By: Mike Whaley
(This is the first in a series on the 2022 and 2024 inductees into the New Hampshire Basketball Coaches Organization Hall of Fame. The stories will run periodically over the next three months.)
Ed Beattie knew coming out of college he wanted to coach and teach at the high school level. He didn’t, however, necessarily envision himself coaching women, especially since he had a legendary dad, Bryce Beattie, who had successfully coached boys in Maine and Massachusetts. He’s in two halls of fame in Maine. But that’s how it worked out when he got hired at Winnacunnet High School in 1979. He ended up coaching girls basketball and girls soccer, a sport he started at the Hampton school.
It proved to be an excellent fit for Beattie. He guided the Winnacunnet girls for 33 seasons (1979 to 2012), 31 as the head coach. His teams amassed a record of 519-173 and won seven Class L/Division I state hoop championships, including five in a row. At one point, the Warriors won 84 straight games. He also coached the girls soccer team to an undefeated state title in 1983. He was one of seven coaches honored with induction into the New Hampshire Basketball Coaches Organization’s Hall of Fame on Nov. 2.
“I was very fortunate coming out of college and not expecting to coach women,” he said. Beattie said he was lucky to have an old-school athletic director in Bob Dodge to mentor him. “He was very supportive. He often gave me good advice about handling situations that invariably occur in a basketball season. … He kind of shepherded me along in the early years about how to temper myself a little bit, which I’m not sure I always did. To get me to a position where I could be successful and the kids would have the kind of experience they were supposed to have.”
The late 1970s were a time when girls sports were just starting to get a fair shake because of Title IX. Not necessarily an equal shake, but because Dodge was going to adhere to the Title IX requirements, Winnacunnet’s female athletes were not going to get short-changed on his watch. That boded well not only for the school’s female athletes but also for Beattie, who became a fierce advocate for women’s athletics.
“I guess people would say we were throwback or old-time coaches,” Beattie said of himself and his dad. “I didn’t see myself that way. Times have changed. And how you deal with athletes has changed. I think you could ask a lot from women athletes. … Title IX changed everything. It made it so it was not quite equal. But it was a lot closer to being equal.”
Beattie constantly told sports reporters they should be doing more articles on women’s sports. Why? “Because parents that have daughters buy the same newspaper,” he said. “People have figured that out now. Caitlin Clark, you see articles in the paper out of season about her.”
Beattie added: “Basketball has changed dramatically. Stuff I did as a high school athlete or stuff I did on the college floor, women athletes do now in grade school. They go behind the back. They go between their legs. It’s pretty humbling.”
Another thing that helped Beattie’s transition to being a high school coach in Hampton was establishing a good relationship with the boys coach, the late Jack Ford. There was the potential for conflict with a new coach coming in and Ford being there as an established coach. Rather than use his seniority to benefit his own program or let any ego get in the way, Ford never let that enter the equation. He worked with Beattie to make sure both programs had the chance to grow and be successful. “Jack and I liked each other,” Beattie said. “We knew each of us was trying extremely hard to get to the state final.”
Beattie said they made the gym schedule sometimes two or three weeks in advance. They were able to make it work. Back then teams played on Tuesday and Friday nights – one was home and one was away. Whichever team was home on Tuesday would have late practice Monday while the team that was on the road would practice early. “That eliminated a lot of questions about who was going to take what time,” Beattie said.
It was against that positive backdrop that Beattie got his start as a coach, and it built from there. One advantage Beattie had coming into Winnacunnet was that he had developed an appreciation of women’s athletics from his days at old Nasson College (Maine). He respected what they could do and that carried over to his coaching. “I made a conscious effort to myself that I was going to treat the women athletes the same as if I were a boys coach,” he said. “That was a difficult curve at first. Quite honestly, not everyone wanted to see that happen. I was demanding, but I knew at the end if we were walking off the court on the last day and we were the winners, it would all be worth it.” That’s where Dodge’s complete support came in. He advised the young coach and had his back if there were outside forces that had a problem in what he was doing.
One thing Beattie took from his dad was an uptempo, pressure-defense style. Bryce Beattie was a pioneer in Maine using the zone press. “A lot of people thought it was almost unkind to the opponent,” Beattie said. “Early on when the game was 50-60 years old, you let them (the opponent) bring the ball up the floor. He was being almost unsportsmanlike. Steal the ball in the back court and lay it in.”
It rubbed off on Beattie. “Good coaches steal whatever they can find,” he said. “My father had a few ideas that stood the test of time.”
That pressing and running style became the hallmark of Beattie’s teams. “We pressed and ran because we felt the more times you touched the ball the higher the score could go,” he said. “That’s a basic scenario.”
Certainly the “small” Winnacunnet gym, which wasn’t small, lent itself to that. Beattie laughed about that. “It was its own advantage,” he said. “It’s small. It’s a regular-sized floor. Jack Ford and I used to play up the fact it was a small floor even though it was regulation (sized). Because it set the mentality of the opponent that they were going to get pressed from sideline to sideline. There was going to be no room. They (the fans) were right on top of you.”
The Warriors had success under Beattie in the old gym, winning state titles in 1984 and 1998. In 2005, the new school was built and the basketball teams practiced and played their games in a new, bigger gymnasium. Beattie changed some of his approach to coaching because of that. During construction, Beattie would use some of his free time to sit in the unfinished gym “thinking about how I would use the facility to develop athletes and hopefully basketball players – certainly athletes first.
“I practiced everybody together – all three teams,” said Beattie, who taught high school history at Winnacunnet from 1979 to 2014. “That’s something I decided to do once we had the new facility. That’s one factor that led to greater success. … The freshman point guard was working with the all-state point guard. I completely changed how I coached as a result of the change with the building. It worked.” The second year in the new facility, the Warriors won the first of five straight Division I state titles.
Beattie said the larger environment allowed the team to lift weights, do isometrics, jump rope, and do stations. “We designed drills based on the positions kids played,” he said. “Block players would work together and against each other.” The coaching staff could mingle to provide instruction. Beattie felt that the varsity players were challenged every day. “There’s a kid coming and they’re a sophomore and they’re coming,” he said. “That competitive edge helped a little bit.”
Sitting by himself in the unfinished gym, Beattie was thinking about “how do something different and how to make it be an athletic experience as well as a basketball experience. We took pride in the fact that we felt we had the best athletes – not necessarily just the best basketball team. We had the best athletes. If we made it an athletic event; if we made it up and down the floor, 84 feet, 50-feet wide, side to side, up and down the floor, 32 minutes, we were going to be successful. We were in better shape than anybody else. We got better as the game went on. We’re going to get you with that press at some point. You’re going to break down. That was our whole philosophy. I had kids who bought in. They knew and understood what we were doing.”
Beattie still believes the Winnacunnet gym is the best high school facility in the state. He liked that it had seating all the way around the court, not just on the sides. “It made it feel like a real college facility,” he said. “I wanted seating at the end. As a coach, to press full court, I love seating at the end.”
There were many great players who suited up for Beattie. From his stepdaughter Maura Healey in the 1980s, who went on to star at Harvard University and is now the governor of Massachusetts, to Heidi Plencner and Abigail LaRosa, who both played at the University of New Hampshire, to Tiffany Ruffin, who was part of four consecutive state championships. She took her game to Boston College and then Fordham. From those stars down to the final kids on the bench, there was complete buy-in to the way Winnacunnet did things.
Longevity at one place had its benefits. “Nobody had to learn how things were going to go,” Beattie said. “This is how it’s going to go. I had the backing of the community and especially, the most important thing, great athletes. Winnacunnet has had its share of great athletes in every sport. But I think the girls basketball program there, from my standpoint, has had some of the greatest athletes in the state’s history.”
Current Winnacunnet boys coach Jay McKenna introduced Beattie at the Hall of Fame event in Concord. He has known Beattie for 30-plus years. He grew up with Beattie’s son. His sister, Erin, grew up with Beattie’s daughter and played soccer and basketball for Beattie. McKenna let Erin know that Beattie was being honored and that he was speaking on her old coach’s behalf. He wondered if Erin had anything to share.
Erin told her brother that Beattie “taught us the importance of commitment and perseverance, to stay focused even when things were tough. We were expected to show up ready to play. He was very demanding and he could be very difficult at times. But we knew that he loved us and was extremely supportive of us. … When Mum passed away before my senior year in high school, he was the first person to arrive at our house to check on me and offer his support. He was always there for me and helped me in countless ways that I am forever grateful for.”
Beattie said he can never stress enough how lucky he was that he got into coaching when he did. “I’m not sure I blazed any trails,” he said. “I followed along with what people were doing at the time. I was very lucky to be on the cutting edge of the explosion of women’s sports. It was terrific to be a part of that.”
NOTES: Beattie’s dad’s coaching career spanned 40-plus years in five states, but most notably in Maine and Massachusetts. His teams won three state championships in Maine at Freeport High School (1959, 1960, 1964) and an Eastern Massachusetts title at Swampscott High School in 1983. … After he retired, Bryce was inducted into both the Maine Sports Hall of Fame and the Maine Basketball Hall of Fame. … Bryce coached his eldest son Brett at Maine’s Windham High School in the late 1960s and at Salem HS against his youngest son when Ed played for Triton Regional High School in Byfield, Massachusetts, in the 1970s.
Mike Whaley can be reached at whaleym25@gmail.com