Longtime Marlborough High football coach Sean Mahoney passes away
· Yahoo Sports
Seated next to his grandson on the gridiron on Nov. 27, 2025, Sean Mahoney was all smiles.
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After being wheeled out to the 50-yard line of the Morgan Bowl by his trusted confidant, Jeff Rudzinsky, Mahoney, seated in a wheelchair, joined his grandson, Sheamus, for the opening coin toss of a Thanksgiving Day football tussle between Marlborough High and Hudson High.
Nearly seven months later, Mahoney, the longtime Marlborough High football coach, lost his battle with Multiple System Atrophy (MSA), a rare and aggressive neurodegenerative disease.
Mahoney died on June 12. He was 63 years old. He is survived by his wife, Nikki, three children, Dan, James and Michaella, and two grandkids, Charlie and Sheamus. Information on funeral services is expected to be announced shortly.
“Rest easy papa,” wrote Sheamus Mahoney on his Instagram story Friday morning with an old picture of him pulling a wagon full of hay with his grandfather seated on top.
“Sean was a special guy,” said Rudzinsky, the former Marlborough High athletic director. “He was that friend that someone may not see for a long time, but when they did meet up, it was as if they never skipped a beat. He will be missed for his quick wit and sense of humor but most because he always thought of others first and made others feel good.”
Sean Mahoney had a standout football and baseball career at Worcester State before embarking on a Hall of Fame career coaching high school football.
Mahoney started his coaching journey with the Shrewsbury High football team in 1994 and then spent six seasons as the head coach at Assumption University. The longtime Marlborough resident took over as head football coach at Marlborough High in 2004 — just a few years before his grandson, Sheamus, was born.
Across 20 seasons on the Panthers’ sideline, Mahoney won 154 games. He was named the MIAA 2020-21 Football Coach of the Year and was inducted into the Massachusetts High School Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2024.
“He brought stability to the football program but then, being in the building, he was somebody the kids always knew they could talk to about anything,” Rudzinsky told the T&G last fall. “He was just that kind of person who had an open-door policy and he did the right thing for the kids. That’s the legacy that he’ll gladly leave.”
Mahoney, who also taught history at Marlborough High, was inducted into the Worcester State University Hall of Fame in 2018 alongside his daughter, Michaella.
A former standout softball pitcher at Worcester State, Michaella Mahoney-DaSilva teaches in Marlborough and coaches field hockey and softball at Marlborough High.
Her dad previously coached girls’ basketball (among other sports) and, for a time, some of Marlborough’s female athletes played for a Mahoney across all three seasons.
“The kids would joke, ‘You sound just like Mahoney,’” Michaella told the T&G last fall. “I would say, ‘I am a Mahoney.’ They got a lot of the same metaphors and motivational quotes from both of us.”
During the middle of the 2024 high school football season, Sean Mahoney started to experience symptoms that made it hard for him to get out of bed. He thought he had a bad back. It was worse than that. He was diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease with no cure.
Mahoney’s last win as the Marlborough football coach came on Oct. 12, 2024, a 27-14 victory over Fitchburg at Kelleher Field.
“In my eyes, (Sean) is Marlborough football,” current Marlborough football coach Ken Stukonis told the T&G last fall. Stukonis knew Mahoney for 25 years and served as his assistant coach for four seasons. “One thing about Sean, if you know him, he’s a solid person. He just does everything the right way, and that’s what he did with the program, and that’s why they had the success they had the last 20 years.”
Michaella Mahoney-DaSilva and her son, Sheamus, moved from Derry, N.H., back to Marlborough nearly a decade ago. Having dad and “papa” nearby helped the transition.
“My dad used to rock Sheamus to sleep humming fight songs,” Michaella told the T&G last year. “I'm never going to be able to hear a marching band drum and not think of my dad.”
And seven months before he passed, Sean Mahoney got to share one final football memory with his grandson and family on Thanksgiving.
“I’m very fortunate to have the opportunity to be a part of Sheamus’ last game,” Mahoney wrote, along with his wife, Nikki, in an email to the T&G last fall.
“He’s the guy that taught me everything I know,” Sheamus Mahoney said. “It’s an honor.”
—Contact Tommy Cassell at [email protected]. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @tommycassell44.
This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Sean Mahoney, longtime Marlborough High football coach, dies at age 63