Mello takes over Danvers High baseball program
Sep. 13—Throughout his entire baseball playing and coaching career, Matt Mello has always worn some shade of blue.
Next spring, he'll be trading in the navy and Carolina blues for some royal wear.
Danvers High named Mello, 37, its new varsity head baseball coach last week. An assistant and junior varsity coach at his alma mater Peabody High for the last 15 years, Mello impressed the folks in Onion Town with his love of baseball, experience and calmly confident demeanor.
"He's ready. That's the biggest thing that struck me — he's ready to be a head coach," Danvers High athletic director Andy St. Pierre said. "He's put in a lot of time over there in Peabody and he has a really good plan for how to build a program and do what needs to get done."
Not that the Falcons are in a rebuilding mode; Mello takes over for Sean Secondini, who posted a 34-29 mark in three seasons and shared the Northeastern Conference Dunn title last spring. Secondini was hired as head coach of his hometown, Stoneham, and with a job as prestigious and close to home as Danvers', Mello felt it was time to try to run his own ship.
"Sometimes you just know it's time and an opportunity just feels right," Mello said. "I did just about everything I could do in Peabody and Danvers is a place with a lot of tradition, great Little Leagues ... I've coached a lot of Danvers kids in the summer and they're good ballplayers and great kids. It's the kind of place you want to be a part of."
A 2003 graduate of Peabody High, Mello was a member of the city's 1999 Babe Ruth World Series championship team. He played for the Ed Nizwantowski's Tanners and reached the D1 North final as a senior and then played for Ken Perrone at Salem State. After graduating and becoming a teacher, he volunteered with head coach Mark Bettencourt, moving from varsity assistant to freshman and then junior varsity coach — giving him valuable experience both staging practices and running a game day bench.
"I owe Mark the world for bringing me up and teaching me so many things throughout 15 great years," said Mello, who's spent the last 20-plus years working directly with Hall of Fame coaches in Niz, Perrone and Bettencourt.
"They're all excellent people and I'd include our Babe Ruth coach Gary Palmieri in that group, too. You take a lot of things from every guy and kind of mold it together with your own style. For me, as I've gone through different roles on different teams it's made me aware of what it takes to keep focus as both a top guy and a bench guy."
Helping raise the program's numbers is one focus for Mello, who saw first hand the work Bettencourt did with local Little League and middle school camps to keep kids interested in baseball. He sees all kind of potential for player development in the Onion Town.
"You have to do everything you can to keep kids interested and goes for all high school sports, not just baseball," said Mello. "We want to get involved and make the young kids look forward to the day they'll be Danvers Falcons."
Mello has also been involved in the North Shore Baseball League for the last decade plus with the Beverly Recs (winning a part of championships). He's developed relationships with many of the NEC's baseball brass like Beverly's Jon Cahill, Marblehead's Mike Giardi and Swampscott's Joe Caponigro and was even coached by Saugus' Joe Luis as a youngster at the old Slugger's Alley and Extra Innings.
"Matt knows this league inside and out," said St. Pierre. "He's also very self aware and he's not too proud to know what he has to work on. I loved his leadership style, which is flexible and doesn't coach every kid the same way. That's something you learn with all his experience."
Longtime followers of Danvers baseball, which became one of the state's most dominant programs under the NEC's all-time wins leader Roger Day, will recognize what Mello says is the most important thing in high school baseball:
"Attention to detail," he said. "That and patience; not everything is going to go right all the time so accept that, adjust, stay even keel and be positive and eventually it'll work out.
"As long as we're better at the end of the year than we are the beginning, I'll be happy."
Now a teacher in the Milestones Program in Peabody ("teaching in a classroom is about finding ways to reach kids — that doesn't change on a baseball field," he said), Mello lives in Peabody with his wife, Danielle, and their two young daughters. He's in the process of building his coaching staff and can't wait to get started when he meets the Falcons later this week.
"I have so much respect and admiration for the coaches in this league, I'm really looking forward to this challenge. Now it's a matter of going out and getting to work."
