COURTESY PHOTO
Sean Stellato is rereleasing his book, “No Backing Down,” which is about the 1994 Salem High football season.
By STEVE KRAUSE
Sean Stellato figured he had a story to tell two years ago, and it turned out there were a lot of people who agreed with him.
Stellato wrote the book “No Backing Down,” which chronicles the 1994 high school football season at Salem High, which took place amid the backdrop of an acrimonious teachers’ strike that involved Ken Perrone, the coach of the team.
During the season, the Witches came into Blocksidge Field in Swampscott on an Indian summer-like autumn Saturday afternoon, with the team forced to practice off campus at Gallows Hills Park due to the strike. Perrone was served with a cease and desist order enjoining him not to coach — a directive he ignored.
Perrone and his entire staff ran onto the field arm-in-arm, and the Witches went onto the defeat the Big Blue in what was, for all intents and purposes, the game that decided the Northeastern Conference in 1994. It sent Salem to the Super Bowl, a game it eventually lost; and the entire experience also cost Perrone his job and he never coached football again.
Stellato, now a sports agent who represents several members of the New England Patriots, said that 5,500 copies of the book went out in the initial run, which began in July of 2014, and within a year they were all gone.
So, he’ s decided to rerelease it. And along with that, he said this week he thinks he’s found a screenwriter to author the movie version of the book.
“Intuitively, I’ve always known it was a great story,” he said. “And I didn’t receive too much backlash over the book. I thought it was unbiased. A lot of people, I’m sure, didn’t like it. But Coach Perrone did. I was actually blown away by the response.”
The company producing the film, called “No Backing Down Film, LLC,” is throwing a gala July 22 at the Waterfront Hotel in Salem, where, Stellato said, the screen writer (whom he preferred not to name ahead of time) will be introduced.
“There are a lot of exciting things happening,” he said, adding that current and former members of the Patriots are expected to be there, as are other former Boston athletes.
