Tony Johnson coached Bishop Guertin to numerous football titles, the seeds of which were planted during his days coaching and playing at Holman Stadium. (Courtesy photo)

NASHUA – It was an era that saw a new wave of Legends taking over Holman Stadium.

From the 1970s through various years as far as the 1990s, Charlie Mellen, Bill Dod and Tony Johnson were fixtures in the city’s beloved sports facility. Thus they will all be inducted tonight prior to the annual Fireworks Show into the Nashua Lions Club Holman Stadium Sports Legends Hall of Fame.

Mellen, who passed away earlier this year in Florida, was the successful Nashua High School baseball coach who retired in the mid 1990s. His teams would tangle with Dod’s Bishop Guertin teams in often memorable moments on the diamond at Holman. And Johnson first made his mark as a Guertin back on both sides of the ball in the mid to late 1970s, and then as the architect of a successful run in the late 1990s at Holman that turned into a dynast the next decade when football moved to Stellos Stadium as the Cardinals head football coach and later athletic director. He’s now working as the chief fundraiser for the school’s planned athletic practice and sub varsity facility out on the Route 111 area of Nashua.

And they’re all connected.

Dod was a football assistant when Johnson played, “and he was pretty influential.” Guertin won Division II state titles when Johnson was a freshman (1973) and a junior (1975) and lost by a point to St. Thomas in the 1974 title game. Johnson’s brother Cory joined him on that 1975 team but also played baseball and after moving to the southwest his two sons played major college baseball.

“Cory still says the best baseball coach he’s ever seen was Billy Dod,” Johnson said. “Better than the head coach at Vanderbilt whose won national championships, etc. He thinks he’s the best fundamental coach he’s ever seen.”

When Johnson, who had speed to burn, was a freshman, Dod was his track coach, and coached multiple sports. He grabbed the baseball reins when Johnson was a sophomore until he left BG after the 1988 school year and went to Milford to become a vice principal and baseball coach. Dod then made his mark with a long run as the Souhegan High School baseball coach and athletic director, and today is the winningest coach in New Hampshire history.

When Johnson was hired by then BG AD and Holman Legend Dick Piwowarski as the new football coach in 1994, he set out to restore BG to a winning program. He guided the Cards back to the Division II title games in 1997, ’98 and 2001 before the Cards began a string at Stellos of winning seven titles in eight years, six of them under his guidance, and the only year they didn’t win they lost by a point to Exeter, 14-13, in 2007. But the seeds were planted at Holman. In fact, in the final football game played there in November of 2000, his BG team beat the one Nashua.

“I felt I could build the program back up,” Johnson said. “The first few times we went to the championship game we lost. After that, I got my coaching staff together and said ‘We’re changing everything – we’re not here to lose, we’re here to win (at title). We changed the way we did our off-season conditioning and summer program.”

Johnson made other changes as well, but again, the seeds were planted at Holman for a program that hadn’t consistently won in nearly two decades.

“It was pretty cool,” Johnson said. “My focus was I wanted to be the best. I wanted to be the best program in the state of New Hampshire; I knew we could do it because we had good athletes.”

His first couple of years, though, the Cards in the mid 1990s struggled. What changed?

“Honestly, we toughened up the kids,” Johnson said. “We had some tough kids and we made them tougher. I had two very good assistants (Mark Phillips, Dave Roedel) who were tough, hard-nosed coaches. We basically, we told the kids, ‘Look, you’re a doormat in the state.’ Everybody saw Guertin and said, ‘Oh, that’s a win.’ That’s an attitude, and we said ‘Look, you’ve got to change that attitude. We’re not considered a tough program. We’re considered a doormat in the league and a win for every team we play. It’s got to stop.’

“Somewhere along the line you’ve got to draw a line in the sand and say ‘This isn’t going to happen anymore.'”

His players then such as QB Brian Dolan, Seamus Brackett, etc. said just that. “If we were going down, we were going down with a fight, and it was going to be a fight,” Johnson said. “They were just tough kids.”

Johnson, of course, had tasted that winning feeling as a player, as his Cards team coached by Piwowarski beat Somersworth with him as a starting running back in the Division II title game at Holman in 1975, a 14-7 Guertin win. It was the last time BG won championship on the Holman turf.

How did it feel to return to Holman as the BG head coach?

“It was pretty surreal,” Johnson said. “It really was. Because I remembered we had some great teams when I was a player. The locker room stuff was always stuff that you remember. It was pretty cool. I loved playing at Holman Stadium. “When we played the Turkey Bowl (as a player) we had 5,000-10,000 people, the end zones were packed, it was like a college game, they’re screaming at you and you couldn’t hear what was going on, couldn’t hear the cadence.. It was crazy, it was cool.”

Johnson’s competitive nature was born during his BG playing days.

“As a player, we thought we would never lose,” he said. “When I was a player, I thought we’d never lose. When I was a coach that attitude was the same, it was unacceptable to lose. You’ve got to think you’re better than every team you’re playing, than every player that you face against. That was never an attitude when I got (to BG as a coach). But those guys on those teams in ’75 and ’76 we never thought we’d lose. Even (vs.) Nashua.”

Johnson said back then the BG athletes hung out with a lot of the Nashua players as they both practiced in the spring at the Fairgrounds Jr. High track.

“We knew all those guys,” Johnson said. “We’d sit there going, ‘We’re not losing to these guys.’ So again, it was cool. We were friends. My toughest competiton at Guertin as a sprinter were basically guys I used to work out with from Nashua High. … It’s easier when you don’t know a kid, and have no idea what he looks like behind the helmet. But when you know these kids, it’s different. It was a great rivalry, we respected each other.”

Thus Johnson took the mentality of two decades earlier and restore it at BG. “I don’t care if Nashua has 4,000 kids, we’re not losing to these guys,” was his approach. “That was the prevailing attitude.”

“He was just a great competitor,” Dod said of Johnson, noting that on practice days his job was to run the defense and try to “give the offense as many headaches. The thing about Tony was he was just so fast. If you gave him just a little bit (of room) he would take off. He was just so quick off the snap. He was gone.”

Dod wasn’t surprised at Johnson’s success as a coach, either, albeit watching from afar.

“He was a smart individual and knew where to put people,” he said. “He had a good football background … came into a situation in which Guertin was eager to win and … it continued to snowball with wins and wins and wins.”

DOD LOVED THE NASHUA-BG RIVALRY

Dod said that Nashua and BG always had a great relationship, and in baseball “it was outstanding. Working with Charlie was always a pleasure, It was just a great relationship that we have. The history of Nashua athletics and Nashua baseball was great. You wanted to make sure you were ready to play the best when you played Nashua.”

And thus the memories came flooding back.

“We were in the semis at Holman in eight out of nine years in the ’80s,” Dod said. “The players worked real hard to get in the tournament, make the semis, and we were fortunate to make the finals four times. But the memories of playing in the semifinals and the high level of Class L baseball was phenomenal. The players just did a great job. That’s a great memory. We lost four semifinal games, a couple in the seventh inning. Those are always difficult. But (Holman) was just a phenomenal place to play.”

Dod said playing at Holman – which Guertin and Nashua didn’t always do because of Nashua Angels and Pirates home games in the mid 1980s – was the highlight of the year. But he also brought the Hudson American Legion Post 48 team as well as the Souhegan Senior Babe Ruth teams into Holman to play against Nashua teams.

“You come in and the kids would look around and it was just big-time,” Dod saod. “And (the city) did such a great job of preparing the field. It was a highlight every time you’d play in the stadium.”

Dod remembers the days when for a couple of years home plate at Holman was in right field, “and even that was a big deal.”

Dod admits when he left BG he missed his teams playing at Holman after he left for Milford. There were a couple of instances, when there was a Cncer fundraising game for Souhegan vs. Hollis Brookline at Holman and, he said, “It was a packed house.”

Dod remembers in early April of 1983 the Nashua Angels Double A team pracitced at BG in and around the Cards practice because they couldn’t get into Holman. While the BG players were in shorts, the Double A players just up from Florida “couldn’t put enough clothes on,” Dod said with a chuckle, noting that they actually started a fire with some wooden bats to get warm. Dod enjoyed his time as the official scorer at the minor league games. “That,” Dod said, “was a great experience.”

BG won the Class L title in 1982 and ’87, falling in the 1984 title game. But the battles with Nashua vs. Mellen’s teams are what Dod savors today, remembering games like on in the mid to late 1980s when BG speedster David Lavallee scored from second on a ground out for a win. “It was just such an important rivalry,’ Dod said. “Every time you played Nashua you were playing a team that was the most prepared offensively and defensively that you were going to play. They had all the rundowns, they had all the cutoffs, the bunt defenses, the pickoff. You had to be prepared for everything, and it was very important because of the level that Nashua (under Mellen) played. You had to get your team to a higher level because if you didn’t, Charlie and the great Nashua athletes would do a number on you.

“It was a great challenge for both of us. We won a few, and Nashua maybe won a few more than we did. But every game was like a new season. It was great, and the attendance, we played a night one game, and the other game was usually a Sunday afternoon game.”

Local and state coaching legend Bill Dod will be inducted into the Sports Legends of Holman Hall of Fame on July 4. (Telegraph file photo by TOM KING)

Local and state coaching legend Bill Dod will be inducted into the Sports Legends of Holman Hall of Fame on July 4. Before he left for Milford and then Souhegan, Dod was the head baseball coach and AD at Bishop Guertin and a fixture at Holman Stadium. (Telegraph file photo by TOM KING)

Dod remembers on the Sunday games vs. Nashua you could hear radios in the stands listening to the Celtics playoff games. “Just a lot of good things,” Dod said. “Charlie was a professional, the ultimate coach, the ultimate role model for baseball. He wanted baseball to be at a higher level. There wasn’t a lot of chirping back and forth. Very rarely, the two benches, would their be any negative back and forth. He absolutely wouldn’t allow it. You got there and played the game the way it should be played.”

The honors for Dod, who has the field at Souhegan named after him and is various Hall of Fames, including the NHIAA’s, are overflowing. How does he feel about becoming a member of the Legends of Holman? His name, along with Johnson’s and Mellen’s, will be on the plaque that is on the concourse as you enter the Stadium’s main gate.

“I’ve been very fortunate to win a lot of awards,” Dod said. “And this one is special. Special for me because I never expected to get this award. I don’t live in Nashua. The award as I thought it was would go to a Nashua resident. When (Lions Club official) Ed Lecius told me, I couldn’t believe it.”

The award has gone to other non-residents, but Dod said he never expected it.

As AD, Dod oversaw a lot of events. He remembers when his boys soccer coach George Gauthier got soccer played at Holman. And when he was the AD at Milford, the Milford athletic staff were in charge of the NHIAA tournament that for a year or two was played there. So his ties to Holman run deep. “I was more than happy to do it,” Dod said.

Dod also remembers coaching under Piwowarski when Johnson played and the rivalries with Exeter. “That,” he said, “was a big rivalry.”

MELLEN WELL-RESPECTED

Mellen was remembered fondly by those who played and coached with him following his passing over the winter at his home in Florida.

Charlie Mellen had some good advice for a young, up and coming JV coach at Nashua High School.

“He would tell me to make the umpires like you,” B.J. Neverett said, “because there’s going to be a 3-2 pitch in the seventh inning that you need, and you’ll probably get it. The umpires are human, too.

“He was a true gentleman on the field, the umpires loved him.”

Mellen guided Nashua to state titles in 1976, 1979, 1991, 1993 and ’94 and was inducted later in ’94 into the Nashua Hall of Fame as he had retired as baseball coach – handing the reins to Neverett, who coached for 17 seasons.

Neverett has a unique perspective on Mellen, because he not only coached under him, he also played for him at Nashua.

“Playing for him, he never got mad,” Neverett said. “He let us be players, he let us play the game. He was a very good high school coach, and he had some great teams.”

Especially in the 1990s, when the Panthers, with a host of players who ended up playing in the minor leagues, made it to five straight Class L title games from 1990-94 and won in ’91, ’93, and ’94.

The final win in ’94 over a powerful Concord team was fairly improbable as Nashua entered the tourney with a .500 record. It was after that win that Mellen told Neverett he had resigned and that he heavily recommended him for the job as his successor.

“He had a big impact on things I did after I took over there,” Neverett said. “He had a lot of impact on me, on guys I played with and those after I played. He had a big impact on baseball..”

“He would say to me ‘I don’t care how you did,'” Neverett said, ‘because you win when we win. He was so correct. All he wanted me to understand was that as the JV team, you’re developing them for us.'”

Mellen, who would have turned 90 this coming month, was also extremely loyal to his players. Neverett recalled that his JV team one year that had six future Division I players. “It had nothing to do with me, they were really talented,” Neverett said. “But (Mellen) wouldn’t take them because he had a senior group on the varsity. He was very loyal. … ‘They’ve been with me for three years, I’m going to roll wth them.’

“I remember how loyal he was to his players, especially the seniors. If they put the work in – he wanted them to play in the summer – and if they did that, he was extremely loyal to them.”

One of those talented players was catcher Greg Coy.

“I loved Charlie,” Coy, a ’92 Nashua grad, said. “For me, it was good, we played on some great teams. He had some great players, great assistant coaches – you can’t say enough about Buddy Hughes. But (Mellen) was great to play for. Super kind. Very knowledgeable. And ‘Gotta get the job done guys. Gotta get the job done.'”

The late longtime Nashua High School baseball coach Charlie Mellen will be inducted into the Nashua Lions Club Legends of Holman Hall of Fame on July 4. (Courtesy photo)

The late longtime Nashua High School baseball coach Charlie Mellen will be inducted into the Nashua Lions Club Legends of Holman Hall of Fame on July 4. (Courtesy photo)

Coy said one of the biggest things he learned from Mellen was exactly what Neverett did – keep your cool.

“He would say ‘Coy, you have to keep your head,'” Coy said. “Because I could lose my head very quickly. He allowed me to calm down and keep my head. That was the best thing about Charlie.”

Lecius broadcast the Nashua games on local radio and admired Mellen.

“He was a purist,” Lecius said. “He knew baseball inside and out. A very unassuming kind of guy. Great classroom teacher (math) and a great coach. He touched a lot of lives when he was here in Nashua, and made his mark. People still remember him today.”

“He was a very quiet coach,” Neverett said. “He just put us out there, and told us to go play. Again, after an inning was over, he didn’t say much, he’d usually just clap a couple of times and say ‘C’mon, let’s go, let’s go!’ And that was about all he’d say during a game.”

Neverett remembers losing in the state finals his junior year in 1977, thanks in part to an error that allowed Trinity’s Mike LaValliere — who went on to a Major League career — an extra pitch and he cleared the bases for the winning runs.

“I know that really devastated (Mellen),” Neverett said. “We used to talk about that on bus rides. He said, ‘Don’t worry, in your career, you’ll see that happen – a play that should be made won’t be. That’s high school baseball.”

That was Charlie Mellen, a coach who his players will tell you kept it all in perspective as soon to be a Legend of Holman.