By Bob Marra
When you discover a passion for football at age 7 and play competitively for fourteen consecutive years, it’s not easy to stow away the helmet and cleats and give up the game—even after an attempt at college ball doesn’t turn out the way you might have hoped.
For Revere’s Calvin Boudreau, the semi-professional East Coast Football League appeases his competitive gridiron craving. Boudreau, who quarterbacked Revere High’s historic 10-1 football season in 2019, has found a comfortable spot behind center for the Mill City (Lowell) Eagles, currently unbeaten (7-0) and sitting atop the ECFL East Conference.
Boudreau was the League’s Rookie of the Year in 2023 and now is racking up record-breaking statistics in his second year at the Eagle’s helm.
“He’s already broken the league record with 21 touchdown passes this year—and he has three games to go,” said Eagles General Manager Zach Swale. Going into an August 10 game against Connecticut’s Valley Generals, Boudreau leads the league with 1458 passing yards 79 completions in 110 attempts.
It’s been a rocky few years since the glory of his junior year at Revere High, when the Patriots advanced to the MIAA Division 4 North finals and fell just short of the Super Bowl while racking up 10 wins in the school’s most successful season.
Boudreau said his memories of 2019 “are too many to count. That team had talent at every position, we were well-coached, and got along like I’ve never seen a group of guys get along.” While he savors every win, he specifically recalls a nail-biter at 5-time Northeast Conference champion Marblehead and topping off the season with a Thanksgiving Day win at Winthrop.
He and his teammates, many who started out together on the Pop Warner “E” team ten years earlier, looked forward to one last ride as seniors, but the dastardly Covid 19 deprived them of a normal season in the fall of 2020. Instead, Revere played a shortened four-game schedule in May of 2021, finishing 3-1. “We made the most out of that four-game season, but I felt we could have done something special with a full year,” he said.
After high school, Boudreau enrolled at Curry College, looking forward to a new adventure on the collegiate level. Though he played his freshman year at Curry, overall, “…my time at Curry was not a great experience for me. Football didn’t pan out and I was struggling to find a career path,” he said.
His absence from the Curry football roster in 2022, however, caught the eye of Mill
City’s GM Swale. “I recruit players, and am somewhat fanatical about it,” Swale said with a laugh. “I keep a spreadsheet of players within a 30-mile radius of Lowell and saw that Calvin was not at Curry for a sophomore season. I went to see him play a flag football game and right away noticed his talent.”
The 6’1, 175-lb Boudreau stepped into the starting role in the third game of the Eagles’ 2023 season and quickly sparked the offense. A strong-armed right-handed slinger who is a threat to run every time he feels defensive pressure, he likens his game to Aaron Rodgers. “I’ve always tried to see the game the way a Tom Brady sees it, but Rodgers is the style I emulate, the way he can throw on the run, take off when needed, and make off-balance throws.”
His style is working out just fine in the talented ECFL. The league, for players aged 18 and older, features rosters filled with former college players and high school standouts. It bills itself as the country’s largest amateur football league with teams throughout New England. Calvin Boudreau has quickly established himself as one of the League’s premier players.
So, football has remained a major part of Calvin’s life after high school. Now, he balances a fulltime job with the Revere DPW with his Mill City quarterback duties, and he stays involved in sports as an official for Revere Parks and Recreation basketball and softball leagues. Last year he was an assistant coach for Malden Catholic football and Pioneer charter school (Everett) basketball.
It caps a progression that started his freshman year in high school. “I was fortunate enough that my coaches believed in a 5’3″ 115-pound freshman to go out there and quarterback that team at the start of my Revere High career. We had a down year, and then the following year I broke my collarbone and missed my sophomore season. Then, we had that great 2019 season,” Calvin said.
The 2020 Covid year and the 2021 detour at Curry are all part of his football story. “Football is indeed my favorite sport,” Calvin said. “There’s something about it. A group of guys all with different roles with one goal in mind, working as a cohesive unit to win. And football teaches so many life lessons. In my opinion it is and always will be the perfect sport.”
It’s all a continuing sports story for the athletic Boudreau, who played baseball, basketball and football since he was a pre-schooler, and a continuing story in the Boudreau household now that younger brother Domenic (RHS 2023, Salem State 2027) joins him on the basketball court .
He speaks fondly of those who influenced his sports life, including his parents Don and Stacie and coaches like Eddie Sullivan, Paul Norton, and John Leone. “They helped me grow as a person as much as an athlete,” he said.
The day will come when Calvin’s not throwing footballs for the Mill City Eagles, but he won’t be off the football field altogether. He sees himself as a coach in the years to come. “If I could teach a younger kid about the game of football, I would relay to them that success is not given it’s earned. You can’t get better if you don’t work at it. You can never be complacent.” ?
And any kid with Calvin Boudreau’s passion for the game will do well to achieve all that Calvin has achieved, and continues to achieve, both on the football field and in life itself.
