At Salve Regina University in Newport, a season of quiet grief turned into a show of unity this fall when the football team showed up at the tennis team's home opener to cheer, clap, and chant for teammates who had spent months mourning their own coach. The gesture came months after the Seahawks football program lost one of its own, 21-year-old offensive lineman Joseph Boutros, during a historic blizzard in February, and roughly a year after the tennis program lost its head coach, Bruce Levine, to an unexpected death in August 2025.
According to WJAR / NBC 10 News, Boutros, a criminal justice major from Bohemia, New York, died after snow clogged the tailpipe of his car while he sat charging his phone during a power outage, allowing carbon monoxide to fill the passenger compartment. He was found unconscious in a Bellevue Avenue parking lot on Feb. 23, 2026, and was pronounced dead at Newport Hospital, with investigators attributing his death to accidental carbon monoxide poisoning, according to WUSF. The storm that claimed his life brought heavy snowfall elsewhere in Rhode Island and triggered widespread power outages, and was compared with Rhode Island's historic 1978 blizzard, as reported by the Boston Globe.
Boutros's football teammate Spencer Chapman told WJAR the team was snowed in during the immediate aftermath and could not even gather to grieve together. The incident illustrated how a snow-clogged tailpipe can allow carbon monoxide to build up inside a vehicle.
A Season Already Marked By Loss
The tennis program was carrying its own weight of sorrow well before the blizzard hit. Head coach Bruce Levine died unexpectedly at age 68 on Aug. 25, 2025, according to Sol Levinson & Bros.
Assistant coach Casey Farrell, a former Salve Regina tennis player who graduated in 2023, stepped up to lead both teams as interim head coach before being named head coach of both tennis programs, according to Salve Regina Athletics. Farrell told WJAR that the loss hit so close that she had to leave the team's first few practices just to attend her coach's funeral. The following October, the women's team dedicated its play at the annual Clash on the Grass tournament at the Hall of Fame to Levine's memory, honoring an event that had been one of the final ones he helped plan with Farrell.
Football Coach's Idea Brings Teams Together
It was head football coach Kevin Gilmartin who proposed that his players show up for the tennis team, a suggestion the team's captains quickly agreed to, per WJAR's report. Gilmartin watched his idea play out when the football team packed the stands for the tennis team's home opener this fall.
The football players marched in clapping and chanting throughout the meet, and Chapman said the energy his teammates brought changed the atmosphere entirely. Farrell credited that support from the school and the football team with helping her players compete with more confidence than usual. The result showed on the scoreboard: the tennis team won two of three doubles matches against Endicott, a result WJAR notes the Seahawks rarely achieve. Tennis players later returned the favor by attending a football game to cheer on the teammates who had shown up for them.
Programs Compete Within A Shared Conference
Salve Regina joined the New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference on July 1, 2023, according to Salve Regina Athletics.
Boutros's death also rippled far beyond Newport. A community GoFundMe campaign launched after his death raised nearly $50,000 to help his family with memorial expenses back in his hometown of Bohemia on Long Island, where he had been a standout player at Connetquot High School, according to Greater Long Island. The outpouring underscored how a single tragedy in a Newport parking lot reached a community hundreds of miles away.
