capped off the score to seal a 30 to 8 victory.
They give the football to Thibodeau,
and Thibodeau plows his way into the endzone.
Oh, my God. Like, we-- We're going to win.
The Bernardians earned
their second straight state championship
and the potential for so much more.
What a team. What a season. What a school.
I mean, just, uh, the little engine that could
just keeps on doing it.
We're two time state champions, baby!
Yeah!
It really was a miracle, and it shouldn't have happened.
How do you get to a state championship game with 26 kids?
And I've been telling them
it's not 26 kids, it's the 26 that we have.
What a special group of young men that truly
believed in each other, and they did it for each other.
And I couldn't be any more proud than I am.
I remember very vividly, Coach Bingham was
one of the last ones off the field.
And he just came over to me, and he said, "We did it, boss."
And rightly so, we both had tears in her eyes, and it was,
you know-- 'cause we-- we knew what that game was.
It was surreal. We did it back to back.
It was unreal.
When I really realized what happened
was when we got back on the bus after the game.
In the chair, with the trophy buckled in next to me.
We made it happen. Somehow, someway, we found a way.
St. Bernard's alumni.
We wanted you to be the first to know
that we just clinched the Division Eight Super Bowl.
Hey team, how does it feel to be champions at Gillette?
Oh yeah!
Of course, my brain is going to--
What does this mean for the school?
You know, and you think about, you know,
the papers and the press and all of the families back
home that are gonna hear about this.
Hey baby, back to battle!
Given the pressure of maintaining enrollment,
and, you know, in fundraising, my brain is just reeling
with all the opportunities that could come from this.
We shared on our Facebook page, the post of the Super Bowl team.
I mean, it was hundreds of likes. Thousands of views.
The only time we'd gotten that much
attention was when the announcement
that the school could close had come out.
So, this was the first time we had something
so overwhelmingly positive stretch so far.
And it immediately showed up in fundraising.
Things like that, our opportunities in fundraising.
And so, we saw this massive opportunity
to validate that, yeah, we're small, but we're mighty.
With the resounding thrill of victory
still in the air and the promise of publicity on the horizon.
The community awoke the next day aware
that its work was not quite done.
I don't know if I've said this to anyone,
but I got up by 4:30 that next morning,
on like 90 minutes of sleep and I just watched it.
Not as a coach.
I just turned it on and just let it play through.
And just take the whole thing in.
I enjoyed not thinking. I enjoyed not game planning.
I enjoyed not having to do anything.
I just enjoyed watching the kids.
We got up at the crack of dawn.
I remember driving around Massachusetts,
stopping at gas stations
to scoop up all the newspapers.
And they were already gone.
I don't know who else-- who beat me to it.
My parents live in southern Massachusetts.
I drove to their house and I-- on the way was just
stopping on Route 20, just picking up every newspaper
I could and trying to get the Sentinel.
You know, and the Telegram.
And they're all sold out, everywhere.
I found a copy of the Telegram,
so we got that one, which was great.
You know, so I'm going closer to my parents' house
and then I-- and then I see the Herald.
And I see that we're on the front page of the Herald.
Front page on one of the biggest newspapers, The Boston Herald.
It was amazing. And we had the high five with Channel five.
There are only 106 students
in grades nine through 12.
How do they do it?
It was all falling into place.
Everything that we had been doing
was starting to make sense.
Where for the longest time it honestly hadn'’t.
It hadn't made sense throughout the entire fall.
It was like, what are we doing? Where are we going?
And suddenly it was like, okay, I know where we're going.
It was this sort of relief,
but also excitement about,
okay, so what does this mean now?
You know, where does this take us now?
If you see things underlined,
that means I'm seeing something that I liked.
That I found that was uh, beneficial to your argument.
It was a Friday afternoon.
I was, uh, I was finishing up the work day.
You know, we were still on a high
from everything that had happened the week before.
And in pops an email from superintendent Perda.
I read it slowly and I became silent.
It was yet again that the work
we had done was exemplary and we had accomplished a lot.
But yet again, it was not enough to prove
to the committee and-- and the bishop
and the superintendent that we had enough to move forward.
We were bridging on nearly $1,000,000 and it wasn't enough.
For the first time I was like, This actually might not happen.
In this thing I was so convinced was the right thing to do.
I was so convinced that saving the school was about the kids,
the teachers, the alumni, the city.
I was so convinced, and the answer was no, again.
And I--I was just silent.
So, I know a lot of people got frustrated
when he got the note saying that it wasn't verified.
That didn't surprise me because pledges in the financial
world are very different than cash in hand.
Now, knowing the people that were contributing,
I had no question, the rest of the trustees had no question.
But I completely understood where the diocese
was coming from because it wasn't money in the bank.
There were some pledges involved and you have to have good faith.
The diocese did not always exercise the best faith.
On that day, I felt complete and utter disrespect, distrust,
and I felt like maybe this wasn'’t meant to be.
Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.
When the goalposts moved his time, however,
there was an irresistible force now driving the campaign.
From its carpool karaoke on the bus--
♪ Country roads take me home ♪
From its pre-season Hijinx to the final gun
at Gillette and beyond.
The infectious personality of this team
working together on and off the field
that turned St. Bernards into a viral sensation.
TikTok was like really big.
We'’re just nice and loose
and just wanted to like have fun with it.
And we just like made a TikTok before the-- the Gillette game.
And it like, happened to go viral.
Every time the beat dropped, they pushed their stomachs out.
And, yeah. Somehow it blew up. I don't know how.
We were at like 30,000 or something likes.
We were all making predictions and Bansh
comes out and says 1,000,000.
A million likes and we'’re all like, "No. No way."
We got my phone and everyone was quiet and I screamed a million.
It was the craziest thing.
We were almost more excited about the million
views on the TikTok than we were about winning.
And then Ben Goolsby came out of the bathroom
with the trophy yelling "Back to back."
Yeah baby! Back to back.
And then, obviously we posted a TikTok to get on that.
At that point, we're like, "Oh, another million views."
We all of a sudden were visible to alums,
who had really lost touch.
People were like, would look up
our school and like, want to help us.
I think the impact, the publicity was everything.
It was a miracle.
I mean, just all the stuff that was going on
alongside with the football team winning.
The buzz was positive and-- and the money
was starting to come in.
Fundraising got energized.
We got energized and we saw more applications than--
than we had in years past, which was, again, a great sign.
Okay, we're trending up.
We opened a bank account for the entry.
And to me that was pivotal, right?
And I wanted to make sure that that was publicized.
So, we blasted it.
So, for us as a really symbolic
of the start of our future.
Um, the fact that we have raised so much money,
that we now have this deposited into a bank that's for the use
of this, it's just really exciting.
And so, December through January was
right back to the same-- same thing
we've been doing for four or five months.
So, there'’s always this silent stress, I guess you could say.
If we don't talk about it, it'll go away.
Everything will be okay.
We knew that closing was still a possibility,
but the school and the parents and the team--
the transition team, we're still trying to climb that hill.
Buoyed by the Super Bowl win
and social media stardom, the All-In campaign
took the ball over the Christmas holiday.
By the time school was back in full swing
after winter recess, the fundraising effort
not only met the million-dollar target but passed it.
All that was left was the final call.
It had gotten to the point where it had to be yes or no.
Our students needed to know that.
Our alumni needed to know that. Our parents needed to know that.
And honestly, I needed to know.
Because I didn't have much left in the tank.
So, we set up a meeting with Superintendent Perda,
to meet with the Bishop, the school committee.
Really, everyone that makes that decision.
And this was our chance to provide yet again the latest
information as to what we had accomplished.
And the way I looked at it, as if this was the last chance.
Representing St. Bernard's
at the meeting would be lead fundraiser
Nick Pelletier, principal Linda Anderson,
of course and for the first time, a new face.
Recently hired director of admissions Debbie Maloney.
The trends in fundraising and in enrollment
were all going in the right direction.
But we all realized, right?
That until we had a real school to sell, that we were stuck.
My guts usually pretty solid
and my gut usually guides me pretty well.
Going into that meeting, my gut was all screwed up.
It was more than just the numbers.
Uh, there had to be an emotional attachment to this decision.
The story was about the people. The story was about students.
And so, in some ways, bringing Debbie was probably
one of the best decisions we made.
She had worked with so many of these families that were
looking to enroll in St. Bernards.
It was just as I listened to Nick and I thought
of how far we had come and yet how far we had to go.
And in order to do that, uh, the gentleman
in the room had to catch our vision, right?
And I was so excited, right?
To affirm what Nick had just completed saying.
And I looked around the room, right?
And I looked at the Bishop
and I said, "Please, we're ready."
She actually gave this beautiful speech and just said, like,
"We need you to give us our wings.
Like we're ready to fly,
but we need you to give us our wings."
She looked right at the Bishop and--
and I kind of turned and I was like,
"Oh, I hope that was-- I hope that was good."
It was the exact thing that needed to be said. It was time.
And then I kind of just looked over at the Bishop and...
he agreed.
I remember Nick calling me from the car as soon as him
and Linda got in the car and-- and they said,
"We did it. We got it. We're there. "
All right. It was just like this big
yes.
On January 30th, almost exactly one year
to the day that she learned
of her promotion, Principal Linda Anderson
called the student body to another fateful assembly.
So, we called you here for an assembly because
we have some important news to share with you.
She kind of let into it a little slow.
Very first assembly that I ever called as your principal.
And we talked about the future of our school.
-You guys remember that? -Yeah.
Yeah.
"And I let you know that your school might be closing."
I started by saying, you know, we-- we got through this
because you-- you hung in there.
I asked you to hang in there and to be brave.
And you did.
Now I have something to tell you.
And she said, "I'm really excited to let you know
that I just got back from the diocese in Wister."
This morning, we received that.
So, St. Bernards will open next fall
as an independent private Catholic school
with $1 million plus raised in funds.
It was like they exhaled.
And it was this-- just such a beautiful moment, you know?
You know, they say that you--
your life flashes before your eyes before you die.
I feel like that'’s going to be one of the moments that I see.
You know, was that-- was that day.
That was honestly probably one of the best days of my life.
Because I love being at this school and I love
playing football for this school and I love my teammates.
And being able to have that comfort
that I was going to have one more year.
One more ride with them was awesome.
Many of these kids had been a key part of this.
You had kids who had, you know, fought to, um,
in open houses to-- to convince families
that this was the place to be.
There were so many individuals who had put their time in.
Such a relieving feeling, right?
I mean, just these kids are so happy.
They're going to be able to stay here, right?
A school they love, right?
They don't have to bear the burden of this.
We went from absolutely zero hope on May 29th
to here we are a year later with 37% growth and a million--
I think we'’re at a million 5 right now.
It's changing every day.
It wasn't just one thing.
It wasn't one move. It wasn't one donation.
It wasn't one hero.
You know, honestly, in some ways,
it's kind of like a football team.
There is no one player.
The biggest lesson in...
this whole endeavor is that you don't turn
your back when-- when times are bad.
You find a way to try.
You know, the story in St. Bernard'’s is really
just a microcosm of really a bigger story.
I think we live in a time, um, where people need
to feel hopeful and to feel grounded.
In our little community you now, we offer that. It's catching.
To come back from where we were and to make it to where we did.
There's no better dream story that you can tell.
I can tell that story to my kids now.
It's improbable that a school with 100 kids
in the building would be able to survive.
It's improbable that a 33-year-old woman
that had been teaching for six or seven years
would come in and lead like no other.
The whole story's improbable. We shouldn't be here.
We should have failed like a lot of the other
Catholic schools in Fitchburg have done.
We did things that we never should have done.
And we did that because of the kids in that room.
And they came together.
They loved each other. They were tough. They didn'’t quit.
I think they grew more as people
than any other team that I've ever had.
Like, we weren't good. But good God did they work.
And they had fun and they did it for each other.
And they were tough. They didn't quit.
They did everything that you would want as a football coach.
I don't know if you can be beaming
with any more pride than having those types of kids like that.
I mean that St. Bernard's football.
I'll make a biblical reference and calling it Lazarus.
Rising from the dead.
It's a miracle.
The Sentinel published our version of it,
which was really cool.
You know, and I love the picture they took.
They'd asked me to stand at the door
of the school and open it.
I just was beaming.
I was just so proud and so happy to just open that door.
It's symbolic because now you can open your door again.
You know, you're welcoming everybody back in.
Like to, uh, start by welcoming everyone
down to our beloved Bernardian bowl.
Thank you for coming out to celebrate our two-time,
back to back Massachusetts state football champions.
you are the first ones to see it, buddy.
I want to be very clear, until Mr. Anderson buys
me a diamond this size-- This will be my wedding ring.
Very good.
No one expected this team to win a Super Bowl.
You were climbing a mountain
for all of us and we were watching.
And when you got to the top,
we were inspired to do the same.
There would be no St. Bernard's without Tom Bingham.
You are a testament to who we are
and to the Bernardian spirit.
Congratulations, Coach Bingham.
Thank you.
We did. We got through it.
-We do. -We did.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
-Go Johnny! -Yes, Johnny.
♪ Clouds are in my brain And I just go in circles ♪
♪ Trying to think straight ♪
♪ Trying to get ahead ♪
♪ I rush around and then I always show up late ♪
One. Two. Three.
Yeah, boys.
Woohoo.
All in.
♪ It's just beginning if we're almost done ♪
♪ Oh, everyone that flies starts on the ground ♪
♪ Oh, you got to get lost if you want to be found ♪
♪ If you want to be found ♪
♪ I see you in the back ♪
♪ Visible in the middle of this crowd ♪
♪ I see you getting up ♪
♪ When no one helps after getting knocked down ♪
♪ I see you putting one foot in front of the other ♪
♪ when you don't know where to go ♪
♪ I see you hiding tears behind ♪
♪ that face of strength you have found ♪