The Finelli Formula

Throw a pencil in the corner, make it a race to get it first and will dive and scrap for it, he says.

You can bet the former Swampscott cross country coach would also have a plan.

And if there’s was book on pencil races he would have read it and thought about it.

He would have trained, too.

Now, Finelli will take his formula for building a track program to St. Mary’s in Lynn after his resignation in Swampscott over differences with the school administration.

Finelli likes competition and winning.

It’s disappointing to walk away, he says, but he feels good about the program.

One of the best parts of his coaching experience in Swampscott was the team building that culminated in a large squad whose members were self-motivated and motivated by each other, he says.

His foundation for success relied on the athletes, fellow coaches and parents.

The Finelli formula draws on the best qualities from coaches he had in high school and college.

His coach at Revere High was Frank Gallagher, a legendary coach who emphasized hard work.

His coach at Brandeis, Norm Levine, was a terrific recruiter.

As a graduate student, he worked as an assistant coach at Case Western under a coach, Bill Sudeck, who entrusted his staff with lots of coaching responsibilities.

At Swampscott High, Finelli worked hand-in-hand with assistant coach Joe Tenney and got help from Howard Rothblatt.

Finelli’s wife, Sandra, cooked hundreds of pancakes each week for the team’s Sunday morning get togethers at the Finelli home, in Swampscott.

Parents later took over the breakfasts and bolstered the program with enthusiasm.

A team grows and peaks each season and builds on last year's foundation, Finelli said.

Finelli's tenure at Swampscott started with hustle — recruiting.

He had fewer than four boys and three girls on the team to start the season in 2002.

He asked for and got a list of telephone numbers and called almost all the school's 770 kids and ended up with 12 boys and 13 girls on the team that first year.

Each year the team got larger.

“I’ll take anyone who has a pulse,” Finelli said.

Last fall he had 130 runners.

Parent remembers driving ahead of the team to a meet at Gloucester two year ago.

King was standing next to the Gloucester coach when Swampscott’s two buses pulled in to the school.

“The coach almost dropped to the ground when I told him that, 'Yes, they all get to run,'” King said.

If the kids go to practice and complete their work they run at meets, Finelli said.

“I treat the first and the last kid the same,” he said.

By treating the kids right, they will push themselves and bump up against that point where they have to draw on inner resources.

“You want to build them, not break them down,” he said.

A milestone in program building came with his 2006 squad.

It got to the point where if he told runners to run seven miles they would run eight; to run eight they would run nine.

Andrew Keeter was a member of that team. 

Now a student at Springfield College, he remembers Finelli as a player’s coach who never got down on a runner who ran a bad race.

“You could trust him,” he said. Toward the end of the season they would run 12 miles some days.

Keeter’s twin brother, James, a student the University of Pittsburgh, said the 2006 season ended with the all-state competition on a grueling uphill course in western Massachusetts. A mountain, really.

The teammates were close-knit and had run together since middle school.

 In the back of their mind, they really wanted to win for Finelli because they knew how hard he had worked to build the program.

“We ran a crazy amount every day,” James said. 

The team won the all-state meet but not without drama. There was a 20-minute wait while the results were compiled.

When the team found out they had won, it was the happiest he had ever seen Finelli, James said.

Finelli says his most gratifying moment as a coach was seeing a dead last runner who couldn’t finish a course as a freshman, turn himself into a middle of the pack runner,

He transformed himself over the summer by hard work.

“He has transformed his life,” Finelli said. “That’s the great part of coaching.”

Now, Finelli is excited about starting a new program at St.Mary’s.

He has already asked the school for a list of telephone numbers.

He’ll be calling the students, building a team.