BEVERLY  —  When the Endicott Gulls football team begins its quest for a Division 3 national championship Saturday at noon against No. 11/13 Cortland State, look for a couple of childhood buddies and former Lynnfield High classmates to be playing key roles. 

The game may be history-making for the Gulls, as a victory would be the program’s first NCAA conquest in the history of Endicott football since the team was formed 20 years ago in 2003.

One will be doing it on the field. The other will be doing it on the sidelines.

As he has all year, senior starting quarterback Clay Marengi will be under center taking snaps. All he’s done is help lead the Gulls (9-1) to their third straight Commonwealth Coast Conference championship, a program-best No. 14 D3 national ranking, and automatic berth in the NCAA tournament.

Bryan Mallett will be doing it on the sidelines behind a lens. The official team videographer, he’s been a fixture around campus for several years. A digital media major, he began doing his thing at Endicott at the urging of Marengi.

“Clay told me I needed to come to his games,” Mallett said. “He told me this is how you start, how you get a foot in the door, and I agreed with him and did a couple of their home games. The videos were horrible, but I got close to a lot of the guys and it was just a good time. People were loving what I did and they had a really good season, so I was having a blast.” 

He liked what he saw, so he applied to Endicott. It was during his junior year that Mallet started thinking about carving out a career.

“I really started to feel like I could do this for a living,” he said. “That’s when I really started to get busy.”

Mallet’s love affair with film began his freshman year of high school when his family was going on vacation and his mother, Julie, the director of Lynnfield Rec, bought him a GoPro underwater camera for Christmas. 

“I started messing around with it in the pool, at the beach, parasailing, and made a video,” he said. “I said, ‘Wow, this is kind of cool.’”

Since the start of the fall season, Mallett estimates he’s shot more than a game a day. While he’s been pressed into service in almost every sport, his favorite sport to shoot is – you guessed it – football.

He is currently interning as a video editor at TorchPro, a sports media network churning out MLB, NBA and NHL player videos, podcasts and newsletters.

Mallett said the highlight of his experience with TorchPro was the video he made for company co-founder Joe Pavelski, who won a Stanley Cup with the Dallas Stars in 2020.

“He posted that on his Instagram and the Dallas Stars Instagram, so that was really cool to have my video on the Dallas Stars’ social media,” Mallett said. “It was a moment when I thought this was just really cool.”

Mallett said he is excited about the challenge Saturday’s game day will bring.

“I feel like this moment was meant to be for both Clay and me because we’ve worked so hard behind the scenes,” he said. “Having the opportunity to be followed and depended on, for us, is a real privilege and something we don’t take lightly for each of our jobs. It’s really cool to see our plan work out this way. Since our junior years, we’ve been this kind of duo in terms of his abilities on the field and mine behind the scenes. It’s just cool to see both of us improve over the last six years to now. Cortland is a really good team, but Endicott is, too, so I’m excited for the challenge ahead.”

Mallett also does paid freelancer work for several area high schools, including Lynnfield, Newburyport, Pingree, as well as Boston College hockey this winter. 

Win or lose Saturday, Mallett’s work isn’t done. After the game, he’ll be jumping in his car and heading south to Scituate to video the final of the MIAA Division 4 boys soccer championship game between Lynnfield and Monomoy. 

He’ll be where he’s been all fall, along the sidelines, videotaping yet another Pioneers team chasing a state title. And let there be no doubts about it; at heart, he’ll be rooting for the hometown team.

“I try to prioritize Lynnfield because that’s my town,” he said. “I’ll always be a Pioneer.”