Similar to John Feinstein’s A Season on the Brink and Pat Conroy’s My Losing Season, school administrator Kelly’s memoir of his senior season at Don Bosco Technical High School in Boston’s powerful Catholic Conference is a fascinating story of the rise of a perennial bottom-feeder to a league championship. Kelly’s rags-to-riches account is interspersed with adversity and triumph and centers on Clyde Dempsey, an inspirational but controversial coach whose life and tragic end dominates the book. Dempsey spent time as a mob leg breaker and likewise nine years on the run in Canada after killing a man in a bar fight in 1981. After extradition back to Massachusetts, Dempsey was convicted and sent to prison, where he died in 2001. In 2014, Kelly and his teammates held a reunion, reflecting on their championship season, their current lives, and Dempsey. Throughout the narrative, Dempsey’s mantra of coaching shines through: quickness, technique, and desire…a straightforward and overall great read, proving that fact is stranger than fiction."
This memoir will have strong regional appeal, but the combination of an unusual personal story with plenty of detailed football technique, a close look at the tough-love motivational style of an inner-city coach, and a fascinating true-crime element suggests that it just may reach a much broader national audience, even extending beyond sports fans.
About the Author
Son of a Boston Irish cop, Kevin Kelly was born and raised in Hyde Park, Massachusetts. With the sudden tragic death of his young mother, he and his older brother Tom would learn quickly how to adjust and navigate through their formative years. Fortunately, a few blocks pushed in place for both boys: A rock-solid father, a tight neighborhood of lifelong friends, a beautiful and loving stepmother, and football.
Following his brother Tom’s footsteps, Kevin attended Saint Don Bosco Technical High School in downtown Boston from 1971-75. His first two years of high school football were full of losses and increasing self-doubt. Approaching his senior year, he saw himself on the brink of quitting the sport, but was inspired to continue playing by his older brother’s single comment: Quitting would be a decision he would regret the rest of his life. Undersized and unappreciated, and with a coach named Jack Dempsey who inspired a group of nonbelievers, Don Bosco would go on to win the Catholic Conference Championship. On the strength of that, Kelly continued to play football at both the college and semi-pro levels.
A rare and cherished moment would come in the summer of 1976, when, by chance, player and coach played side by side for the Hyde Park Cowboys, in New England’s semi-pro league. Together they would share a second championship and solidify a bond that lasted a lifetime. Today, Kelly continues to passes on the knowledge and inspiration of Dempsey, the coach, to his players: that size means nothing in the game of football, that quickness, technique, and desire trump all, that the lessons learned on the field mirror those learned in life, and that playing with class and good sportsmanship is paramount to becoming a true athlete. .
When Don Bosco closed its doors in 1998, the author felt the strong desire to write down the Bosco/Dempsey story, lest the’74 championship team fall into obscurity. There was also a desire to try to understand why Dempsey, the boys’ mentor who did so much good for so many, could turn out to be so bad.
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