Mike Perry, a four-year starter for the Westfield State basketball teams during the mid-1970s, has been a highly successful high school coach for the past 37 years.

The Bridgewater, Mass., native has guided Cardinal Spellman High School in Brockton to state championships in two sports – boys’ basketball and girls’ soccer – and amassed more than 760 coaching victories.
 
During his playing days at Westfield State, Perry was a steady and dependable point guard and team captain who committed very few turnovers and distributed the ball to his high-scoring teammates. The Owls posted an aggregate record of 62-36 during the floor general’s four years.
 
Perry has been coaching nearly year round at Cardinal Spellman since graduating from Westfield State in 1976 with a physical education degree. And he has no plans to stop coaching despite retiring as a middle school teacher in the Bridgewater-Raynham school district last year.
 
The hard-working mentor begins his 34^th year as boys’ basketball head coach. He has compiled 458 victories, an average of nearly 14 wins per season. Cardinal Spellman captured the state championship in 1984 and has advanced to the South Section finals seven times, including three consecutive years (1999-2001). His teams have won three South Section championships and six Central Catholic League titles.
 
Perry has been just as successful coaching girls’ soccer. He has been the head coach since the Cardinal Spellman girls’ soccer program began 25 years ago, and he was also the JV coach when the program first started. Perry has led the soccer program to more than 300 victories, including a state championship in 2009 and a state runner-up finish in 2006. Cardinal Spellman has claimed eight Central Catholic League titles, two South Section titles, and two Eastern Mass. championships.
 
In the two sports combined, Perry has been a four-time MIAA coach of the year and a three-time Boston Globe coach of the year. He served as an assistant baseball coach at Cardinal Spellman for 20 years, 1977-1996, and prior to becoming the basketball head coach he was the JV coach from 1977-1979. Furthermore, he was a junior high school softball coach at Bridgewater-Raynham during his last six years as a middle school teacher. In addition to coaching the boys’ basketball and girls’ soccer teams, Perry is now the JV coach for the Cardinal Spellman softball team.
 
“When you coach for a long time, you see a lot of kids and touch a lot of people. It’s nice,” said Perry.
 
Perry was inducted into the Cardinal Spellman High School Hall of Fame in 2005. He was named the 1972 Male Athlete of the Year at Bridgewater-Raynham High School, where he was a three-sport standout in basketball, cross country and golf.
 
The Perry family has close ties to the Westfield State community, as his brothers Steve (’77) and Greg (’89) and sister Beth (’87) are all Westfield graduates. Steve was a four-year starter in the outfield for the Owls’ NCAA Tournament baseball teams of the 1970s. Greg, who is the long-time coach of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy men’s soccer team, starred in men’s soccer for the Owls in the late 1980s. 
 
Perry resides in North Easton with his wife, Pam, a 1976 Westfield State graduate. They have four children: Megan (28), Justin (26), Danny (22), a 2012 Westfield State graduate, and Alyssa (18).