Years ago, when he was the head football coach at Everett High School, John DiBiaso had a late-night tradition.
After a night out with his wife on a Friday or Saturday, DiBiaso would drive over to Sullivan Station in Charlestown, around midnight, to buy a copy of the next day’s Boston Herald.
He didn’t want to wait until morning to read what the preeminent authority on Massachusetts high school sports had written.
“I’d go in and pick it up with my wife,” DiBiaso recalled. “We’d be out to dinner or something, and we’d go pick it up to be the first one to see it — what he was writing about, the stories that were in there. It was just something special.”
“He” was Danny Ventura — or, as he was better known to generations of student-athletes, coaches, parents and administrators, Danny V.
Over his 40 years in the industry and 35 at the Herald, Ventura established himself as the humble titan of the Eastern Mass. high school sports scene. Through his tireless work ethic, even-handed approach to coverage and bottomless well of institutional knowledge, he became — and, for decades, remained — the go-to resource for scores, stats, stars and storylines, even to big-name coaches like DiBiaso.
“Danny has helped so many people promote high school sports over the years,” said DiBiaso, winner of 373 games and 16 Super Bowls across stints at St. Patrick’s, Weston, Everett and Catholic Memorial. “He’s legendary, and he’s done such a great job really keeping high school sports at the forefront. At the Herald, he elevated their coverage to a level where every Saturday or Sunday, people were running out to buy the Herald to see who was on the back page of the Herald for high school sports. He just did an incredible job.”
Now, that run is over. Ventura, 65, announced his retirement in July. When the high school football season kicks off next month, he’ll be following along as a fan from Florida, where he now plans to spend most of his time.
The response to Ventura’s announcement underscored his impact. Every coach, former colleague and state official reached by the Herald for this story spoke about him in reverent terms.
One compared him to an Egyptian king. Another used the word “guru.” In DiBiaso’s eyes, he’s “the godfather of high school sports in Massachusetts.”
“If there was a Mount Rushmore of people who cover high school or run ships that cover high schools, he would have all of the busts,” former Herald columnist Karen Guregian said. “It would just be him. His face would be on all of the sculptures.”
This outpouring of praise “floored” Ventura, who said he “never got in this business to get congratulatory messages.”
“People have said such nice things about me, and to me, all I wanted was just to give an honest day’s work,” Ventura said. “And I feel like I did that. I owed that to the Herald, and all I wanted to do was make sure that when I left there, I could feel good that I gave them an honest day’s work.”
‘Just the passion’
Raised in Brighton, Ventura began his journalism career at the Dedham Transcript in 1986, then joined the Herald’s sports department in September 1990. Initially a part-timer, he quickly became a staple on the Herald’s high school coverage, working first under high school sports editor Bob Holmes and later under Stephanie Tunnera and Jim Clark.
In 2006, Ventura succeeded Clark in that role and held it for nearly two decades, while continuing to report on a wide range of high school sports. Five different Mass. state coaches associations (football, baseball, basketball, wrestling and swimming) have presented him with awards for his coverage.
“(I remember) just the passion,” said Clark, who worked with Ventura for 21 years and now serves as the director of communications for the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association (MIAA). “Just the fact that he recognizes that the student-athletes are the most important part of any coverage we have. … He was very thorough, very knowledgeable, always approached his job very professionally. And the institutional knowledge — 30-plus years, or however long he’s been doing that — just knowing the people and knowing who the players are and just remembering the student-athletes from 25 years ago and their stories and everything. You just can’t replace that kind of experience and institutional knowledge.”
Ventura’s list of contacts was endless. People at all levels of high school athletics trusted him with information because they respected his professionalism and knew he’d present it fairly.
“Whether any coach, any player, anyone had a question, he was kind of an encyclopedia,” said Brendan Connelly, who first met Ventura as a teenager and has covered school sports for the Herald since 2014. “… He knew when the biggest stories were happening. He just knew what was going on. You could ask him any question, and the guy knew. He was that tuned in, that dialed in. It’s unbelievable.”
“People in the high school community just worshipped him because of the care he took in covering high school sports and trying to make sure that he had something on every high school and every game was accounted for in some fashion … to make sure everybody got in somehow,” Guregian said. “He was the master at it, and I think the high school community as a whole appreciated the care Danny took in covering everyone.”
In a statement to the Herald, MIAA executive director Bob Baldwin said Ventura “epitomizes what is right in the connection between school sports and professional journalism.”
“High school sports will not be the same without him and is better today because of him,” Baldwin said. “… Danny will be missed and will serve as a model of how it should be done.”
A football fixture
Nowhere were Ventura’s contributions more visible than in the Herald’s high school football coverage, which he spearheaded from the early 1990s until his retirement. His Sweet 16 power rankings, which debuted in 1993, and Thursday Pickorama both were appointment reading for players and coaches.
“The memories I had were always of his Pickorama,” said Brian St. Pierre, the former star quarterback and current head coach at St. John’s Prep. “That was always, you were waiting until the end of the week to see what Danny V said about the game. It either worked in your favor if he picked against you and you used it as fuel, or he picked you and you were the favorite and you had the bullseye on you. But he was already really well-informed, so you knew when he made those picks, he had a pretty good record doing it.”
(That he did. In his final Thanksgiving Pickorama last November, Ventura went 15-2.)
One hundred twenty-six different schools — from Abington to Xaverian — won Eastern Mass. or state Super Bowls during Ventura’s time with the Herald, including 51 different winners since the state-wide championship model was adopted in 2013. The roster of future NFL players he covered stretches from Matt and Tim Hasselbeck in the early ’90s, through the likes of Lofa Tatupu, Anthony Sherman and Jordan Todman in the 2000s, and up to current pros like Maurice Hurst, Isaiah Likely, Lewis Cine and Mike Sainristil.
Ventura also chronicled the formative years of many of the area’s top coaches. Half of the teams that cracked his season-ending Sweet 16 for 2024 were led by head coaches who played for their respective alma maters during Ventura’s Herald tenure: St. Pierre, Doug Kopsco (Needham), Chris Arouca (Marshfield), Paul Zukauskas (BC High), Mark Mortarelli (Natick), John Sexton (Central Catholic), Ryan Dugan (Methuen) and Jesse Davis (Wellesley).
“There are coaches now that are the best coaches in their respective sports in Massachusetts who were covered by Danny when they were players,” former Herald high schools reporter Matt Feld said. “There are guys whose coaches’ fathers were covered by Danny when they were coaches. Danny just covered and intertwined so many generations of the greatest athletes and the greatest coaches in Massachusetts that there is simply no way to replace him. … It’s impossible to have the stature and the reputation that Danny has.”
“To do what he did as long as he did at the level he did it, I think speaks volumes to him as a professional,” added St. Pierre, who starred at Boston College and had a long career as an NFL backup. “But I think it was just the human, too. He cared. He loved sports. He loved the high school athletic scene. God knows how many hours he put into it, but all for the benefit of the young kids, which is the best part about it. There’s an unselfishness to that, and there’s a lot of appreciation that should go to that.”
St. Pierre was involved in a game that, nearly 30 years later, remains etched in Ventura’s mind as the greatest he ever covered. He can rattle off from memory every detail, including player 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 past rival Xaverian on Thanksgiving 1997, a matchup so highly anticipated that the Herald began previewing it in August.
“It’s what, 28 years ago? I still remember everything about the game. I can’t forget that,” Ventura said. “I might forget my name on a daily basis, but I can remember everything that happened in that game. I mean, the buildup was amazing.”
There’s that institutional knowledge again. Those who know Ventura invariably list it as one of the traits that set him apart. Another: his loyalty.
“Danny, to me, is the pharaoh of high school sports,” Feld said. “I don’t know how else to better describe him. Sort of this ultimate leader in the industry and pioneer in the industry in the area that everyone admires and looks up to as a resource, but more importantly, in my opinion, as a confidant and a friend. The best thing that I can say, the No. 1 trademark about Danny, is just how loyal he is — to his staff, to his writers and to the student-athletes across Eastern Mass. — and has been all this time since he started. His priority has always been to see to it that the kids can get the best coverage that we’re able to provide from them, and he honestly didn’t expect anything less.”
Connelly called Ventura “one of the ambassadors for high school sports across the country.”
“There’s no one who is more loyal and hard-working than Danny V,” he said. “Whether it’s to his company, to the people he knows, to anyone he’s associated with, he is always there for anybody, and he’s always there to help build you up. And when it comes to sports in general, there’s nobody who works harder at his craft than Danny V.”
The scope of Ventura’s work wasn’t strictly limited to scholastic sports, either. He also covered seven Super 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 almost like a Swiss Army knife for so many years for the Herald,” Feld said. “… There are so many people out there who are too good for high school sports, and Danny, despite the fact that he covered Celtics NBA Finals, Patriots Super Bowls, whatever it might be, never thought he was too good for it. And I think now, you just don’t find that.”
Stepping away
Ventura wanted to make clear to readers that his retirement was voluntary. He was not pushed out, not the victim of any downsizing or layoffs. In fact, he said, his bosses tried to convince him to stay.
“It 100% was my decision, and it didn’t happen overnight,” he explained. “… I’ve thought about it for a couple of years, and I think one of the reasons I actually stayed as long as I did was because of the love I had for the Herald. I love the paper. I love the people I worked with. Just, to me, I’m 65. I’ve been in the business for 40 years. I’ve been at the Herald for 35. It just seemed like a nice round number at this point.
“The one thing that I always said was I would never bail out on them during the athletic/academic school year. … So I always said if I was going to do this, it’s got to be early in the summer, and it was the Monday after the Fourth of July.”
Ventura’s final byline in the Herald was on July 10. But he hasn’t disappeared from the high school landscape — and doesn’t intend to.
He’s continued to tweet and retweet about 7-on-7 football, college commitments and other high school happenings on his @BostonHeraldHS X account, a handle he says he’ll eventually change “out of respect for (his) replacement.” He’ll “absolutely” remain invested in the teams, players and coaches he spent more than half of his life covering.
“People have asked me, and I’ve said just because I’m not working there, I’m not dying,” Ventura said. “I’ll still follow everything. I’ll still follow everyone. I’ll still call coaches to harass them.”
He won’t be the same omnipresent figure, however. And his exit leaves a hole that will never be filled.
“I don’t know if there will ever be anybody like him again,” DiBiaso said. “I hate to say it, but he’s like one of a dying breed.”
“He was the guru of high school athletics in Mass., there’s no doubt,” St. Pierre said. “And anybody that reached that kind of stature, when they leave, there’s a huge void. But he’s deserved it. He’s done it for a long time, so he deserves to go off the way he wants to.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
