All's well in Everett after 6th Super Bowl title
QUINCY -- He stops on his way to the checkout counter, his basket half-full of necessities for the impending trip to Florida. With the Tide, the deodorant, the Downy, and other sundries collected on this trip to
And six is what this day is all about.
The number of shirts packed for Florida. The number of pairs of pants. The number on his son's jersey, the number on his own jersey in his playing days. The table at which he sat -- after switching from 13 -- at the team dinner the night before.
Six. Because with a win in yesterday's Division 1 Super Bowl -- still hours from kick off -- DiBiaso would have six Super Bowl titles with the Crimson Tide, the alma mater he has returned to prominence in his 15 years at the helm. Six titles, the latest one coming against Brockton, the only other team in the state that could vie for Massachusetts supremacy with his own tradition-laden program, and the team that beat Everett two years ago in its last Super Bowl appearance.
"I don't have to win another championship," DiBiaso said two days before the game. "I'm 50 years old. I don't need a ring or a trophy. I don't carry trophies around. I don't wear the rings or anything. I want this for my seniors and the kids on the team that have worked so hard. I really, really want this for them. They've been such good kids, no problems. Very mature, very goal-oriented. They're great kids, no headaches. Not one kid has come up to me and said, 'I should carry the ball more.'
"It's really recharged me that this year these kids have been so great."
Working through two all-nighters since his Thanksgiving win over Cambridge, DiBiaso's eyelids have grown heavier in the last week and a half. They'll grow heavier still, even with his Super Bowl run over, yesterday's 35-6 win over Brockton returning Everett to the top of Division 1, because DiBiaso was scheduled to arrive in Orlando last night at midnight with his wife, Maureen, Everett's cheerleading coach, and his daughter, Kristina.
Even with a championship already in his pocket, he has another to win. His son, Jonathan, quarterback of the Everett Huskies "C" Pop Warner team, begins play today in an attempt to win a title of his own. A national title.
So his reward for the sleepless nights, the hours designing plays and watching film and mentoring students, could be seen as a half-missed Gatorade bath far too early in the fourth quarter, given the chilly temperatures and approaching trip to the airport. It could be looked at as the trophy that will be added to his overflowing cases, or that sixth ring.
But for DiBiaso, it was a chance to send off this year's senior class with a championship that no one, including himself, really imagined at the beginning of the season. And, even more than that, it was one play in the fourth quarter. With the words "Duc formation," hanging in the air, Kenny Duc -- a senior benchwarmer from Haiti, who is driven home most nights by DiBiaso, and whom the coach calls one of the nicest kids on the team -- got a carry in the final quarter of the final football game of his life.
That, to DiBiaso, is Everett football.
"Football is life in Everett," senior defensive back Jonathan Nascimento said before the game. "It's our life."
Hardly known for much -- beyond its football team -- Everett is a hamlet of a city, 37,000 strong. Sixty percent of its high school students, in a community of 1,745, live in poverty, according to Everett superintendent Frederick Foresteire . Forty-three percent don't speak English at home. The coaches know this football team's place in the community, the reason for all the pressure to win, the nearly impossible expectations.
Like the lights. When Everett finally got lights for its shabby, chewed-up field in 1999, it meant much more than Friday night football. Where, in other towns, a Saturday morning game might disrupt nothing more than a few errands or a shopping expedition, it means losing a full day of work in Everett. And, in this city, that means a lot.
"When you live in a city like this, you point to the industry, the smoke stacks, the traffic on Broadway," Foresteire said. "Our houses are almost one on top of the other. This is something you can point to. I live in Everett, and that's my team. That means a lot to the community."
Just inside the entrance to Everett High School, a building that will be abandoned by the next school year, photographs of team after team after team line the hallway wall. Starting in 1894 -- and including the 1914 undefeated national championship team -- DiBiaso describes the legacy he has become part of during his tenure at the school.
He knew what he was getting into, his father having been athletic director at the school for more than two decades, and his first taste of Everett's ire came in his second year as coach when, after three straight losses, he returned one night to a front yard strewn with garbage.
That's the reason for the impatience now, even with a Super Bowl win just three years ago. Two seasons without one is unbearable in Everett.
Because, as one coach put it during practice the day before the Super Bowl, "This is all this town has."
"All I can think about is two years ago, coming back home on that ride," Nascimento said during the bus ride. "It was terrible. Everyone came in thinking we were going to win that game and we took them too lightly. We're in the same position. They've got a terrible record, but that team is a great team, no matter what. We can't take them lightly like we did before. My emotions are everywhere. I just can't wait for this game."
No one could.
It was one morning the Everett football players didn't have to think about anything else. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else in their lives -- not work or family or college, not even the phone call from a Boston College recruiter asking about star running back Isaac Johnson , a call DiBiaso had crowed over at the team dinner at the Hilltop Steakhouse the night before -- nothing mattered as Brockton loomed.
"You're going to hit them first, like they've never been hit before," DiBiaso said, in the cramped and overheated locker room as gametime arrived.
"When we take the lead, we're going to play smart because we know everything they do. When they try to hit us back, we're going to hit them harder. Then, they're going to start to get tired and they're going to quit. They're going to give up. We are not going back to Everett without the trophy.
"You take what's yours. You take it back."
They did. They gave only slightly on the 21-0 lead built with 8:15 to play in the second quarter. And, though they gave enough to send beads of sweat dripping off DiBiaso's face in an impassioned and emphatic halftime speech that excoriated everyone in the room, from his quarterback, J.R. Suozzo, to his "stinko" offensive linemen, before leaving them with one final line: "You have to want it more than them."
His calm had returned, his smile even, by the time he saw his seniors lifting that orange bucket of Gatorade with four minutes left to play in the final quarter. He sidestepped the liquid, and began his muted celebration. He got to watch the joy that spilled out of Walter Fallas and Robert Nazzaro and Joe Forte and Nascimento, the senior captains who had come to him before the season vowing not to leave Everett without the championship that had eluded them for two years.
And then DiBiaso, minutes after his championship and his dousing and his sixth trophy, climbed into a police car. His Super Bowl was over, but his championship quest was far from done. He had a flight to take. There were more games to be won.
Amalie Benjamin can be reached at abenjamin@globe.com. 
