Football pride carries St. Bernard’s

BY BILL DOYLE | CFP CORRESPONDENT

Damien Jones and Antonio Mancini could end their high school football careers the same way they started them – by winning a state championship.
When they were freshmen, they started at cornerback when St. Bernard’s High School defeated West Bridgewater, 30-8, at Gillette Stadium to capture its second consecutive Division 8 state title.
As senior captains, Damien and Antonio are the team’s top two running backs and they will lead St. Bernard’s into the Division 7 state championship game against West Boylston at 3 p.m. Friday at Gillette Stadium. A victory would give Damien and Antonio the perfect bookends to their football careers.
“That would be pretty amazing,” St. Bernard’s coach Tom Bingham said. “That does not happen very often.”
“It would be very meaningful,” Damien said. “It would be like I’d be filling the shoes of the seniors during my freshman year.”
Before the game, the Bernardians will pray together as a team. Prayer has been an important part of every season since Mr. Bingham became head coach at the Catholic high school in Fitchburg in 2005.
“Our football team starts everything with a prayer,” Mr. Bingham said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a practice in August or if we’re walking onto Gillette in December, every time we come together and have an organized activity as a football team, we start that with a prayer.”
“For me, it’s like I’m talking to God,” Damien said, “and having him watch over us.”
Religion is obviously important at a Catholic school, and a handful of the members of the football team were once altar servers. “Before the game and after the game,” Mr.
Bingham said, “everything that we talk about is ‘you’re not at it alone, we’re in everything we do together’ and having that moment to pause for that is certainly a reminder.”
St. Bernard’s (11-1) was seeded third in Division 7 and West Boylston (10-2) was seeded first.
West Boylston rested its starters on Thanksgiving Day during a 48-13 loss at Maynard so they would be healthy for the state championship game. The Bernardians crushed the Knights of St. Paul Diocesan Jr./Sr. High School, 48-20, the night before Thanksgiving at Assumption University to capture the Bishop’s Cup.
Last year, West Boylston eliminated St. Bernard’s in the first round of the playoff.
“It’s kind of a revenge game for us,” Antonio said.
“It will take our best game of the year to beat them,” Mr. Bingham said. “They’re the No. 1 seed and they’ve been the favorite all year and they’ve earned that.”
Mr. Bingham doesn’t like to compare this year’s team with the two state championship squads.
“Every team has its own unique characteristics,” he said. “They’re all wonderful in different ways. One thing you can say about all three teams is they’re certainly not afraid of working hard. In different ways, all three of them certainly believed and came together in their own way.”
Antonio, a fullback from Shirley, ran for 1,190 yards and scored 17 touchdowns this fall before sitting out the Bishop’s Cup game against St. Paul to rest. He ranks seventh in Central Mass. in scoring with 137 points.
In 2019, Antonio’s brother, Nico, ran for three touchdowns in the state championship game. Antonio has informed his brother he plans to find the end zone as well and finish with more yards in the title game and the season than his brother did as a senior. Nico will be in attendance.
Damien, a halfback from Fitchburg, carried the ball only seven times in the pre-Thanksgiving game against St. Paul, but ran for 218 yards and scored four touchdowns. This season, he leads Central Mass. in scoring with 202 points and he has scored 30 touchdowns. He has also rushed for 1,697 yards, averaging 13.9 yards per carry.    
Junior quarterback Salvi Bilotta doesn’t throw the ball often in St. Bernard’s wing-T offense, but there’s no need to when he can hand off to two such effective rushers. When St. Bernard’s defeated defending state champion Cohasset, 32-19, in the state semifinals, Salvi didn’t throw any passes and the two running backs accounted for 343 of the team’s 353 total yards.
Damien is only 5-foot-7 and weighs 140 pounds while Antonio is just 5-9, 165, but they’re both tough and fast. Offensive tackles Stefano Allen and Rocco LaMonica and center Darnell Woodson, all seniors, create most of the running room for Damien and Antonio.
Senior linebacker Dominic Beaudoin and sophomore defensive end Jameson Williams lead the defense. Six Bernardians start on both offense and defense.
St. Bernard’s enrollment has doubled from 100 to about 200 in recent years, but it remains the smallest high school in the state that plays football without co-oping with another school.
Nevertheless, the Bernardians field a strong team every year. Their goal is to play their best football in the playoffs.    
“Our road map is don’t lose at home,” Mr. Bingham said, “win your league, get a home playoff game and that’s going to launch you in a direction where you have a shot.”
St. Bernard’s captured the Dual Valley Conference title and has won its last 10 games.
“We talk a lot about adversity,” Mr. Bingham said. “Bad things happen and how do we respond to that? When adversity presents itself to you, our path to success or our path to changing the outcome is easier when we’re all doing it together.”
Working together not only makes for a successful team but a successful school as well. And the story of the football team’s inspirational example is highlighted in a soon-to-be-released film.
Emmy Award winning filmmakers Gregg Backer, Evan Kanew and former Bernardian Jeff Bowler are scheduled to release a 95-minute documentary on Apple TV on Dec. 13 called, “All In, Miracle at St. Bernard’s.” The film details how the St. Bernard’s community pulled together to keep the high school open and how the football team’s 2019 state championship boosted the school’s pride. Due to financial losses and declining enrollment, St. Bernard’s was on the verge of closing, but the Diocese of Worcester agreed to keep the school open for the 2019-2020 school year to allow time for a solution to be worked out. Funds were raised to turn St. Bernard’s into a non-diocesan, private Catholic institution for the 2020-21 school year.
Mr. Bingham and Nico are interviewed in the film and Damien and Antonio are shown playing in the 2019 season.
“It’s crazy that it’s happening,” Antonio said, “and that we get to be in it and see people we know in it. I never thought it would happen at such a small school, but it’s awesome that our story is being told.”
“I think it’s amazing,” Mr. Bingham said. “It appeals to a lot of different audiences. It really is a success story. It’s an underdog story, it’s an athletic story. You have a church community working with the diocese and everyone working together. We couldn’t be on our own without the help from the bishop (Bishop McManus) and his office to really keep us afloat for one more year while we transitioned to figure that out. It truly is a miracle when you look at how many things had to go right in the correct order. Many of those items that needed to be successful really didn’t have favorable odds, but they did happen.”
The football team’s run to the state championship helped the school feel good about itself.
“It was definitely a rallying point,” Mr. Bingham said, “and we needed to get excited about something in a time when there wasn’t a lot to get excited about.”
A third state championship would be another cause for celebration.