Years in the past, when he was the pinnacle soccer coach at Everett Excessive College, John DiBiaso had a late-night custom.
After an evening out together with his spouse on a Friday or Saturday, DiBiaso would drive over to Sullivan Station in Charlestown, round midnight, to purchase a duplicate of the following day’s Boston Herald.
He didn’t need to wait till morning to learn what the preeminent authority on Massachusetts highschool sports activities had written.
“I’d go in and decide it up with my spouse,” DiBiaso recalled. “We’d be out to dinner or one thing, and we’d go decide it as much as be the primary one to see it — what he was writing about, the tales that have been in there. It was simply one thing particular.”
“He” was Danny Ventura — or, as he was higher recognized to generations of student-athletes, coaches, mother and father and directors, Danny V.
Over his 40 years within the trade and 35 on the Herald, Ventura established himself as the standard titan of the Japanese Mass. highschool sports activities scene. Via his tireless work ethic, even-handed method to protection and bottomless effectively of institutional data, he turned — and, for many years, remained — the go-to useful resource for scores, stats, stars and storylines, even to big-name coaches like DiBiaso.
“Danny has helped so many individuals promote highschool sports activities through the years,” stated DiBiaso, winner of 373 video games and 16 Tremendous Bowls throughout stints at St. Patrick’s, Weston, Everett and Catholic Memorial. “He’s legendary, and he’s executed such an awesome job actually maintaining highschool sports activities on the forefront. On the Herald, he elevated their protection to a degree the place each Saturday or Sunday, folks have been working out to purchase the Herald to see who was on the again web page of the Herald for highschool sports activities. He simply did an unimaginable job.”
Now, that run is over. Ventura, 65, introduced his retirement in July. When the highschool soccer season kicks off subsequent month, he’ll be following alongside as a fan from Florida, the place he now plans to spend most of his time.
The response to Ventura’s announcement underscored his impression. Each coach, former colleague and state official reached by the Herald for this story spoke about him in reverent phrases.
One in contrast him to an Egyptian king. One other used the phrase “guru.” In DiBiaso’s eyes, he’s “the godfather of highschool sports activities in Massachusetts.”
“If there was a Mount Rushmore of people that cowl highschool or run ships that cowl excessive colleges, he would have the entire busts,” former Herald columnist Karen Guregian stated. “It could simply be him. His face can be on the entire sculptures.”
This outpouring of reward “floored” Ventura, who stated he “by no means received on this enterprise to get congratulatory messages.”
“Individuals have stated such good issues about me, and to me, all I wished was simply to provide an sincere day’s work,” Ventura stated. “And I really feel like I did that. I owed that to the Herald, and all I wished to do was guarantee that once I left there, I may really feel good that I gave them an sincere day’s work.”
‘Simply the fervour’
Raised in Brighton, Ventura started his journalism profession on the Dedham Transcript in 1986, then joined the Herald’s sports activities division in September 1990. Initially a part-timer, he shortly turned a staple on the Herald’s highschool protection, working first underneath highschool sports activities editor Bob Holmes and later underneath Stephanie Tunnera and Jim Clark.
In 2006, Ventura succeeded Clark in that function and held it for almost 20 years, whereas persevering with to report on a variety of highschool sports activities. 5 totally different Mass. state coaches associations (soccer, baseball, basketball, wrestling and swimming) have introduced him with awards for his protection.
“(I bear in mind) simply the fervour,” stated Clark, who labored with Ventura for 21 years and now serves because the director of communications for the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Affiliation (MIAA). “Simply the truth that he acknowledges that the student-athletes are a very powerful a part of any protection we’ve. … He was very thorough, very educated, at all times approached his job very professionally. And the institutional data — 30-plus years, or nonetheless lengthy he’s been doing that — simply realizing the folks and realizing who the gamers are and simply remembering the student-athletes from 25 years in the past and their tales and the whole lot. You simply can’t substitute that type of expertise and institutional data.”
Ventura’s checklist of contacts was limitless. Individuals in any respect ranges of highschool athletics trusted him with data as a result of they revered his professionalism and knew he’d current it pretty.
“Whether or not any coach, any participant, anybody had a query, he was type of an encyclopedia,” stated Brendan Connelly, who first met Ventura as an adolescent and has lined college sports activities for the Herald since 2014. “… He knew when the largest tales have been taking place. He simply knew what was happening. You would ask him any query, and the man knew. He was that tuned in, that dialed in. It’s unbelievable.”
“Individuals in the highschool neighborhood simply worshipped him due to the care he took in protecting highschool sports activities and making an attempt to guarantee that he had one thing on each highschool and each recreation was accounted for in some trend … to verify all people received in someway,” Guregian stated. “He was the grasp at it, and I believe the highschool neighborhood as a complete appreciated the care Danny took in protecting everybody.”
In a press release to the Herald, MIAA govt director Bob Baldwin stated Ventura “epitomizes what is true within the connection between college sports activities {and professional} journalism.”
“Highschool sports activities won’t be the identical with out him and is best as we speak due to him,” Baldwin stated. “… Danny shall be missed and can function a mannequin of the way it ought to be executed.”
A soccer fixture
Nowhere have been Ventura’s contributions extra seen than within the Herald’s highschool soccer protection, which he spearheaded from the early Nineteen Nineties till his retirement. His Candy 16 energy rankings, which debuted in 1993, and Thursday Pickorama each have been appointment studying for gamers and coaches.
“The reminiscences I had have been at all times of his Pickorama,” stated Brian St. Pierre, the previous star quarterback and present head coach at St. John’s Prep. “That was at all times, you have been ready till the top of the week to see what Danny V stated concerning the recreation. It both labored in your favor if he picked towards you and also you used it as gasoline, or he picked you and also you have been the favourite and also you had the bullseye on you. However he was already actually well-informed, so that you knew when he made these picks, he had a reasonably good report doing it.”
(That he did. In his final Thanksgiving Pickorama final November, Ventura went 15-2.)
100 twenty-six totally different colleges — from Abington to Xaverian — received Japanese Mass. or state Tremendous Bowls throughout Ventura’s time with the Herald, together with 51 totally different winners for the reason that state-wide championship mannequin was adopted in 2013. The roster of future NFL gamers he lined stretches from Matt and Tim Hasselbeck within the early ’90s, via the likes of Lofa Tatupu, Anthony Sherman and Jordan Todman within the 2000s, and as much as present execs like Maurice Hurst, Isaiah Probably, Lewis Cine and Mike Sainristil.
Ventura additionally chronicled the youth of most of the space’s high coaches. Half of the groups that cracked his season-ending Sweet 16 for 2024 have been led by head coaches who performed for his or her respective alma maters throughout Ventura’s Herald tenure: St. Pierre, Doug Kopsco (Needham), Chris Arouca (Marshfield), Paul Zukauskas (BC Excessive), Mark Mortarelli (Natick), John Sexton (Central Catholic), Ryan Dugan (Methuen) and Jesse Davis (Wellesley).
“There are coaches now which might be one of the best coaches of their respective sports activities in Massachusetts who have been lined by Danny after they have been gamers,” former Herald excessive colleges reporter Matt Feld stated. “There are guys whose coaches’ fathers have been lined by Danny after they have been coaches. Danny simply lined and intertwined so many generations of the best athletes and the best coaches in Massachusetts that there’s merely no option to substitute him. … It’s unattainable to have the stature and the fame that Danny has.”
“To do what he did so long as he did on the degree he did it, I believe speaks volumes to him as knowledgeable,” added St. Pierre, who starred at Boston Faculty and had a protracted profession as an NFL backup. “However I believe it was simply the human, too. He cared. He liked sports activities. He liked the highschool athletic scene. God is aware of what number of hours he put into it, however all for the good thing about the younger children, which is one of the best half about it. There’s an unselfishness to that, and there’s a whole lot of appreciation that ought to go to that.”
St. Pierre was concerned in a recreation that, almost 30 years later, stays etched in Ventura’s thoughts as the best he ever lined. He can rattle off from reminiscence each element, together with participant names and spellings (“Wayne Lucier — that’s L-U-C-I-E-R”), of the late two-point conversion that pushed St. John’s Prep previous rival Xaverian on Thanksgiving 1997, a matchup so extremely anticipated that the Herald started previewing it in August.
“It’s what, 28 years in the past? I nonetheless bear in mind the whole lot concerning the recreation. I can’t overlook that,” Ventura stated. “I’d overlook my title each day, however I can bear in mind the whole lot that occurred in that recreation. I imply, the buildup was superb.”
There’s that institutional data once more. Those that know Ventura invariably checklist it as one of many traits that set him aside. One other: his loyalty.
“Danny, to me, is the pharaoh of highschool sports activities,” Feld stated. “I don’t know the way else to raised describe him. Form of this final chief within the trade and pioneer within the trade within the space that everybody admires and appears as much as as a useful resource, however extra importantly, in my view, as a confidant and a pal. One of the best factor that I can say, the No. 1 trademark about Danny, is simply how loyal he’s — to his workers, to his writers and to the student-athletes throughout Japanese Mass. — and has been all this time since he began. His precedence has at all times been to see to it that the youngsters can get one of the best protection that we’re capable of present from them, and he truthfully didn’t count on something much less.”
Connelly known as Ventura “one of many ambassadors for highschool sports activities throughout the nation.”
“There’s nobody who’s extra loyal and hard-working than Danny V,” he stated. “Whether or not it’s to his firm, to the folks he is aware of, to anybody he’s related to, he’s at all times there for anyone, and he’s at all times there to assist construct you up. And in terms of sports activities usually, there’s no one who works more durable at his craft than Danny V.”
The scope of Ventura’s work wasn’t strictly restricted to scholastic sports activities, both. He additionally lined seven Tremendous Bowls for the Herald, plus one NBA Finals, a handful of NCAA basketball and hockey tournaments, and Davis Cup and Federation Cup tennis.
“He was virtually like a Swiss Military knife for thus a few years for the Herald,” Feld stated. “… There are such a lot of folks on the market who’re too good for highschool sports activities, and Danny, even if he lined Celtics NBA Finals, Patriots Tremendous Bowls, no matter it is perhaps, by no means thought he was too good for it. And I believe now, you simply don’t discover that.”
Stepping away
Ventura wished to clarify to readers that his retirement was voluntary. He was not pushed out, not the sufferer of any downsizing or layoffs. In actual fact, he stated, his bosses tried to persuade him to remain.
“It 100% was my determination, and it didn’t occur in a single day,” he defined. “… I’ve considered it for a few years, and I believe one of many causes I truly stayed so long as I did was due to the love I had for the Herald. I like the paper. I like the folks I labored with. Simply, to me, I’m 65. I’ve been within the enterprise for 40 years. I’ve been on the Herald for 35. It simply appeared like a pleasant spherical quantity at this level.
“The one factor that I at all times stated was I might by no means bail out on them in the course of the athletic/tutorial college yr. … So I at all times stated if I used to be going to do that, it’s received to be early in the summertime, and it was the Monday after the Fourth of July.”
Ventura’s closing byline within the Herald was on July 10. However he hasn’t disappeared from the highschool panorama — and doesn’t intend to.
He’s continued to tweet and retweet about 7-on-7 soccer, faculty commitments and different highschool happenings on his @BostonHeraldHS X account, a deal with he says he’ll ultimately change “out of respect for (his) substitute.” He’ll “completely” stay invested within the groups, gamers and coaches he spent greater than half of his life protecting.
“Individuals have requested me, and I’ve stated simply because I’m not working there, I’m not dying,” Ventura stated. “I’ll nonetheless observe the whole lot. I’ll nonetheless observe everybody. I’ll nonetheless name coaches to harass them.”
He received’t be the identical omnipresent determine, nonetheless. And his exit leaves a gap that can by no means be crammed.
“I don’t know if there’ll ever be anyone like him once more,” DiBiaso stated. “I hate to say it, however he’s like one among a dying breed.”
“He was the guru of highschool athletics in Mass., there’s little doubt,” St. Pierre stated. “And anyone that reached that type of stature, after they depart, there’s an enormous void. However he’s deserved it. He’s executed it for a very long time, so he deserves to go off the best way he needs to.”
