Podcast: North Andover (Mass.) coach Steve Zella on hard work

North Andover (Mass.) High School head coach Steve Zella was this week's guest on the "Chasing The Goal" podcast.

On this week’s episode of New England Lacrosse Journal’s “Chasing The Goal” podcast, hosts Kyle Devitte and Jack Piatelli talk with North Andover (Mass.) High School head coach Steve Zella.

Zella is a native of Weymouth, Mass., and graduated from Weymouth High School in 1995. He was a three-sport varsity athlete, competing in football, track and lacrosse.

Zella went on to attend Springfield College for his undergrad degree and, later, the University of Hartford as a graduate student, where he earned a Master’s degree in education.

At Springfield, Zella was a three-year starter on the lacrosse team and, in 1999, he participated in the NEILA All-Star game. He would go on to coach at Brookline (Mass.) High School before becoming the coach at North Andover.

This season, the Scarlet Knights went 6-13 playing a very competitive schedule with games against teams like Acton-Boxborough, Xaverian and Pinkerton Academy (N.H.).

Watch the full podcast below on YouTube. It’s also available on all major podcast platforms. If you enjoy it, please leave a rating and a review. Watch more episodes on the Chasing the Goal podcast channel.

Here are some excerpts from the podcast.

Kyle Devitte: Coach, how would you describe your coaching style at North Andover, and how it’s kind of evolved over the years to what it is now? 

Steve Zella: Well, my coaching style is … we work hard. We stay disciplined. It’s definitely more of a command-style coaching. We game-plan for every single team that we play. Sometimes we do things differently. They’re expected to work hard. They’re expected to compete at a high level. They are expected to play with energy, be good teammates and be ready to compete against anyone.

The goal when I got there was to win a state title. So my coaching style is more intense, I would say, than laid back. I really try to squeeze everything I can out of our players, and I have demand expectations from them. It’s all about execution — we run plays and defenses over and over again until they’re damn near perfect; it gets repetitive, but when you’re in the game, and this is a situation where you need a goal or you need to stop or you need to clear the ball or you need to make a play … they’re ready for that.

Jack Piatelli: One thing I’d like to mention is that you grew up in Weymouth and you played for another legend, Tony Manzelli, who was another intense guy. What are some of the takeaways you learned (from him) and use today as a coach?

Steve Zella: That you just have to grind for everything. Our practices were three hours long, and we would have to put our cleats on our shoulders and run two miles to the field. He would run us for three hours. But more or less what it was like with Coach Manzelli was life lessons, doing everything full speed, learning how to act on and off the field.

I really don’t think kids would last to practice these days on his lacrosse field. I mean, times have changed a lot — three-hour practice, wouldn’t get home till seven, grind for everything. Everything that I’m made up of now is from him, and it’s built off of hard work, blue-collar, brown paper bag lunch, put your hard hat on and work.

And, basically, I credit him for everything because I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him. He really took me and my younger brother, Jeff, under his wing. We had our father pass away when we were 15 and 13. So, Coach Manzelli was really like my father.

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