by:  Thomas Mespelli and Declan Gardner

Coach Tortora is the coach of the Westborough Freshman football team. He also coaches jv basketball and freshman baseball. He started his coaching career in 1974 at Westborough High School.  Between now and then he spent ten years coaching at Valley Technical High School.  Coach Tortora was very successful at Valley Tech, where he won a super bowl coaching football.  He has also coached girls’ track, where he transformed a terrible team into a contender for the championship in only 3 years.

He was inspired to be a coach when he was growing up because he always had great coaches. The coaches were his main role models as a young adult. Coach Tortora wanted to give back into the community what he had taken out of it, and a great way to do this was to coach.  Something Coach Tortora continues to emphasize throughout coaching, is that education is most important. No matter what, education will always benefit you most.

Coach Tortora grew up in Westborough and attended Westborough High School. Here at Westborough High School he was an acceptable student and outstanding on the sports field, so like many, education wasn’t as high a priority as sports. Mr. Tortora played hockey, baseball, basketball, football and track.  Coach Tortora was the last person to come out of WHS as a four sport varsity athlete. During the fall, Coach Tortora played football, during the winter he would play hockey, and during the spring he played baseball and track. Coach T would never practice for baseball and track, he would only attend the games.  After high school Coach Tortora attended Black Hills College in South Dakota and played football  for one year. After that he went to Nichols College and he also played football there. He attended college for business.

In life, CoachTortora was very successful in business. He spent some of his life as the vice president for marketing in a food company, and currently runs a security company. One of Coach Tortora’s biggest accomplishments was raising a family. He has been happily married for 33 years, and has 3 children. All of whom are successful.  Surprisingly none of Mr. Tortora’s children played many sports, despite his athleticism as a kid.  He does believe, “sports should be voluntary”.

Coach Tortora continues to not only build great teams, but to also teach life lessons in the process. “Sports is a lot like life. In life you have many ups and downs, and it’s about how you rebound from them.” He teaches teamwork, dedication, and determination. Freshman football Coach Tortora  is now the role model coach that he himself had growing up.