SEAN STELLATO: What a great question. Well I was born and bred in Salem, Massachusetts. I played highschool football there and had a very successful career there. Actually, the spinoff from my book, No Backing Down, came from my Junior football season which had a very diverse underdog team, a legendary coach that I always call a first generation Bill Belichick. As the team was projected to not win a game they found themselves undefeated playing another undefeated team. A major teacher strike shut down the school system – we ended up playing in front of 12,000 people and I had my career game on National Television and that was kind of my coming out party. After graduating Salem, I had the opportunity to go to a Boarding School for a year called the Gunnery Prep School. I’m fully indebted to them because they taught me the value of education. They gave me the opportunity as it was such a political spinoff with the team after the Junior year, because of the coach being fired, that all of the kids who were going to be seniors were pretty much in harms way. The new person that they hired didn’t care. People were looking out for themselves and not for the kids. So a lot of the minority kids who had single parents, didn’t have a father figure to look out for them and it ultimately killed their careers. I was fortunate and was the Lone Ranger that was able to fly from the nest and get an opportunity – a true blessing was Gunnery Prep School – they gave me a full scholarship which was $33,000 to go there! I mean there were 8 of us together in a 3-bedroom house where I grew up in Witch Craft Heights in Salem. My mom was a stay at home mom and my parents didn’t have a college degree. They gave me that blessing and opportunity and I was on the basketball and football team there. I went onto Marist College – my mother doesn’t fly so I gave the Heisman to them. I did re-
ceive denial letters from a couple of schools and I still do read them a couple of times a year because if I let rejection define me, I wouldn’t have been doing what I am doing. I played Division I basketball and football there which, is 45 mins north of the city on the Hudson. It was a beautiful campus and had a successful career there. My junior and senior years there I was the leading wide receiver for the 2000-2001 season. I finished there 9 straight semesters on the Dean’s List. The beauty of an education and just remembering the first time that I had been on an airplane to play basketball at Pepperdine – an amazing journey through college. But we played down in Florida after 9/11 about 10 days after that and I got scouted by an Arena Football coach and he ended up following up with me after the season and I had the opportunity to play 2 years professionally for the Arena Football League for 2002 and 2003. One of my head coaches for one of my teams is now the head coach at Purdue and he beat Ohio State this year. You know, I saw the movie Jerry McGuire back in 1996 in high school and I fell in love with the movie. I thought about how cool it would be. I mean, as a football player, you think that you’re immortal and that you can play forever and I had to face that reality. I could have played in 2004 and I said, “I’m going to go hard on this sports agent thing.” I had 2 agents that I had hired and then I fired. I felt that there was this gap between how I wanted to represent players and the lack of transpar ency that I was fed when I played. I felt that I wanted to reshuffle this industry and threw my hat in the ring and got licensed late 2005. I didn’t know what I was doing and I spent a few years banging around on my own for a few Continue reading Athleisure Mag's February cover story, All Together Now on page pg 148
