Category: Jam Session

Saint Dominance: STA established a supreme hold on Division III

By Mike Whaley

(This is the third in a series on the eight 2025 NHIAA state championship basketball teams.)

We’ll get to the Saint Thomas Aquinas High School girls basketball team’s commanding run to the Division III state championship this past March. First, the back story.

The major motivation for the Saints was tied to the end of last season. Saint Thomas lost its first game of the 2023-24 campaign before rattling off 17 consecutive wins to earn the top seed in the D-III tournament. That earned them a bye to the quarterfinal round at home. There the Saints made short work of No. 8 White Mountains, 56-27. In the semis, semifinals, their season came to a sudden end to No. 4 Kearsarge, 52-44.

“It was a big disappointment,” said 6-foot-3 senior center Emilie von der Linden. “We really wanted to win that game. Since we lost that game last year, it really did fire us up this year.”

“I think we thought no one could beat us,” said six-foot senior guard Genna Bolduc. “We were a little too cocky. I think we weren’t as well prepared. We definitely let things get in our heads.”

The Saints also had a subpar shooting night, according to coach Kevin Giannino. “For some reason the ball would not go through the basket,” he said. “I can’t tell you how many missed shots and layups and opportunities we had. It was really frustrating to see what happened. To watch a team that had scored in a number of games, 58, 63, 65 points, we just could not make a basket.”

That loss motivated Saint Thomas to regroup and get ready for the following season. As Gianinno recalled, the players said to him “‘Coach, let’s practice tomorrow and get back out there. We can’t wait to get back at it.’ That really fueled them.”

[📸 Todd Grzywacz]

Bolduc said that loss changed the team’s mindset. “We went into every game this year thinking we could lose,” she said. “We could lose, so let’s play as hard as we can, no matter who the team is – even the lower-ranked teams. We went out and played our hardest, got an early lead and just worked really hard.”

One could not argue with the end result. When the Saints walked off the court after the Division III championship game at Keene State College on March 1, they had won, strictly by the numbers, the most one-sided game in D-III championship history, 72-35. They set or tied three championship-game records: margin of victory (37 points), most team 3s (10) and most 3s by a player (Bolduc, 6), tied with Fall Mountain’s Sophie Bardis (2020). That completed their season at a perfect 22-0, counting three holiday tournament victories. It was STA’s first state title since winning the old Class M crown in 1981.

Coming into the 2024-25 season, the Saints were laser-focused on their goal to avoid a repeat of the previous season. It was also the final year for a trio of seniors who had been varsity players since they were freshmen – Bolduc, von der Linden and Amelia Anderson, a 5-11 forward. Add in lightning-quick junior guard Emma Toriello and 5-foot senior point guard Lila Anthony, a transfer from Newburyport High School in Massachusetts, and there was definitely a sense of determined urgency in the air.

While the Saints knew they could score points, Giannino said there was also a realization that defense had to become more of a priority. “The call was out to play defense,” he said. “The girls put a big poster together – ‘Tenacious D’. We signed that after every game. We just talked about our defense. That was what we thought would carry us all the way through.”

[📸 Todd Grzywacz]

During the regular season there were two significant stretches that helped define who the Saints were. The first came at the Oyster River holiday tournament where they won three games in convincing fashion over bigger schools. In the first two rounds, STA beat Division I Spaulding, 73-41, and Keene, 42-33. In the championship, they vanquished host Oyster River, 61-48. OR went on to advance to the D-II championship. The Keene win was the only time this season that a team came within single digits of the Saints. The two other closest games were 10-point wins over Prospect Mountain and Monadnock (in the D-III semis). Everything else was by 21 or more points with 14 wins by 30 or more. Saint Thomas scored 50-plus points in 21 of their 22 games, and allowed the opposition to score 40 or more in just six games. In 22 games, the Saints averaged nearly 63 points per game, while allowing 29 points per contest.

Von der Linden recalls being in the locker room after winning the Oyster River tournament. “Our coach said ‘we were able to get this one, let’s go get another one (D-III title) later in the season.’ It was a boost to our confidence.”

The second significant span came in late January after they had played a stretch of games against some of the weaker teams in D-III – all blowout wins. Then came a five-game run against quality tournament teams. The first was Hopkinton at home, a team that had lost one game to that point. “I didn’t have to say one word to get the team ready for the Hopkinton game,” coach Giannino said. “They came out of the locker room and they were just flying. That was their opportunity to just make a statement. There was a big crowd at home. New Hampshire Sports Page was there. We’re a good team, but that night was special.” The Saints rolled over Hopkinton, 69-28, led by Toriello’s 20 points and 14 and 12, respectively, from von der Linden and Bolduc.

[📸 Todd Grzywacz]

STA followed that up with quality wins over Prospect, 58-30; Berlin, 61-29, and Gilford, 60-27, in which they scored the first 21 points of the game. “I was just beside myself,” said Giannino. “I just couldn’t believe how well we had played; just answering any challenge that was put before us.”

The biggest test, however, was just around the corner. After winning those four games, the Saints had a rare six-day layoff leading into a Monday night game at Prospect, a trap game if ever there was one. “I thought that would be a good test for us,” Giannino said. “Sure enough, we went up to Prospect. They were ready for us.”

Despite being a little rusty, the Saints jumped out to a 17-point lead early, but the Timberwolves forged back into the game. Prospect got as close as six points in the fourth quarter before STA was able to get some breathing room and win, 50-40. “It was the first time we had seen any type of a challenge,” the coach said. “We got into foul trouble. It was the first time we had to use our bench. We probably didn’t react as well as we probably could have.”

Von der Linden recalled it as “just a rusty Monday night game.” Bolduc remembered there was some sickness going through the team, so they weren’t at their sharpest. “Going into that gym is always hard,” she said. “Their student section is really chirpy. It’s good for them. We had some mistakes on defense and then we couldn’t get our shots to fall.”

[📸 Todd Grzywacz]

All season long, the Saints rode their outstanding starting five of Bolduc, Von Der Linden, Anthony, Anderson and Toriello. In fact, the trio of Bolduc, von der Linden and Toriello gave Saint Thomas one of the best scoring trios in the state regardless of division. Clearly, the Saints could have challenged for the D-II title and even been a top-tier playoff team in D-I. During that five-game span that threesome scored in double figures in every game. Versus Prospect, Bolduc and Toriello led the way with 15 points apiece, while Von Der Linden added 13. The season scoring balance was quite striking. Bolduc (8.7 rebounds, 2.6 steals and 2.6 assists per game) and Toriello led the way, each averaging 15 points per game, while von der Linden put up a double-double – 14 ppg and 12.3 rpg. Von der Linden said some reporters referred to the scoring trio as a “three-headed monster.” She said the team had their own term for it: “‘Pick your poison.’ If I’m getting shut down, Genna and Emma will go light it up from the 3-point line and vice versa. You really couldn’t pick the right option. We have trust in one another that if one of us is hot we will keep feeding them the ball. I think it goes back to playing team ball this year.”

Anderson was a tremendous complementary player, noted Giannino. “Amelia was our glue guy,”
he said. “She’s an extremely smart player. She gave up some offense to do the things we needed her to do. She was a good rebounder, great defender. She’d help break the press. She’d hit the open person with one more pass; just a solid, all-around player.” Case and point was the championship game where Anderson’s contribution impacted the game in a variety of ways. She scored six points with 11 rebounds, three blocks, three assists and three steals. In addition, she limited Fall Mountain’s All-State forward Clara Stewart to one field goal and 10 points. “What a way to cap off an excellent career with her best game on the biggest stage,” Giannino said.

Toriello was “tough as nails,” according to Giannino. “She spends half her time on the floor. She’s all out all the time. I can’t believe how fast she is. She’s the fastest guard in our league. She would just blow by people. She was a devil in transition. She’d kill you one way or another.” In addition to her impressive scoring numbers, Toriello had 3.9 steals and 3.7 assists per game.

[📸 Todd Grzywacz]

Anthony (4.8 ppg, 3.5 apg, 2.5 spg) transferred to STA as a junior. Giannino said she came with excellent ball skills and was a top-notch on-ball defender. “She is a very knowledgeable player,” he said. “Her dad was a big-time coach in Connecticut. You can tell she was coached by her dad. She developed a good chemistry with Toriello. They had backdoor and highlight passes. We put her on the other team’s best player, often a point guard. She really stepped up.”

The unsung bench could have started on most other teams. It included junior forward Charlotte De Tolla, who was on championship teams in three different sports (basketball, soccer, lacrosse); and sophomore guards Mallory Baker and Julianne Stowell.

Bolduc and Von Der Linden came in as freshmen with Anderson, but did not play a lot on the varsity. Von Der Linden was still pretty raw as a post player and needed to get more aggressive. Bolduc was a player in transition. She had some size that had kept her role around the basket. That changed when she was moved away from the basket so as not to clog up the paint with Von Der Linden and, more to the point, to take advantage of her exceptional 3-point shooting skill. Both girls started taking basketball seriously. They joined AAU teams and began working harder on their games. By the time they were juniors, they were legitimate players in Division III. The Saints went from being just a mid-pack playoff team to a bonafide contender.

Saint Thomas ended the regular season with convincing wins over two of the division’s lesser teams to improve to 16-0 and earn the top seed for the tournament. That was another challenge for them, playing nine games against six teams at the bottom of the standings with a combined record of 20-80. It would have been easy to lose focus.

“I think we definitely had the discipline,” said Bolduc. “We were making sure that no matter what the score, we were still playing our best basketball. We played as if it was a close game, no matter what.”

The top seed meant a first-round bye to the quarterfinals, which in this case meant another game against a strong Hopkinton squad, led by all-state guard Shaylee Murdough. Leading up to that game, Saint Thomas had spent the week recovering from sickness. “If we had played in the first round, I don’t know if we could have fielded a team,” Giannino said. “It would have been Toriello and four JVs at that point.”

[📸 Todd Grzywacz]

Although the Saints ended up beating Hopkinton, 70-44, it was a game in the fourth quarter. STA led 22-18 in the second quarter, but ended the frame on a 22-0 run to widen the gap to 44-18 at the break. The lead stayed pretty much the same after three, 50-25. Even so, Giannino had a feeling Hopkinton wasn’t done. “We were waiting for them to make a run,” he said.

Sure enough, the Hawks started the fourth quarter with a 10-0 spurt to close the gap to 50-35. “At that point, I looked at my girls. We were just barely hanging on,” Giannino said. “We were drained. We were sick all week.” Despite a big quarter by Murdough (she scored 16 of her game-high 30 in the fourth), the Saints regrouped and ended the quarter on a 20-9 run to win going away. Toriello led the offense with 18 points, Bolduc added 13 and Von Der Linden hit for 12. Again, despite adversity, STA was able to find another gear to win and move on.

The big moment was now at hand – the semifinals. Here was the round that had been their 2024 Waterloo. Their opponent at Sanborn Regional High School was a potentially difficult fifth seed in Monadnock, who had just blown past No. 4 Gilford in the quarters, 65-27. “This was the game we’ve been pointing to,” Giannino said. “This is the game we lost last year. At the beginning of the year, we sort of pinpointed Monadnock. We thought they were going to be a really good test for us. Sure enough they were.”

Monadnock’s defense made the Saints work. They did a good job of denying the post pass into Von Der Linden. “They put tremendous ball pressure on Lila Anthony – the point guard – and denied Bolduc and Toriello on the wings,” the coach said. “It was just outstanding defensive play.”

[📸 Todd Grzywacz]

It was a tight game into the second quarter. With the Huskies up 27-26, STA went on a quarter-ending 14-0 run to get some breathing room at the break, 40-27. Monadnock cut the margin to 46-37 after three quarters, and then scored the first five points of the fourth quarter to slice the margin to 46-42. They could draw no closer. Saint Thomas was still up 54-48 with several minutes to play, but was able to hold off the Huskies to win, 63-53. Toriello and Von Der Linden paced the attack with 20 and 18 points, respectively. Bolduc was held to eight, but it was not enough to pull off the upset. Bailee Soucia led Monadnock with 18 points, while Shaylee Branon chipped in with 15.

“My mentality going into that game was I’m definitely not losing again here,” said Bolduc. “Losing in the semifinals and the championship (which Bolduc has experienced in both basketball and soccer) is one of the worst feelings because you were so close. You were just a little bit short. I definitely did not want to lose again when I’m this close to achieving something I’ve wanted.” Bolduc was also an all-state goalie for the Saint Thomas girls soccer team that won two D-III state championships in 2023 and 2024.

After the season, Giannino coached a senior all-star team. He recalls Keene HS boys coach Ray Boulay coming up to him and congratulating him on a fine season. Giannino did the same as Keene had come within a point of winning the D-I title.
“I thought we had you,” Boulay said, catching the STA coach off guard.
“What are you saying?” Giannino responded.
Boulay laughed. “Well, I’m best friends with (Monadnock coach Eric) Fazio. We were game-planning for you all week.”
“If I knew that was the case,” Giannino said, “I wouldn’t have been rooting for you guys.”

In any case, the Saints were off to the finals for the first time in 18 years (34-23 loss to Lebanon in 2007 Class I final). Their opponent? No. 2 Fall Mountain, who easily dispatched tournament dark horse, No. 14 Stevens, 61-24. Giannino was impressed with the Wildcats. “They can put five girls on the floor who can hit from 3-point land,” he said. “I thought it was going to be a big test.”

[📸 Todd Grzywacz]

At the same time, Giannino knew the Saints had yet to play their best game. “The entire year, I saw the potential in this team,” he said. “I just thought we could play a little bit better. I told the girls ‘you played a great game tonight. But do you think we could play a little bit better?’ They all said ‘absolutely, we can play better than this.’ I challenged them to play better. I was really pushing them to play their best game.”

When the championship game rolled around at Keene State, Giannino’s high expectations were finally met. “I probably couldn’t say ‘could we play better?’” he said. “Because that was the best game we played all year. I know people think maybe it was a lopsided game and they weren’t a quality opponent. They were a very, very good team. We just played out of our minds.”

Von Der Linden admitted to being nervous. Part of that, of course, was playing in the state championship. She also had additional emotions churning around inside since this was the same court where her dad, Eric Von Der Linden, had played his college ball back in the 1990s. “It’s a long bus ride to Keene,” she said. “We were all singing and dancing to our music up until we got into the locker room. We all had a shared understanding. This is our last game. Let’s make it our best. That’s what really made it click.”

Saint Thomas jumped out to a 17-7 lead after the first quarter and headed into the locker room at the half up 30-18. With Fall Mountain still within striking distance, Bolduc sparked a huge third-quarter outburst that put the game away. She made three of her six record-tying 3-pointers as STA widened its lead to 47-21, eventually winning, 72-35. Bolduc led all scorers with 24 points (18 in the second half), while Toriello had 15 and Von Der Linden tossed in 12 with 19 rebounds. Here are more examples of STA’s dominance: Advantage in rebounding (40-18), points in paint (30-6) and second-chance points (28-2). The numbers told the story.

Fired up after a discouraging loss in the 2024 semifinals, the Saints regrouped, refocused and made a point of coming back with a mission to have a definitively positive season. The championship win was the culmination of that mission. When the postseason awards were handed out, STA was at the top of the list. Bolduc was named the D-III Player of the Year and joined Von Der Linden on the All-State First Team. Toriello was named to the Second Team. Von Der Linden was also selected to the All-Defensive Team. In addition, Bolduc received the D-III Jack Ford Award, which honors a player for equal parts basketball performance, academics and citizenship/community service.

“Coming in as a freshman, I knew we would improve,” said Bolduc, who will attend and play basketball next year at Plymouth State University. Von Der Linden will follow the same path at Bridgewater State in Massachusetts. “I didn’t know it would result in a championship. Especially the past few years, our division has been so good. There have always been teams that have been exceptional. I never thought we’d be the exceptional team. I always thought we’d be good, that we’d get better. Winning it was a dream. You come so close with the girls on the team. This year was one of the closest teams I’ve ever been on. It was just nice to do it with a group of girls I care so much about and I love so much.” Perfect, you might say.

Whaley can be reached at whaleym25@gmail.com

 

Unexpectedly Perfect: Woodsville’s chemistry led to fourth D-IV title in five years

By Mike Whaley

(This is the second in a series on the eight 2025 NHIAA state championship basketball teams.)

To say Jamie Walker is low key might be an understatement. But you could hear his normally even-toned voice rise a few octaves when he was asked about his team’s undefeated Division IV state championship basketball season – Woodsville’s fourth title in five years. “I did think we would be competitive,” he said. “I would have told you you were crazy if you told me we were going to go undefeated and win a state championship. That would have never entered my mind.”

Indeed, the Engineers ran the table with a 22-0 record, which included a nail biting 51-48 overtime win against North Country rival Littleton in the championship at Colby-Sawyer College.

Woodsville’s previous season ended with a semifinal loss to Littleton. From that team, four of the first six players graduated, leaving coach Walker with some positions to fill. The good news? The Engineers returned two of the best players in the division in his son, junior point guard Ryan Walker, and 6-foot-3 senior forward Landon Kingsbury. The key, however, was surrounding that duo with a complementary supporting cast. Coach Walker was able to do that.

After the Engineers lost in the 2024 semis, Walker knew he had his son and Kingsbury returning. “We didn’t know what we had around them,” he said. He figured senior Jacob Putnam and junior Cowan Kimball would be solid. Although both had played sparingly in big games, they did get quality minutes in the semis when one starter was too sick to play and another, Connor Houston, incurred an ankle injury that prevented him from playing in the second half.

Ryan Walker. [📸 KJ Cardinal]

The possible fifth starter was 6-2 senior Devin Sabina, who had spent three years as a JV point guard. “I had a conversation with his mother back in May (of 2024) and I said ‘I think Devin can help us next year, but he’s got to start playing now and continue on throughout the year.’” Sabina made the commitment. He played AAU ball with Kingsbury and Ryan Walker, and did all the summer stuff. He also had to embrace a new position inside as a forward since there was no way he was supplanting Ryan Walker at point guard.

The first guy off the bench turned out to be senior Owen McClintock, who did not play as a junior. He was a kid who could shoot the basketball. When coach Walker got wind that McClintock was thinking about playing, he asked his son to nudge McClintock into making the summer commitment, which he did. He became a valuable asset as the first player off the bench. “As the season progressed, I told him ‘your job is to come down and get your feet set, find a place you like, and somebody will find you and you’ll get the 3s,’” coach Walker said. “He hit 3s all year long for us.”

Eventually that group of six became the rotation and it turned out to be a very good one, certainly better than anyone could have predicted. Kingsbury noted that Woodsville used the summer to try to build chemistry with its new lineup. “Chemistry was the big thing,” he said. 

It took the rest of Division IV some time to catch up with what Woodsville had going on. Early on, Kingsbury and Ryan Walker received a lot of attention. “They pretty much said those two aren’t going to score,” coach Walker recalled. “And then everybody else started scoring. They thought ‘well there is a little bit more there than Ryan and Landon.’”

The big “coming out game” was the first Littleton contest on Dec. 19 at home – a 58-38 win. Walker and Kingsbury were held to six points each, but Sabina and Kimball stepped up big time with 21 and 15 points, respectively. “They were left wide open and made shots,” coach Walker said. That revelation made the Engineers even stronger as teams now had to respect the shooting ability of their secondary players.

Landon Kingsbury. [📸 KJ Cardinal]

Still it took a while for the offense to get into sync with the new players learning how to play with the veterans and vice versa. While the offense was a work in progress, Woodsville put its nose to the grindstone and focused on defense. “We figured if we play defense, we’ll get the turnovers and that leads to baskets and that’s always good,” coach Walker said. 

In coach Walker’s mind there was no clear favorite in the north. He wasn’t as sure about the south, but in the north “I didn’t think there was anyone heads and shoulders better than us,” he said. “I thought it was a pretty competitive year for the top five, six, seven teams.”

By the second half of the season Woodsville was still undefeated. The schedule tightened up as the Engineers started seeing some teams for a second time. In their final nine games, five games were decided by seven points or fewer and two others were competitive wins of 11 and 13 points. It didn’t come easy. “We always found a way to win,” said Ryan Walker. “We always had someone step up and push us over the other team and win the game.”

The beauty of it was that Woodsville was getting contributions from everybody. They weren’t just relying on Kingsbury and Ryan Walker. Putnam hit a 3-pointer at the buzzer to win at Profile, 42-39. McClintock’s late shot beat Littleton at their place by three, 61-58. “I’ve told a ton of people this,” said coach Walker. “They were just a good team that enjoyed playing together and knew each other. They knew what their strengths were. They knew what they didn’t do well. They all played a role in us winning.” 

Ryan Walker was the glue that held it all together. It was not a surprise that he was the Division IV Player of the Year and the top point guard in the division. “The reason we don’t look rattled in close games is because he’s pretty calm out there with the ball in his hands,” said the coach. “That takes a lot of pressure off everybody else on the team. … He doesn’t turn it over. Turnovers are key in close games, big games. He gets us into our offense. That’s very, very important.” Bottom line in Division IV, nobody had what Woodsville had at the point.

“I kind of let the game come to me,” said Ryan Walker. “Everyone on the team could score, so I knew that kind of takes a little pressure off me. I just try to get everyone involved.”

Jacob Putnam. [📸 KJ Cardinal]

Kingsbury’s evolution as a player was also important. A four-year varsity member who played on championship squads as a freshman and sophomore, he was primarily a scorer before this year. “This year he started doing the little things,” said coach Walker. “Defensively he was taking charges and getting steals. He was rebounding offensively and defensively. He started to round out his game. He wasn’t just a scorer anymore.” Kingsbury still scored, of course, averaging a shade under 20 points per game to lead the team, hitting the 1,000-point plateau, and earning D-IV First Team All-State honors. Next year he plans to attend and play basketball at Central Maine Community College.

Kingsbury knew that as the team’s biggest guy on the floor, he had to take more of a big man role. “I realized I had to start playing a little bit better defense,” he said. I have to try to get more rebounds and try to help my team out with more than just scoring.”

Ryan Walker could also score, providing 16.9 ppg, while Sabina (8.2), Kimball (7.8), Putnam (6.1) and McClintock (3.4) chipped in. Kimball and Putnam (a D-IV All-Defensive pick) were the stoppers on defense.

When the regular-season dust settled, Woodsville looked around and found itself at the top of the D-IV heap with an 18-0 record. 

“If you came to any of our practices, you never heard the word undefeated,” said coach Walker. “I’m not sure we ever discussed what our record was. We just focused on the next game. The kids might have been talking about it. I never heard it in practice. Everybody in the back of their mind knows they have a target on their back. Everyone wants to be the one that beats you.”

The Engineers opened at home in the first round vs. No. 16 Lin-Wood, who they had beaten by 38 points during the regular season. It was close to start, but Woodsville was able to get it into double figures by the second quarter and keep it there in a 61-46 win. Kingsbury led the way with 21 points, while Walker added 12, and Sabina and Putnam split 19.

Devin Sabina. [📸 KJ Cardinal]

A tough game with No. 8 Farmington never unfolded because their top player, Demery Hadges, got injured in their first-round game and was not close to full strength in the quarters. The Engineers played their best first half of the season, leading 18-3 after the first quarter and 36-9 at the half en route to the 57-40 win. Kingsbury and Sabina each had 14 points, while Walker added 11.

The semis was against No. 5 Gorham, who Woodsville had beaten twice during the season. This proved to be the perfect time for the Engineers to play their finest defensive game of the season to hold in check the Huskies high-scoring duo of Isaac Langlois and Jack Saladino to 14 points between them in a convincing 43-27 victory. Putnam slowed down Saladino and Kimball limited Langlois, the division’s top scorer. “I tried to force him left and keep him out of the paint,” Putnam said of his Saladino assignment. “I was up on him all night.”

“We knew what we had to do,” said Kimball, who held Langlois to a season-low nine points. “Keep the ball out of Isaac’s hands.” Those words were stressed by coach Walker. “Stay on him. Don’t help out. Wherever he goes, you go.”

Walker led the offense with 17 points. Kingsbury and Kimball added 11 and 10, respectively.

That set up an all-North Country championship at Colby-Sawyer College with No. 3 Littleton. The Crusaders had vanquished the division’s other undefeated team in the semis, Concord Christian, by a 64-51 score. This was the third meeting between the two rivals, both won by the Engineers (58-38, 61-58). “Littleton had just knocked off Concord Christian,” recalled coach Walker. “I’m sure they were saying ‘we just knocked off one undefeated team, let’s beat the other one.’”

The Gorham win came with some potentially crippling news. Late in the game, Ryan Walker severely rolled his ankle. “I tried to jump a passing lane and I landed on someone’s foot,” he said. “I rolled my ankle. It happened with a minute to play in the game. I probably shouldn’t have done that.”

As Walker recalled, the ankle was pretty swollen. There was no way, as far as he was concerned, that he wasn’t going to play. “I just wanted to rest it and get it to be as good as it could be,” he said.

Jamie Walker. [📸 KJ Cardinal]

The silver lining, if there was one, was that the semifinal game was played on a Monday, so he had four days to recover. “I iced it a lot,” Walker said. “I really didn’t do much on it. As the days went by, I was walking fine. On Friday, I didn’t practice or anything. I just shot around a bit and it felt a little bit better. I just wasn’t sure what it was going to feel like come game time.”

On the ride home from the Friday practice, coach Walker could see an improvement in his son. “He was positive in his talk. ‘He seemed a little upbeat,’ I said to myself. ‘OK, this is a little different than the guy limping around for three days.’ I kind of thought he was OK.”

That being said, even though the tape job made the ankle feel good, Walker hadn’t done anything on it since Monday. “He hadn’t been running up and down the floor,” his dad said. “He hadn’t cut right to left.” He definitely wasn’t 100 percent. There were times in the championship when he looked like his old self. “He looked quicker and could get by people whenever he wanted,” said his dad. “But there were (also) times when he looked a little hobbled.”

Coach Walker wasn’t sure what percentage to put his son at. “He wasn’t 100, but he was certainly closer to 100 than he was to 50.”

Woodsville was fortunate that the semifinal game was played on Monday. Had it been played on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, his dad said he would not have played in the championship. “There’s no way,” coach Walker said. “He was limping pretty bad for two days after. You really couldn’t see his ankle until Thursday or Friday when the swelling finally went down.”

Ryan Walker recalls warming up before the championship and he felt at that point he was probably at 60 percent. “Once the game came around and the adrenalin was flowing, I was probably higher than that,” he said. “I tried not to be aggressive around the rim and land on anyone’s feet. I was playing away from the rim and fading away, when I usually go towards it.”

A third meeting with Littleton was certainly going to be a tough nut to crack for Woodsville. Walker expected it to be similar to the three-point second game. “They’re a tough team to defend,” he said. “No matter what five are on the floor, they can all dribble and shoot. There’s no leaving someone alone on that team.”

The game was as good as advertised. Littleton jumped out to a 10-point lead in the first quarter, but the Engineers battled back to take a three-point lead at the break on McClintock’s 3-pointer at the buzzer. Predictably, it was a game that came down to the final seconds.

The Engineers didn’t help themselves as time was winding down. With the game tied at 43-all, they called timeout with 18 seconds to play. But they then turned the ball over on the inbounds pass. Littleton went ahead 47-45 when Marcus Hampson made both foul shots after being fouled driving for a layup at 15 seconds. Down two, coach Walker signaled not to take a timeout. His son took the ball the length of the court, drew three defenders and then hit Sabina for the game tying layup that forced overtime. “Devin was right where he was supposed to be,” said coach Walker. “When someone drives to the basket, I want you opposite them. I don’t want you on the same block. Then your defender is right there. Always get opposite to the guy driving to the basket. Where did he go? Opposite and he got the layup.”

 In OT, Putnam scored his only points on a corner trey at 2:30 to give the Engineers a three-point lead (50-47) and an eventual 51-48 championship win to complete the season at 22-0 – the only undefeated boys team in New Hampshire.

Putnam recalled his game-winning shot. Walker drove to the basket and drew Putnam’s defender. “You’ve got to know it’s coming when he has two or three defenders on him,” Putnam said. “I just try to give him a good angle because he’s got two people on him; help him out and catch the ball and shoot. It was like the exact same shot that I hit against Profile. No problem. No hesitation.”

Despite the injury, Ryan Walker played a great game. His teammates were concerned during the week that he might not be able to play or that if he did play, he wouldn’t be himself. “I was nervous because we hadn’t played without him all year,” Kimball said. “He’s our biggest contributor on the floor. I was a little worried and I was a little worried for him. I know he likes to drive and get into the paint. There are a lot of feet down there. I was a little worried that he would roll it again.”

It all worked out. “He played great,” Kimball added. “I thought he played one of his better games. He looked normal to me.” Walker led all scorers with 19 points and paced Woodsville in playoff scoring with 60 points in four games. Kingsbury and Sabina added eight points apiece, and Kimball had seven. Sam Reagey led Littleton with 16 points, while Connor Roy and Hampson chipped in with 10 each.

At the beginning of the season, there were certainly some question marks. But as the season unfolded, the Engineers started checking off boxes. “They were a team that accepted their roles and played them very well,” coach Walker said. “They were an easy group to coach. There was no fighting. They got along. They liked playing with each other.” As their record indicates, it proved to be a winning recipe.

Whaley can be reached at whaleym25@gmail.com

The wait is over: Groveton fends off rival Littleton for 17th state title

By Mike Whaley

(This is the first story in a series on the eight 2025 NHIAA state championship basketball teams.)

The Groveton High School girls began the 2024-25 season trying to reverse a recent trend. The most dominant girls program in the history of New Hampshire high school basketball with 16 state championships, the Eagles were in the midst of an unusually long dry spell. They had gone 11 years (2013) without claiming a crown – easily their longest hiatus since winning their first title back in 1988. Although Groveton was a contender in the previous two tournaments, it stumbled at or near the wire – a 47-33 loss in the 2023 championship to Colebrook and a discouraging 29-26 setback in the 2024 semis to Newmarket.

The Eagles were returning to their former level of play but the question was – could they reach the D-IV summit? The answer, when the D-IV dust settled, was an emphatic “yes,” courtesy of a thrilling 36-33 championship win over North Country rival Littleton. But it certainly wasn’t easy.

Veteran coach Tim Haskins recalled that the loss to Newmarket in the 2024 semis did not sit well after the 2023 championship loss to Colebrook. “We were right on track to get back again last year,” he said. “Newmarket played a great game in the semis and we didn’t. I think that loss, to be honest, was kind of hanging over us or in the back of our minds. We were pretty motivated to get back to at least that point – back to the semis. And then get a chance to win that game and then get a chance to get ourselves back to the final.”

Aspen Clermont [📸 KJ Cardinal]

The Newmarket game certainly motivated the girls. “It really upset me,” said senior point guard Aspen Clermont. “There were a lot of things that went wrong. We didn’t play to our full potential.”

Junior forward Delaney Whiting hit the 1,000-point mark this season, led the team in scoring and was named Division IV All-State First Team. “The biggest thing last year is we weren’t a team when we went out on the floor,” said the Eagles’ go-to player.

Mylee Kenison was a freshman forward last year. She admits she put too much pressure on herself. “It was a lot. I had a part on the team,” she said. “I had to try my best to get to the championship.”

Assistant coach Kelley Brown, a four-time champion during her Groveton playing days, said everyone played as individuals. There was no teamwork. When the team saw the game video, they all agreed: “We didn’t play as a team. We were playing one-on-one with the Newmarket girls. I kept reminding them this year that we need to play as a team.”

The Newmarket game served as a strong incentive for this past season. The Eagles were certainly a pretty good team. Were they good enough to make a run to the championship was the looming question. 

Delaney Whiting [📸 KJ Cardinal]

What helped early on was beating Littleton in their own holiday tournament, as they had done in 2023. Groveton stopped the Crusaders, 37-28, a game that flew under the radar with little press coverage. But it served to boost the team’s confidence for the rest of the season. “It helped us,” Whiting said. “It made us aware that we can beat them. It didn’t count as much in everyone else’s eyes. But it showed us we have what it takes to beat an undefeated team.”

The first part of the season before Christmas was the weakest part of Groveton’s schedule. After the holiday break, the schedule definitely toughened up. “It was literally five straight weeks where every team we played had a winning record,” said coach Haskins. “There just weren’t any breather games at all on the schedule. We’d win one and say, ‘Well that’s good.’ There was no time to celebrate. We had to turn around and get ready for the next one.”

Part of that brutal stretch included two games with Littleton, which the Eagles lost – 52-36 and 40-37. It stung, but it wasn’t the end of the world. In both games, Littleton used a big fourth-quarter surge to pick up the win. “In both of those games we were upset emotionally and frustrated,” said Clermont, a second-team all-state selection. Upset for sure, but not defeated. Underneath that frustration, they still had confidence. They knew what was possible.

Along with the two Littleton losses, the Eagles had some hard-fought wins during that stretch over White Mountains, 50-44; Pittsburg-Canaan, 48-38 and 54-41; Farmington, 50-48; Colebrook, 62-49, and Woodsville, 40-34.

Head Coach Tim Haskins [📸 KJ Cardinal]

Haskins said the goal at the end of the regular season was to be a top-three team, which would allow them to host the first two playoff rounds, and to stay out of Littleton’s side of the bracket. It took some work, but they were able to accomplish both goals.

Once you earn one of the top four seeds, the accomplishment is immediately relevant. Unless you get a first-round bye, there is the potential to host two playoff games. The Eagles took advantage of their friendly home court to roll through the first two rounds over Lin-Wood, 72-32, and Portsmouth Christian, 69-40.

“We knew pretty much what we were going to get with those games,” said coach Haskins. “Those rounds make me the most nervous. You’re the favorite and by a lot. What if we mess up? The farther we go, the less nervous I get personally.” If Haskins had any nerves in those first two rounds, they quickly dissipated.

That set up a semifinal game against No. 2 Holy Family, whose only loss had been to Littleton (47-40). Haskins had been able to scout the Griffins at Franklin. “We felt it was going to be a challenge because they had girls who were a bit bigger compared to what we had,” the coach said. “We were ready. We got back to the same point where we got knocked out last year. The girls were pretty determined that it wasn’t going to happen again.”

Clermont recalls Holy Family walking into the Bedford HS gym for the semis. “I said ‘Oh my god.’ They were pretty tall. It was a little intimidating.” Indeed, the Griffins were an imposing unit with five girls 5-foot-8 or taller led by six-foot freshman Lizkenza Yonkeu. Whiting was one of only two Eagles 5-8 or taller.

Kaycee Chappell [📸 KJ Cardinal]

The difference was that Groveton’s secondary players really stepped up. While the Griffins were able to limit Whiting’s scoring chances, holding her to five points, Mylee Kenison and Julia Chappell picked up the slack, scoring 13 and 12 points, respectively, in a convincing 51-29 win. Clermont also tossed in 12. The Eagles held a slight 19-16 lead at the half, but used a 16-5 burst in the third quarter to take control of the game.

“We felt whenever we can we like to play a pretty fast-paced, up and down the floor game,” Haskins said. “We felt it might give some of their big girls a little bit of a problem.” Groveton also held its own on the boards, despite being undersized. Another big factor was that the Eagle defense was able to hold HF sophomore all-state scoring ace Ryenn Pedone to 10 points, well below her 22.0 average.

“We showed that we weren’t just a team of one or two players,” the coach said. “We had different girls who could step up if the occasion dictated.”

Myle Kenison understood the situation and that she needed to be ready to contribute. “I knew I had to step up and when I was open I had to shoot. When I had my drive, I had to make a drive,” she said.

Groveton had advanced past the semis to the championship for the second time in three years. Their opponent was not a surprise – the unbeaten No. 1 seed and defending champions from Littleton. “It was two coaches and two teams that knew each other pretty well,” said Haskins of himself and the Eagles and Littleton and their coach, Dale Prior.

Littleton had won three games to get to the finals, but their path had been a little more difficult. No. 8 Farmington had pushed them in a 52-41 quarterfinal win and then they held off pesky Newmarket in the semis, 37-31.

Mylee Kenison [📸 KJ Cardinal]

The championship was just as everyone figured it would be at Colby-Sawyer College – tightly contested and down to the wire. It was tied after the first quarter, 7-7. The Eagles led at the half, 20-16, and then jetted ahead 33-24 after three quarters. As in its two previous losses to the Crusaders, Groveton found itself succumbing to a fourth-quarter outburst that reduced a nine-point lead to one with 32 seconds to play, 34-33, after a 3-pointer by Juju Bromley. Were the Eagles headed to loss number three?

Littleton fouled Mylee Kenison with 15 seconds to play. The sophomore forward had already stepped into the spotlight as an unlikely star in the semis with a game-high 13 points. Now she had two foul shots to give the Eagles a chance to maybe put the game away. “I knew we were up by one,” the sophomore said. “I knew they were going to foul us. They wanted the ball back. When I got to the line, my heart was beating really fast. I knew I had to at least make one of them. I usually just take a deep breath and shoot. I just took a breath. I knew if I made one we would be in a pretty good spot. I made both.”

Now leading 36-33, the Eagles did not let Littleton put in the tying basket and won their first state championship in 12 years. That ended the longest championship drought since the Eagles won their first state crown back in 1988, increasing their girls’ state record total for state championships to 17. It was the sixth title under Haskins who has coached the team for 19 years, and has been a part of the program for 39 seasons (and all the state championships). He got his start in 1986 as an assistant and JV coach under coaching legend Gary Jenness, who has more wins than any other high school girls basketball coach in the state with 641. From 1988 to 2013, Groveton had one of the most dominating runs in state history with 16 titles in 26 years. Only the Nashua girls are in the same stratosphere, capturing 15 crowns during an impressive span from 1982 to 2004.

Once a perennial contender in D-IV, Haskins noted it has gotten harder for Groveton to stay consistently competitive with the town’s declining population, an affliction that runs across the North Country. That makes this year’s championship run all that sweeter. 

Makalyn Kenison [📸 KJ Cardinal]

Mylee Kenison once again led Groveton in scoring with 10 points. Julia Chappell had another big game with eight points, and Mylee’s younger sister Makalyn also had eight. Littleton’s defense held Whiting to five points and Clermont did not score. For the Crusaders, Addison Pilgrim had 10 points, while Addison Hadlock chipped in with eight and Bromley tossed in seven. Two other players who supplied invaluable playoff contributions for the Eagles were seniors Kandrah Savage and Kaycee Chappel. Freshman Makalyn Kenison was a consistent force all year long as the team’s No. 2 scorer behind Whiting and its top offensive rebounder. She received all-state honorable mention.

To further drive home the point that Groveton’s secondary players expanded their roles during the playoffs, one need only look at the increased scoring numbers of Mylee Kension (6.9 to 10.5 ppg) and Julia Chappell (3.8 to 10.3 ppg). When it mattered most, they delivered.

Whiting did a commendable job adjusting her game, especially later in the playoffs when opposing teams really focused on shutting her down. “Rather than get super frustrated because she wasn’t scoring, she’d grab rebounds, play defense, get assists, and just was a good teammate out there,” said Haskins. “She did her role well in that respect.”

Haskins noted that when Groveton lost in the finals in 2023 and the semis in 2024, the team went six players deep in both games. During this year’s championship run, they embraced a seven-player rotation. “We were a little bit deeper and more versatile,” Haskins said. It was just enough to get the Eagles over the hump and onto the championship podium.

In addition to holding down Littleton’s long-range shooting game, the Eagles did not let them run. Clermont said they made sure to keep an eye on Bromley who is very good at getting breakaway baskets. “Whoever was closest to her when a shot went up, just went with her,” Clermont said. “It kind of worked. I feel like our defense didn’t give them a chance to break out.”

Ditto, of course, for the Groveton offense, which also likes to run. Littleton limited those opportunities.

Perhaps the biggest difference was the insistence by Clermont that Groveton use its 3-2 zone versus a 2-3 matchup that Haskins felt would stymie Littleton. For most of the season, the Eagles had used the 3-2. “I raised my hand and asked ‘Haskins, what do you think about trying the 3-2 and if it doesn’t work switching to the 2-3 matchup?’ He said ‘Let’s give it a shot.’ For the whole game, we played a 3-2 defense. It worked. We had really good communication during that game. Realistically, the entire year we did play a 3-2 against most teams.”

Clermost’s value to the team went way beyond what she brought to the court. She was Haskins’ team liaison, keeping him in the loop when problems were on the horizon. She was equipped to deal with any drama that might surface. “Being a captain on a girls varsity basketball team is a very difficult thing to do,” she said. “In high school there is X amount of drama. There is so much that comes up. Sometimes you’re not prepared for it. Last year prepared me because I knew what was going to happen this year. Who causes the drama and who does this and that.”

She added that she and Whiting, as captains, were in constant communication. “We talked about how to fix things,” Clermont said. “Before the playoffs started, we were in a very good place. We had very little drama. A lot of the girls were there to support one another.”

Clermont said that her role was there to set up the offense and “get people where they need to be and position people; keep it positive and all the attitudes in line. Sometimes Mylee would get down on herself. I would have to go over to her: ‘Dude, you’re fine. Let’s go.’ We’re not going to win with this attitude. There were times when I would say ‘Relax, we’re winning the game. There is no need to freak out.’”

Clermont’s presence will be the biggest void to fill next year, both her ability on the court and her strong leadership skills. Savage and Kaycee Chappell are also moving on. Haskins pulled the three seniors to the side fairly early in the season to make a point. “‘These three graduate next year,’” he told the rest of the team. “‘I don’t know who it’s going to be, but one of you is going to be the fifth starter (next year).’ The eight to 12 players this year will prep for maybe that role next year.” That, of course, is a story in the making. For now, the Eagles will savor a championship that, in a town used to winning championships, was well worth waiting for.

Whaley can be reached at whaleym25@gmail.com

Farmington’s first hoop title still resonates 55 years later

By Mike Whaley

It’s the 55th anniversary of Farmington High School’s first state championship in basketball – the 1970 Class M boys crown. Their story is about as “Hoosiers”-esque as they come.

At the time, Farmington was a virtual basketball nobody. The Tigers had exactly one playoff win in their history (1957). They lost in the first round of the 1969 tournament to Inter-Lakes by a point. Despite their history, they did have a pretty good team in 1969-70. Their starting five had grown up playing basketball together: seniors Paul Moulton, Danny Reynolds, Alan Hagar, and Paul Bishop, and junior Tony Quinn. They were guided by third-year coach Art Parissi.

Farmington had a solid regular season, going 15-2 to earn the No. 3 seed in the tournament. Their losses had been to league rivals Newmarket and Oyster River. The talk of the tournament, however, centered around  No. 1 and unbeaten Woodsville, coached by the volatile legend John Bagonzi. The Engineers had beaten all comers in winning the 1969 crown in similar and perfect fashion, including Class I champion Littleton. In fact, Woodsville capped the previous season with a record-setting 97-41 win over Pittsfield in the final at the University of New Hampshire – records for championship game points scored by the winning team and winning margin that still stands as overall tournament records.

The Engineers were just getting going in a span that would see them win five state titles in nine years.

Tony Quinn drives to the basket in Farmington’s quarterfinal win over Conant.

The Tigers, led by 1,000-point scorers Moulton and Reynolds, drew a first-round bye and faced Conant in the quarterfinals at Bishop Brady High School in Concord. The Orioles hung with them into the second half before the Tigers pulled away to win 79-66. Moulton led a balanced attack with 24 points, followed by Reynolds (17), Hagar (16) and Quinn (13).

That set up a matchup at UNH against powerful Woodsville, whose winning streak now stretched to 40 games. David vs. Goliath. It looked like it was going to go like everyone thought it would as the Engineers darted out to a 10-1 lead to force a Farmington timeout. In the huddle, a slowdown approach was discussed and quickly discarded. Like Woodsville, the Tigers embraced a fast-paced style. “We wanted to play the only way we knew how,” said Moulton in 2020. The one change that coach Parissi made was to have his players dribble through the Engineers’ vaunted press versus using the pass, which just wasn’t working. The worm began to turn.

Farmington’s Danny Reynolds lays one up versus Woodsville in the semifinals.

By halftime, Farmington had found its groove and was up 46-41. Woodsville was getting into foul trouble (three players fouled out). The Engineers pulled to within three at one point, but no closer. As time was winding down, Woodsville did something it had not done in two years – it pulled off its press.

When the final buzzer sounded, the Tigers had stunned the New Hampshire basketball world with one of the greatest upsets in state high school tournament history, 90-81. All five starters reached double figures: Moulton and Hagar with 23 apiece, Quinn notched 16, Reynolds had 15, and Bishop collected 13.

Standing in the way between Farmington and championship glory was another underdog – No. 10 Merrimack. The Tomahawks were in the final after three upset wins. It was a track meet, but it was anticlimactic after the Woodsville game. The Tigers led 49-40 at the half, and stayed in control to win by 12 – 95-83. To this day it remains the overall most points scored (178) in a state championship game in N.H. history. Again there was great scoring balance led by tournament MVP Moulton with 30, Reynolds with 28, and Hagar and Bishop with 15 each. All five starters made the Class M All-Tournament Team and averaged in double figures, led by Moulton (25.7 ppg). The other four starters averaged between 12 and 20 points per game. The Iron Five scored every single one of Farmington’s 264 tournament points.

Head Coach Art Parissi is hoisted up in celebration following Farmington’s title game victory over Merrimack.

“It was fun,” said Moulton in 2020. “We were the heroes of the town – for the next 50 years, I guess.”

Although some of the players  – most notably Moulton, Hagar and Bishop – and coach Parissi have passed away, it is still hard to forget the 1970 champions. If you take a gander at this year’s Division III tournament program, the Tigers once again deserve a mention in the record section. And given how the game has slowed down, it could last, well, another 55 years.

Whaley can be reached at whaleym25@gmail.com

The best at both worlds: Nichols successfully navigated coaching both genders

By Mike Whaley

(This is the last in a series on the 2022 and 2024 inductees into the New Hampshire Basketball Coaches Organization’s Hall of Fame.)

Even in his 70s, Dave Nichols’ passion for coaching basketball remains as vibrant as ever. It has never waned. When he was a young man, Dave got ahead of himself, focusing on his passion while forsaking college until he realized he needed the latter to move forward at the former. Plus, one needs to make a living.

Dave coached multiple stints at Oyster River High School on both sides of the gender aisle for 24 years and over 40 years in total counting his time in Milford and Hanover as an assistant or sub varsity coach. He was the first, and still only, New Hampshire coach to guide both genders to a state championship – one in boys (1988) and three in girls (2003, 2006, 2009). He was an assistant coach with four other state champions. Dave was one of seven coaches inducted into the NHBCO Hall of Fame last November in Concord.

“I remember thinking, heading into Dave’s program, we were winners,” said Jill Friel, who played for the Bobcats from 2005 to 2009. “I wanted to be part of that.” She was a key member of two championship teams coached by Dave.

Hanover’s Dan O’Rourke has coached with and against Dave for over 20 years. “He had similar approaches to basketball as I had,” said O’Rourke when introducing Dave at the Hall of Fame. “It’s hard to read Dave sometimes. He has a poker face. I knew that his teams got better year by year and during the season. While we were heavily favored (in the 2005 championship game), I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, and sure enough it was tied (going) into the fourth (quarter).” Hanover pulled out a 49-38 win.

Dave was never a predictable opponent. The opposition could never be sure what he had up his sleeve coming into a season. “You always coach to the talent that you have,” he said. “That dictates whether you’re going to be a running team or a set-up team or pressing team, zone team or a man-to-man team.” Some coaches have a set style and they stick to it. Not Dave. He wanted to see what he had for talent and then adapt to the strengths of that talent. Dave predictably made the most of the players he had.

In just his second year as head coach in 1980-81, Dave Nichols guided the Oyster River boys to the Class I championship game – an overtime loss to Timberlane. [Courtesy photo]

Dave grew up in Milford, played basketball for Milford High School where he graduated from in 1969. He did not take a conventional path into coaching.

After spending a year at a Kansas college, he returned to Milford and started dating a cheerleader at Milford HS, who later became his wife. He also started helping out with the basketball program. He decided not to go back to college. “I spent more time coaching basketball and arranging my schedule for basketball than I did arranging my education,” he said. “I would go to practice. I would scout. At away games, I did the scorebook.”

Dave went back to the Kansas college at the start of the 1971 school year. When he came home for the Christmas break, he noticed that Milford had a really good team. “I talked myself into not going back for the second semester,” he said. Milford was indeed good. The Spartans were a Class I school, but for just that season, they went up to Class L. They beat preseason favorite Manchester Central twice that winter – at a holiday tournament and for the Class L title. Milford won another title in 1975 in Class I.

By then Dave was on board as a freshman coach for a couple years and then the JV coach for several seasons. Still, a career path was on hold. Debbie, that cheerleader, was now his wife. They were both commuting to Fitchburg State College in Massachusetts to complete their education, graduating in 1979.

With a degree and coaching experience in hand, Dave began applying for jobs as a math teacher, while Debbie was looking to get a job as a first-grade teacher. “I was getting job interviews, but she wasn’t,” he recalled.

Dave Nichols is the only New Hampshire coach to have led a boys team and a girls team to a state basketball championship. [Foster’s Daily Democrat photo]

Dave interviewed in New Hampshire at Salem, Milford and Oyster River, as well as Biddeford, Maine. He had other opportunities to interview in Massachusetts and Vermont, but the feeling was they wanted to be in Maine or N.H. He decided to take the Oyster River job, which was to teach math and coach JV boys basketball. That changed pretty quickly.

It wasn’t even the first day of school when Dave was talking to Athletic Director Sam Clark in his office. In walks the current head coach, Dick Colprit, who Dave was introduced to. “He looks at me and Sam and says ‘You might as well be the varsity coach, I’m all done.’”

Dave said the main reason for Colprit’s resignation was that he felt Oyster River could not compete in Class I, which is where they were moving up to after a successful run in Class M.

Dave was taken aback. “I’m thinking there’s a 6-7 kid named Pat Galvin that I’d already met and several players that I had been told about,” he said. Clark told the principal about Colprit’s decision. He said they would sit on that for several days and think about it. A few days turned into a week, but the end result was that Dave was offered the varsity job.

Dave was hoping to be a head coach eventually, so he was ready in that regard. Had he stayed in Milford, the head job would eventually have been his. “I kind of wanted to get away from Milford,” he said. “I thought it would be good to get away for a while. I’m going to go to Oyster River for five years, which turns into 35 and then five more as a sub.”

As a first-year head coach, Dave was not intimidated at all by Class I. “That’s what I was familiar with,” he said. Dave had seen some of the kids play at a local youth center and been impressed with what he saw. “Geesh, we’ve got some players here,” he told himself. “Two years later, we’re in a championship game.”

In 2009, Dave Nichols coached the Oyster River girls to the Class I title with a 39-33 win over Hanover. [Foster’s Daily Democrat photo]

A big challenge facing Dave was that Oyster River had no feeder program. There were intramurals at the middle school level that picked all-stars at the end of the season to play several area schools. “At first, in the offseason, we scheduled something for Sunday nights and it kind of grew over the years,” he said. “Eventually we started camps and set up a whole summer schedule. That evolved. It had to be a consistent program at that level. I knew the coaches in Class I were pretty much having year-round programs and summer programs.”

Dave’s instincts were right about his early teams. His first year (1979-80), they made the Class I tournament, won a first-round game before losing in the quarterfinals to Lebanon, the eventual champion. The following year, the Bobcats made it all the way to the championship game before losing into overtime to Timberlane.

Dave had a big team with the 6-7 Galvin, two 6-4 forwards and a 6-3 guard. Their weakness was the lack of a solid point guard. Although a believer in man-to-man defense as something you always needed to have, with this team he focused on using their size and length with a 1-3-1 zone.

Timberlane coach Bucky Tardif told Dave this about that 1-3-1. “He mentioned he had to have an extra day of practice to go against Oyster River to get ready for that damn 1-3-1 defense.” Over the years, other coaches have said the same thing that they needed several days to prepare for Dave’s teams.

Matt Whaley was a 6-3 guard on Dave’s first two teams. “He did a pretty good job. He didn’t know anybody or the community,” Matt said. “It was a step up for us, for sure. He was a much harder worker (than previous coaches). He had a lot of ideas with offense. Defensively he did things.”

Matt respected Dave’s honesty. He was telling him what he needed to hear, not what he wanted to hear. “He told me I wasn’t a great ball handler. ‘You can score and rebound and do a lot of other things well.’ He was truthful.”

Dave Nichols gives his NHBCO Hall of Fame induction speech.

One thing Dave learned early on was that if you knew you had a good tournament team, you coached that team for the tournament all year long. “You just don’t do that the last couple days before the tournament,” he said. “You prepare them all year with your philosophy. I learned that myself.”

With his first teams, they would extend the 1-3-1 with a lot of traps and stuff. It still wasn’t ideal on a big court like the one at UNH. “But what could you do? You’ve got to coach what you have.”

After the success in ‘80-81, the program was down for a bit, operating with kids who were primarily soccer players and trying to get them to play basketball. Eventually a group led by John Freiermuth surfaced in 1985. The core was very good, but “unfortunately the expectations were higher than what the reality was,” Dave said. “You don’t win a championship with freshmen.”

But things did get better. A couple of those freshmen made varsity. The next year, Pat Casey came along, the linchpin as a point guard, even though at the time he was a “small forward.” Dave saw his potential as a point guard. Casey had good leadership qualities. He could handle the ball and pass, he could defend, he was tough, and as an added bonus, he could score. “He was determined enough,” Dave said. “We didn’t have one and I decided he was going to be one. His father was delighted. He saw the same thing I did.”

You could make the argument with little pushback that Casey was the greatest point guard to ever play for Oyster River. He scored over 1,000 points, and then went on to have a very good career at Middlebury College. “He was more concerned with defense, dishing out assists and running the game,” Dave said. But obviously he could score when needed, which added to his value at that position.

Dave said they slowly improved. They’d make the tournament and get knocked out in the first round. “The kids were fine,” Dave said. “They could see that we were progressing and getting better. We were playing a really good schedule. We got better and better every year.”

The summer before the 1988 championship, Dave coached an AAU team with Farmington’s Mike Lee and Winnacunnet’s Jack Ford. Casey and Freiermuth were on the team, which was made up mostly of players from Class L. The other Class I player was Lebanon’s Mike Joslin.

Dave Nichols gives his NHBCO Hall of Fame induction speech.

The three Class I guys hung around a lot together. Dave remembered they were playing in the AAU nationals in Arkansas. He was driving them from one gym to another. “At one point, Mike was bragging about how Lebanon was going to be state champs. Pat and John were giving it right back,” Dave said.

Finally, Dave chimed in, telling them what was going to happen. “Lebanon is going to go undefeated because they play a soft schedule,” he said. “They are going to go to the finals and when they play, hopefully us, we are going to knock them down. We’re going to play a really tough schedule like Merrimack Valley and Pembroke and Goffstown. We’ll all play each other and have 2-3 losses.” Winter comes and all that comes true. Lebanon goes undefeated. Oyster River made it past Merrimack Valley in the semis to meet Lebanon in the final.

Dave recalls that Lebanon had six limousines parked in front of UNH to take them back home after the championship to celebrate. “They can go home,” Dave offered. “I don’t know if they’re going to be celebrating.” They weren’t. The Bobcats knocked them off, 65-51.

Even winning a state title did not appease the parental naysayers of which there are usually many in Durham. “I got told ‘Well, Dave, why don’t you focus on just being the athletic director,’” Dave recalled. He was essentially being told to resign as a result of parental pressure. “I really wasn’t ready to do that. I finally got the School Board to overrule the principal and superintendent and give me back the job. Now I knew what it would be like if I actually did come back. Enough of that. I was offered the job and then I resigned.”

A common theme in some of these hall of fame stories has been when a door closes and window opens. Several years later, Dave’s daughter Kate started playing basketball. “That got me into girls basketball,” he said. “It opened up a whole new path.”

It was 1996. The current girls basketball coach had stepped down, which led to a search to fill the position. It was the fall. The search did not yield any good candidates. The recommendation was to hire Dave. The feeling was that Dave’s daughter, now a sophomore, was on the team and he had proven he can coach in the past. “They asked and I accepted,” he said. There wasn’t much basketball talent. But they were athletic with soccer and volleyball players. Dave talked a few other kids into playing. The Bobcats won four games in his first year and then five. In the third year they made the playoffs.

Since Dave was also the AD, it created a little upheaval as other administrators had to cover for him when his team was on the road. He was approached at the end of his third year coaching girls in 1999 with the suggestion that maybe it was a good idea to hire a new coach so he could totally focus on his AD duties. His second tour as a head coach was done.

Dave decided in 2000 to step down as the AD and return to teaching math full time. The AD position was half time, which meant he was also teaching math half time. “I would teach in the morning and be the AD in the afternoon and night,” he said. “It was unfair to students. It was hard to arrange extra help time.”

It worked out for Dave. He now had some free time to watch his daughter play for her college team in North Carolina. In 2001, the girls’ JV position opened up, and he was asked to take the position by the head coach. “My son was going to be a freshman,” said Dave, who talked to him about being the JV coach. He didn’t have a problem with it. “My wife smiled,” Dave said. “‘I think he has a crush on one of those girls. He’ll have an in if you’re coaching them.’” Dave took the job.

After that season, Dave said parents chased the head coach out. Dave was asked if he would take over from her. He wasn’t happy with the school letting the parents treat the coach like that so he said no. He told the coach, a young woman named Celeste Best, that he would not taek the job. She said, “I’d much rather you coach the team than have somebody from the outside come in.” Dave also saw some of the outside candidates and was not impressed. He said he’d think about it, and then he applied and interviewed. “They ended up offering me the job,” Dave said, which was for the 2002-03 season.

Dave knew right away he had a potentially very good team on his hands. He had a group of girls he had just coached as freshman (Kate Maurer, Hayley Janelle and Megan Wyand) combined with the seniors Brittney Cross and Lindsay Laughton. “This is a team that could go a long way,” he thought to himself. “Brittney and Lindsay were great leaders and really embraced those younger kids.”

The coaching changeover happened in the spring, so that allowed Dave the chance to coach the girls over the summer, which helped get ready for the season. They certainly didn’t talk about going undefeated. What they did talk about was playing 25 games, which was the maximum they could play if they played their full regular season and then went to the finals of the holiday and state tournaments. “We began chanting this thing – one down, 24 to go. Two down, 23 to go,” he said. 

The moment when the Bobcats truly realized they could win the Class I championship came during the Manchester holiday tournament semifinals against preseason Class L favorite Nashua. Dave felt his team could compete with Nashua. He did not expect to win. “We ended up beating them,” he said. “We got a good lead. The last minute and a half, Brittney pretty much dribbled out the clock. They fouled her and she made some foul shots and we won.” They won the championship game as well.

When the Class I tournament rolled around, OR was undefeated and No. 1. “I mentioned the pressure of the undefeated season,” Dave said. “When we started this, the idea was to play 25. It wasn’t to win 25.”

But win 25 they did. At the end of the road was John Stark in the final at Saint Anselm College. They beat them for the title, 50-41. A 25-0 season – the program’s first title in 25 years. Nashua won the Class L championship over Alvirne, 51-48. But since Oyster River had beaten them in the holiday tournament, the Bobcats could rightly claim they were the best team in New Hampshire, and Dave was the first Granite state coach to guide both boys and girls to a state championship.

“I didn’t want the season to end,” said Cross, who scored her 1,000th career point in the championship game and then played at the next level at the University of Vermont. “We wanted to get one more win each time so we could keep it going.”

Cross never recalls feeling any pressure with being undefeated as the season progressed. “He must have done a pretty good job with that,” she said. “Obviously we were aware we hadn’t lost. We were aware of what was at stake each game. I really just remember us just enjoying competing together and finding a way to win.”

Cross felt that Dave “had a lot of confidence and belief in us. I can remember that as an individual. I was kind of an undersized point guard. I wasn’t really getting recruited. I was probably lacking a little of the confidence I needed to get to the next level or to lead the team in the way I was capable of. Coach Nichols did a great job of instilling confidence and belief and expectation in me personally, and then as a result in the team that we could do it, to compete for a state title.”

Two years later with that strong group of sophomores now seniors – Janelle, Maurer and Wyand – the Bobcats lost in the championship to Hanover. They came back with a new team in 2005-06, lost one game in a holiday tournament, and went on to win the state title over Kearsarge, 45-33.

Jill Friel was a freshman on that team as the sixth man. She was the youngest of former University of New Hampshire men’s basketball coach Gerry Friel’s five basketball children. All played for Oyster River. All scored 1,000 points, and all went on to play Division I college basketball (Jill at UNH). She said she was fortunate to have some great seniors to look up to in Nicole Casimrio, Chelsea Evans and Sam Brown, as well as juniors Kelsey Cross and Emily Jasinski. “They all taught me the ropes,” she said.

Friel was particularly appreciative of how Dave handled her. “He treated me as an individual,” she said. “He acknowledged and was aware that my family had a reputation; that I would have eyes on me. He acknowledged that. But he treated me as an individual. What do I want to get out of being on the team? What did I want to get out of myself? Our relationship was about our team and how I would contribute to that team. It wasn’t about my family’s legacy or comparing or contrasting my siblings. He navigated that well.”

Fast forward to the 2008-09 season. Friel was now a senior. She was the centerpiece on the Bobcats along with sophomore center Danielle Walczak. In an early battle between top teams, Oyster River was hammered at home by defending champion Hanover, 71-39. After the game, Dave told the team, “I still have a lot of faith in you guys, but obviously we have a lot of things to get better at and things to work on. This is good that we can use this the rest of the season as motivation.”

Hanover coach Dan O’Rourke, who introduced Dave at the Hall of Fame ceremony, remembered that game. “When I went through the line to shake Dave’s hand, there was that face, a look of determination.” O’Rourke recalled the rest of the season, checking the NHIAA standings and seeing that Oyster River was winning and winning and winning. The Bobcats never lost another game.

Meanwhile, Friel recalls that early-season loss. “That was really the touchstone of the year,” she said. “The snapshot of it was if you want to be the best, you have to beat the best. We lost by 30. We got absolutely demolished. We knew how far we had to go. On the other hand, we knew we had strong centerpieces in myself and Danielle Walczak. It was also about how do we get the rest of the pieces to fit.”

One thing Dave did that Friel thought worked well with the team was to move the Hanover game into the rearview mirror and focus on being the best team in the Seacoast area, which had some very good teams in Portsmouth, St. Thomas Aquinas and Coe-Brown. “If we can dominate the Seacoast, we’re in a really good position; we’re demonstrating that we’re getting better and we at least have the capability to excel. It was mentally breaking it down into smaller goals. If we were making sure that we won our neighborhood that would progress us to eventually take down Hanover.”

When the dust settled on the Class I season, Oyster River and Hanover were the last two left standing in the championship game at Southern New Hampshire University. Hanover had everyone back from the previous year’s championship team, but there was a lot of fighting amongst themselves. They had several very good big players and an outstanding guard, although Dave felt Walczak was the best big player in the tournament, despite being only a sophomore. Friel, of course, was a top-notch guard.

“Sure enough, we met in the final,” said O’Routke. “Again we held them to 39 points, which was great. In my career, we only lost two or three times when we held a team under 40 points. That was always my goal (to hold the opposition under 40).

“Unfortunately, Dave’s team came out and played one of their best games. It was a defensive battle and they held us to 33 points and he won (39-33).”

A key part of the game was indeed defense. While Friel was held to four points (but also seven assists), she held Hanover star guard Lizzie BelBruno scoreless. Walczak had a monster game with a game-high 15 points and 11 rebounds.

“Everybody else stepped up. That was the biggest difference between losing by 30 early in the year versus so many different parts of the team we could lean on in those moments if they’re going to shut myself down,” said Friel.

Dave recalls at halftime the Bobcats were up 22-15. Friel was shooting around at halftime while Dave sat on the bench. Her brothers, Keith and Greg, called her over to offer advice. When she came back to the bench, he asked her what they talked about. She said they told her she needed to score if they were going to win. Dave looked up at the scoreboard, which showed a seven-point lead despite Friel not scoring. “I think we’re going pretty good,” he said. Friel shook her head up and down. “I think so, too,” she replied.

Hanover got as close as two points at 4:59 of the fourth quarter (26-24) before Friel fed a lob to Walczak for two points and the Bobcats were on their way to the win.

Friel said it helped that Dave trusted her, especially as she got older and became a captain. That was important. The idea that this was a collaborative effort. “He allowed me opportunities to be a leader without his voice and with his voice,” she said. “I’m really appreciative of that. I also feel that the most important thing he did was make me and all of us feel like we controlled our own destiny. Whether that’s how we lead or that’s how we play, we had a say in those things in how that looks.” 

Friel paused for a second, adding, “It comes down to him recognizing us as individuals and allowing that room. I think he had a preferred method of how he wanted us to play. But ultimately he was really flexible in leading the team to what we were capable of.” 

Dave coached through the 2012-13 season, although with far less talent at point guard, the Bobcats never achieved the success of those teams in the 2000s. He also saw the writing on the wall. Some administrators weren’t happy with him, so he decided not to fight it and moved on. That opened the door to new opportunities as a scout and an assistant coach. 

Two friends and opposing coaches, O’Rourke and Ed Tenney (Sunapee), asked him to scout for them during the 2013-14 season in the Seacoast area. So he went to Class I girls games for O’Rourke and Class S boys games for Tenney, who was now a boys coach after battling Dave as a Class I girls coach at Kearsarge.

That scouting evolved into an assistant coaching position at Hanover. Halfway through the Class I season, Dave said to O’Rourke, “I’ve done so much scouting and telling you how to beat these teams, but I don’t know your team very well.” O’Rourke invited Dave to come up and spend the night in Hanover. He went to a couple of practices and then a couple of games. Dave would sit in the bleachers and write up reports.

Eventually Dave was invited to sit on the bench with the team as a full fledged assistant in 2015. When he wasn’t scouting, he was at the games on the bench. “They had some really good teams,” said Dave, who has been involved with the Hanover team in some fashion for 12 seasons, including championships in 2019 and 2022 – 50 years after he was part of his first state title at Milford in 1972. “I would scout the toughest opponents and would show up (for those tough games).”

During the 2021-22 season, Dave scouted Bow seven times, Hanover’s eventual championship opponent. “I knew what they were going to do before they did it,” he said. “I knew them so well.”

There was a reason Dan O’Rourke wanted Dave as part of his Hanover staff. “Dave has found success wherever he’s coached. Most importantly, he’s done it the right way. He’s a man of integrity, high moral character. He’s done it with commitment, respect and he’s created the culture.” Like Jill Friel said when she came in as a freshman, his program was something you wanted to be part of because it was a winning program.

Looking back, Dave said as a head coach “I always felt kids needed to have fun. A lot of kids are getting pressured to focus year round on soccer, volleyball or whatever it is. I never wanted kids to focus year round on basketball. But I wanted them to play as much as they could. I always offered opportunities. I helped kids get on AAU teams. I talked to the coaches. I prepped them for tryouts.”

He ran local summer leagues, summer camps and held open gyms. That was something that struck Jill Friel. “Dave’s differential is that he always shows up,” she said. “He was always willing to put in the extra time. Summer leagues. Summer camps. That’s him volunteering for us to have the best possible experience. I find that even more remarkable as an adult that he continued to show up and invest in others.” The simple act of caring and then acting on it was a big part of who Dave Nichols was as a coach. He could see a player or group of players for who they were, adapt to their strengths and then mold them into a successful team that was having fun, while always making sure there were opportunties available to improve. That was a true hallmark of his coaching.

Mike Whaley can be reached at whaleym25@gmail.com

Nifty at 50: Oyster River’s ‘Rag Tag Bunch’ snared first title in 1975

By: Mike Whaley

When the Oyster River High School boys won their first state basketball championship 50 years ago this month, there was no indication that might even be possible until the second half of the Class M season.

The previous year had not gone particularly well due to a lack of cohesion. The Bobcats went an uninspiring 8-10 to make the tournament, and then were quickly bumped out by rival Newmarket.

Doug Sumner recalls in the spring of 1974, the returning players were playing pickup basketball in Dave Durkee’s driveway. It started getting a little chippy. Everyone stopped, recalled Sumner, and there was the realization that they needed to unite for their senior season and dispense with the division and backbiting that plagued the ‘73-74 campaign if they were to challenge for a state title “We had to all be moving in the same directions,” Sumner said.

Another factor that played into all of this is that half of the team was made up of soccer players, which was Oyster River’s primary sport. That spring talk Sumner referenced also pertained to soccer. The Bobcats went onto have a great season, losing their only game in the state championship to Kearsarge in overtime – on corner kicks no less when that was used as an unfortunate tiebreaker.

Despite that pact, senior-ladened OR, dubbed the “Rag Tag Bunch.” did nothing in the early going of the 1974-75 season to suggest that a magical run was in store. In fact, the Bobcats struggled through the first half of the season at 4-6, the low ebb coming in Milton to Nute High, a demoralizing 68-52 drubbing.

These six members of the 1975 champs gathered for a 50th reunion on March 8. From left are Phil Reilly, Bill Shackford, Doug Sumner, Mike Whaley, Randy Kinzly and Jim Murphy.

The biggest change that helped turn the season around was to move two talented, but underutilized, underclassmen into more prominent roles in the starting lineup: junior forward Bill Shackford and sophomore guard Randy Kinzly. From that point on, Oyster River blossomed. The Bobcats went a stellar 8-2 to finish the regular season at 12-8.

It is important to note that the Bobcats played a brutal schedule that season, which undoubtedly helped prepare them for the playoffs. Of their 20 games, 16 were against tournament teams, including six vs. Class I squads Somersworth, Timberlane and St. Thomas.  “We were never badly beaten and it certainly made us ‘play up’ to competition,” said Shackford. 

Other than the Nute debacle, no team handled OR. Although they lost twice each to Somersworth Timberlane and Pittsfield, they were in every game. Pittsfield ended the season with a perfect 20-0 mark. The Bobcats dropped their opener at Pittsfield, 51-50, and then lost to them a few games later at home, 69-61. However, in that game, OR was ahead when Sumner cracked heads with classmate Durkee, requiring five stitches over an eye. He missed the rest of the game and Pittsfield won.

Sumner and Durkee, a co-captain, were two starters in the forecourt at a solid 6-2 and 6-4, respectively, along with the six-foot Shackford, while Kinzly was at one guard in the backcourt with senior co-captain Jim Murphy. Senior Steve Grant, a 6-1 forward/guard, was the super sub off the bench to complete the rotation OR used for the most part during the remainder second half of the season, along with senior guard Chris Congdon who saw spot duty in the backcourt spelling Murphy and Kinzly.

Bill Shackford.

Other games of note: The 134-51 thrashing of Raymond. Although there are no official state records for the regular season, that 134 has to be in the running for the most points in a single game (that’s 4.2 points per minute). OR beat rival Newmarket at home in double overtime, 49-45. There were also two hard-fought wins over Class I St. Thomas, 77-74 and 74-69. After the embarrassing loss to Nute in December, the Bobcats came back to beat the Rams at home, 60-54.

When the tournament rolled around, the Bobcats were seeded fifth behind No. 1 Woodsville, No. 2 Pittsfield, No. 3 Hinsdale and No. 4 Newmarket. Also making the 12-team field from the old Southeastern League were Nute, Farmington and Epping.

Doug Sumner.

Oyster River opened up the tournament at Plymouth State University vs. No. 12 Epping, who they had defeated twice during the season by 20 and 17 points. Murphy led the way in this one-sided affair (73-40) with 17 points.

Murphy was a master entertainer and the clear team leader. His boombox blasted a mixed tape in the locker room and during bus trips with him in the back colorfully leading lively team singalongs. The playlist featured, among others, Elton John’s “Crocodile Rock,” “Elderberry Wins,”and “Benny and the Jets,” as well as Jim Croce’s “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown,” Harry Chapin’s “Taxi” and “Chantilly Lace” by the Big Bopper.

Murphy was also the emotional spark plug. He fired up the Bobcats before each playoff game. The team would gather in the entryway to PSU’s Foley Gymnasium before they hit the floor. There Murphy would get everyone psyched up with his impassioned antics, pumping his fist and chanting with everyone joining in until the energized Bobcats were united as one before taking the floor for layups.

In the quarterfinals, the opponent was rival Newmarket, who had given the Bobcats one of their two second-half losses (66-58 in Newmarket). The season could have ended then and there. The Mules jumped out 14-4 after the first quarter, which would have been a death knell during the first part of the season. But one thing this OR team did well by that point in that season was not to get frazzled. They worked their way back into the game to trail 22-18 at the half. The second half was all Oyster River. Led by Murphy’s 14 points, OR took control 38-32 after three stops, en route to a 50-40 win. Shackford added nine points and Kinzly tossed in eight.

That set up a semifinal match with unbeaten Pittsfield (21-0), after Woodsville dispatched defending champion Hinsdale in the earlier semi, 42-37. One could make an argument that this was the championship. It was certainly worthy of being the nightcap on the semifinal card. At the end of regulation, nothing had been decided – tied at 42-all. Ditto after one overtime, 44-44. Led by Murphy and Kinzly, the Bobcats were finally able to get some separation in the second OT, outscoring the Panthers 13-6 to win, 57-50. Murphy and Kinzly each had 17 points, while Shackford chipped in with 10.

It was Oyster River’s third trip to a championship game. Previously, Bobcats teams had lost in two finals – in 1964 to Newmarket, 51-45; in 1967 to Tilton-Northfield, 64-59 OT.

Dave Durkee.

“Beating Pittsfield in the semis was like getting over a hump,” said Murphy. Sumner recalls going out for the second overtime and before the jump ball having a brief exchange with a Pittsfield guard who he had battled against for four years. “We shook hands and one of us, probably me because I don’t shut up, said ‘the winner is going to beat Woodsville.’ We looked each other in the eye and nodded.”

Woodsville, of course, was by then a Class M power coached by the legendary John Bagonzi. The Engineers had won titles in 1969, 1971 and 1973. The trademark of Bagonzi’s teams was their full court pressure, which unraveled unprepared teams and sometimes even prepared ones. “Even though Woodsville was well coached and very disciplined, we were a very athletic group, who could run, shoot, and were tough, especially on the boards,” said Shackford. “We just had to beat their press and we worked hard on it leading up to the finals.” That was the key. Oyster River was ready for the vaunted Woodsville pressure. It bothered them here and there. But mostly they broke it until it worked against the Engineers in the second half when foul trouble began to pile up. 

Woodsville came out fast to take a quick 6-0 lead. But the Bobcats caught their breath, regrouped and tied the game as Shackford dropped in three long jumpers from the left corner. It was a dogfight from there – until the fourth quarter. It was tied (10-10) after the first quarter. The Engineers led 26-24 at halftime, before Oyster River threatened to open the game up in the third when they surged to a 42-32 lead. Woodsville ended the quarter with a 10-2 run to cut the lead to 44-42 after three, and then sliced the lead to one to start the fourth. That was as close as they got. It was still a game with just under six minutes to play, 51-47. Then Murphy and Kinzly combined for 12 points during a 13-2 surge over the next four minutes that built the lead to 64-49 to put the game out of reach. At this point, OR was breaking Woodsville’s press with ease as the Engineers started fouling out, eventually losing four players. The Bobcats ended up scoring 32 points in the quarter to pull away for the convincing 76-56 victory – the first of five state titles for the boys and the only one in Class M/Division III. The other four (1988, 1992, 1995, 1996) were in Class I/D-II.

Jim Murphy, left, and Randy Kinzly.

It was a huge night for the Oyster River faithful. Everything went right in the end. As a team, the Bobcats shot 57-percent from the field (25 of 44) and 70-percent  from the foul line (26 of 37). Murphy led five players in double figures with 16 points, followed by Durkee (15), Shackford (14), Grant (13) and Kinzly (10).

Oyster River’s final record was 16-8, which included 12 wins in their final 14 games. The Bobcats’ eight losses is certainly one of the highest totals in state history for a champion, but it speaks to their difficult schedule and their ability to overcome adversity to finally come together at the right time. The Bobcats that people saw in December were a far cry from the honed outfit that hoisted the hardware in March. Fifty years later, the “Rag Tag Bunch” may not have the game they once had, but their championship status remains undeniable.

***

The Bobcats held a 50th reunion on March 8 in Portsmouth. Six former OR players were on hand. Sumner recounted this rather odd story. Last summer, a fellow on a motorcycle showed up at the Sumner house in Exeter. Sumner wasn’t home, and his wife told the guy as much, so he drove off. He returned several weeks later and this time Sumner was home. The guy, it turns out, had played for Pittsfield HS during the 1973-74 season. He did not play the following year on the undefeated team, he said, because he did not get along with the coach. Why was he at Sumner’s house? He wanted to tell Sumner that had he played in 1974-75, Pittsfield would have defeated Oyster River in that semifinal game. Talk about not letting something go.

Mike Whaley can be reached at whaleym25@gmail.com

The right approach: Maynard’s manner, efforts transformed Oyster River’s program

By: Mike Whaley

(This is the sixth in a series on the 2022 and 2024 inductees into the New Hampshire Basketball Coaches Organization’s Hall of Fame. The stories will run periodically during the winter season.)

Don Maynard was all about coaching the right way. Winning was certainly part of it, but Maynard was really concerned about doing things the right way. If you won, well, then all the better. Jeremy Friel, one of three Friels to play for Don, summed up his former coach like this: “Coach Maynard is the epitome of what a high school basketball coach should be: Organized, prepared, caring and fair. It was never about him and always about the team. The amount of time he put into the youth programs on Saturday mornings or with his basketball camps in the summer, from scouting to (logging stats from) games from film by himself, from organizing coaches clinics to summer league, and doing this all with teaching and a family is impressive. Being a high school coach myself now, I have an even greater appreciation for all of his efforts and time spent trying to make Oyster River basketball as competitive as it could be year in and year out. We were lucky to have him as our coach and at Oyster River.”

Don coached basketball at Oyster River for 26 years – 21 as a head coach (boys, 20 years). His coaching record was 310-168, which included three Class I boys championships in 1992, 1995 and 1996. He also taught physical education and served as the school’s athletic director. Last November he was one of seven inductees into the NHBCO Hall of Fame in Concord.

“We always knew Coach Maynard was passionate about basketball and really cared about the team, the kids and the community,” said Keith Friel, the school’s all-time scoring leader (2,148 points) and key player on back-to-back championship teams in 1995 and 1996. “He always brought energy and was very positive, especially in tough situations.”

Oyster River’s Brad Taylor, left, and Keith Friel celebrated back-to-back Class I state championships in 1995 and 1996. [Foster’s Daily Democrat photo]

Don grew up in Chelsea, Vermont, and attended college at Norwich University. He played two years of basketball for old-school coach Ed Hockenbury. Don recalls not really thinking about grad school until he received an inter-campus memo from Hockenbury to see him. It changed Don’s life.

He certainly wanted to coach. After he got done playing basketball, Don spent two years coaching the JV team at his high school in Chelsea. Hockenbury’s proposition was enticing. If Don wanted to be a graduate assistant, all he had to do was pay for room and board, the cost to pursue his master’s degree would be covered if he was a grad assistant. “The best year of college I had was my graduate year,” he said.

Don lived off campus with another grad assistant, Keith Boucher, who was also pursuing his master’s. Boucher is now the long-time women’s coach at Keene State College.

This is how Don got to Oyster River. He was invited to Boucher’s wedding, and there he met his future wife, Cheryl. She was attending the University of New Hampshire and living in Lee. Don moved to the area to be with her and started looking for work. He got a job teaching PE in Somersworth, which he did for one year in 1984-85. Cheryl was working as a certified occupational therapist at the Rollinsford Elementary School where she met Debbie Nichols who worked there. One day before basketball season, the two women were chatting. It came up that Don had played and coached basketball a little bit. Debbie mentions that her husband, Dave Nichols, is the head coach at Oyster River and he needs some help. Dave called Don up, and he was Dave’s assistant coach for the 1984-85 season. His foot was in the door.

The following year he taught PE in Barrington/Strafford, and was hired by Oyster River to coach four teams – freshman and JV soccer, JV basketball and varsity softball.

Oyster River coach Don Maynard, center, chats with Keith Courtemanche while Greg Friel twirls the ball during the Bobcats’ great run in the mid 1990s. [Foster’s Daily Democrat photo]

The following year he got hired to teach PE at Oyster River and kept the four coaching positions. He gave up the two soccer positions the following year, stayed with JV basketball and was hired as varsity baseball coach in place of softball. He became the head basketball coach in 1988. He gave up the baseball post to focus on one sport.

When Don took over the boys’ program in 1988, the Bobcats were coming off a Class I state championship under Nichols. Parental pressure led to his removal, although Nichols fought it and was eventually reinstated. At that point he resigned on his own terms.

Don was excited to be heading his own program. “I had an idea of what I wanted to do for offseason stuff,” he said. He got to the point where he had kids doing basketball pretty much year round except for a six-week window in September and October.

Don started a local AAU program called the Renegades, which involved grades 3-4 right up to high school. That carried through from the spring into the summer when there was summer basketball. Oyster River had a JV and varsity team that played in the summer league and also went to a team camp in Providence, Rhode Island. Between the league and the camp, the teams played 30 or so games. That’s’ not even mentioning Oyster River’s own camp held at the high school and run by Don. By the time all that was ending, school was starting up.

“That’s how the coaching experience was for years and years,” Don said. “I loved it. I’d see kids in first and second grade and then they’re coming up through the ranks and I’m coaching them in high school. You know what I miss? Seeing them get into it. Seeing the little kids come to the high school games. Having them in the locker room; little kids sitting on the lockers for the pregame stuff. Then they’d go out and form a line for the varsity kids to run through on their way onto the court. That was pretty cool.”

Don Maynard, back left, guided Oyster River to three Class I state titles in the 1990s, including back-to-back crowns. [Courtesy photo]

Don feels when he started the AAU program it gave basketball legitimacy in Durham. It made parents realize basketball is a pretty big deal too in a town where soccer had long been king. “For some reason, in their heads, that made it more valued, I guess,” Don said of the parents’ way of thinking. “It was more of a real sport, if that makes sense.”

The program really started to roll. “Seeing all those kids playing AAU. We had kids all over town wearing Oyster basketball and camp stuff. We were giving away Oyster River basketballs at camp. Whatever it took to get them hooked. We had it going pretty good, or at least I thought so.”

Don’s first state title in 1992 kind of came out of nowhere due mainly to the late enrollment through an exchange program of a 6-foot-4 Irish kid named Allan Conlan. “What a wonderful kid,” Don said. “Hard worker. Great fit. No ego at all. None of the kids on that team had egos.”

As Don recalled the team, Bryan Rutland was the shooter, Scott Poteet the point guard, and Russ DeForrest the other guard. “It was by committee after that,” Don said. “They just played hard. But they really defended.”

Don Maynard is pictured with his wife, Cheryl, and their granddaughter, Laney. [Courtesy photo)

Oyster River came on Conlan’s radar during the summer of 1991 when he played for an Irish team at an international basketball festival in Portsmouth. When Conlan came over, the Irish team stayed with families in the Durham area. Evidently, said Don, he had a good experience.

The festival was in early July. Come mid August and Don started hearing that Conlan was coming to America and that he wanted to go to Oyster River. Long story short, Conlan went through a recognized exchange program that had him lined up to attend the high school with a place to live by the first day of school. “It ended up being a great situation,” Don said. “He stayed with a family called the Belands. They treated him like a son. It could not have worked out better for everyone. He loved them. He loved Oyster River. He loved the team. He was a great kid.” Conlan loved New Hampshire so much that he stayed and went to college at Plymouth State, having a Hall of Fame career for the Panthers.

It was, however, no love fest with Oyster River’s Class I opponents who had to try to match up with the formidable Conlan. Unsurprisingly, the Bobcats were able to make a run, finding themselves in the championship at UNH on the final day of the Class I season against ConVal.

“That game was crazy,” Don remembered. “We got behind 18-4. ‘Holy crap, what are we going to do? Are we going to embarrass ourselves here?’ From that point, we gave up 33 points. We played defense.” OR won the championship in overtime, 58-51.

Some detractors felt it was unfair that the Bobcats had won the title with an exceptional exchange player. But, as Don noted, ConVal had a pretty good exchange force of its own in James Reilly, a 6-7 inside presence who Conlan knew from Ireland.

Don Maynard coached both of his sons at Oyster River High School – Steven and Trevor. He also coached his daughter, Riley. [Courtesy photo]

One memorable story Don has involves an angry parent who showed up at the shootaround before the championship at the Oyster River gym. He was complaining about, shocking as it may seem, his son’s playing time. He was firmly told to leave.

“What’s crazy, we’re getting our ass kicked (in the first half),” Don recalled. “The parent’s kid was an OK guard. I put him in. The first two times he touched the ball he nailed 3s and that really turned the game around in the second quarter. Isn’t that something? Part of me wanted to leave the kid on the bench. I gave him a chance. He goes out there and hits two huge shots.”

Brad Taylor introduced Don at the NHBCO Hall of Fame event. He thought the 1992 championship game was one of his coach’s finest moments. Taylor was there watching the game with a bunch of fellow eighth-graders. “You never noticed coach Maynard. He was never the show,” said Taylor. “But how he calmed his team down (after they fell behind big early). … We were in total awe of that ConVal team, but then they (Oyster River) came back and won in overtime. We sat there and said ‘that’s a guy we’re ready to play for.” It was incredible coaching. They were so undermanned compared to that (ConVal) team.”

After the 1992 championship, Don’s next group to come along is the best in program history – led by Keith and Greg Friel, the sons of former University of New Hampshire men’s basketball coach, Gerry Friel, who guided the Wildcats from 1969 to 1989. Given Oyster River’s long history of meddlesome parents, you might think this was going to be a problem. The opposite, in fact, was true. “Gerry might have been the best parent I ever had the opportunity to interact with,” Don said. “He was so supportive. He wouldn’t hesitate to say, ‘If my kid steps out of line, kick his ass.’”

Don could sit down and talk with Gerry about anything. “He wanted his kids held accountable,” Don recalled. “He wanted them playing both ends of the court. He was interested in body language and how they conducted themselves.”

Don said Gerry was never critical of him unless he felt Don was letting his kids get away with something. “If I wasn’t holding them to a high standard, he would be disappointed,” Don said. “But that didn’t happen often. He was great.”

In fact, for three or four summers, Gerry invited Don along to a coaches’ summit in Durham at the home of Knobby Walsh, a respected retired high school coach from Providence, Rhode Island. “He was extremely knowledgeable and extremely old school,” said Don of Knobby. “He would come to a game when Greg and Keith were playing, and he would take notes. He’d hand me four pages the next day of stuff he saw or things we should be doing. Sometimes it was a little intimidating.”

Don recalls the coaches’ summit at Knobby’s place. Gerry was there, of course, as was Dartmouth College coach Dave Faucher and Fairfield coach Paul Cormier, and several other coaches. “There were at least a half dozen sharing thoughts and ideas,” Don said. “I’m sitting there with my jaw on the floor.” As if it wasn’t a wonderful experience already for Don, in addition Knobby was a wonderful gourmet chef. He would periodically bring in mouth-watering dishes while talk of basketball carried on between bites. “That left an impression,” Don said.

When Keith Friel was a freshman in 1992-93, the team struggled but you could see that something good was coming. The following year, the team started slow, but ended on a hot streak and looked to be a dangerous team in the playoffs. After a first-round win, the Bobcats were doing a walkthrough the day before their quarterfinal game against No. 1 Lebanon at UNH. Keith seriously rolled his ankle. He tried to play in the game, but he couldn’t. Still, as Don recalled, they gave Lebanon a game, losing by a handful of points. “If he’d been healthy, I think we would have won that game and might be talking about three state championships in a row,” Don said.

Keith was the most celebrated of the five Friels, all of whom scored over 1,000 points at Oyster River and later played NCAA Division I college basketball: Keith (Notre Dame/Virginia), Greg (Dartmouth), Jennifer (UNH), Jeremy (UNH) and Jill (UNH).

The 1994-95 season was a very good one with a mostly underclassmen team. It was actually after January when the lone senior was declared academically ineligible. The Bobcats were very good. You had the two Friels, who everyone knew about. But the supporting cast and even the bench were top notch. Scrappy guard Brad Taylor, 6-5 Dan Kowal and sharpshooting Keith Courtemanche rounded out an outstanding starting five. The first few guys off the bench would have started on any other team, according to Don. “Sometimes they would come into the game and there was very little drop off,” he said. “That’s something I always took some pride in. On my team, you’d have a kid come off the bench, the skill level might be different, but they knew what they were doing. So it was obvious every kid was coached, not just the so-called starters. It didn’t matter if you were the ninth, 10th, 11th player. Whatever. You were going to get on the court and you were going to play hard and know what to do.” 

Three key reserves during that two-year title stretch were Doug Pitman, Gordon Matthews and Tom Getz.

The biggest challenge with that team, especially in 1995-96, was playing time. Because the Bobcats were winning by large margins, the starters were lucky to play half the game. “It was tough because obviously the kids want to play,” Don said. “They’d get a big lead and the next thing you know I’ve got kids sitting on the bench. I want to get them in the game. Sometimes that was a little tricky. I want them to play too.”

Don had the respect of the players. “If there was a problem, we could always talk to him – ‘hey listen, we need to pick up the pace or whatever.’ He was open,” said Greg Friel. “He was a physical education teacher. He had a grip on the school. He knew what was going on. He knew what kids were doing what.”

Greg recalls before the 1995 championship game, all the players got Mohawk haircuts. Greg got the idea from Conlan when he shaved an Irish Shamrock on the back of his head before the 1992 championship game. Don even joined the team by shaving his head. “He was still young enough and hip enough. ‘All right  I can still do this. Let’s go.’”

Taylor remembers the Mohawk moment. In some ways it perfectly captured the loose and free-spirited nature of a team that Tayor said Don allowed “to be idiots 10 years before the Red Sox did. He let us be who we are.”

Taylor smiled, adding, “We thought on Gerry Friel’s homecourt we could embarrass our parents, our girlfriends, and everybody else as quickly as we could, and relax everybody. Lebanon didn’t know what was going on. We all looked like a band of idiots. We were misfits. But we were relaxed, chilled, and ready to go as massive underdogs in my opinion.”

The OR “misfits” did in fact beat Lebanon for the 1995 title, 55-52. As they got ready to defend its title, Don made sure that the Bobcats played the best competition. They played in the Queen City Invitational in Manchester over the Christmas break. They met Manchester Central in that championship before a huge crowd. “We absolutely got our asses kicked,” Don said. “It was a good experience. The kids realized they had to play defense to beat anyone. Central played defense. That was humbling.. But it had the kids’ attention the rest of the year.”

The season culminated with a repeat at UNH over Bishop Brady, 58-49 – avenging their only loss of the season to Brady in Concord. That’s another game Don remembers, not so much for the loss but for the fact that Brad Taylor nearly killed himself crashing into the stage. “He hit the stage head-on diving for a loose ball,” Don said. “I thought for certain he had broken his neck.”

Keith Friel said that Don “was always open to hearing and asking what we saw out there and what we thought and also being firm, too, for the most part. Like knowing when Greg needed to be kicked out of practice.”

The Friel boys were almost always matched up against each other in practice, which often became a volatile situation because they were so competitive. “He was constantly hacking me during every drill,” Keith recalled. “I’m like ‘Dude …’ I’v got him (Greg) chirping at me as we’re going head to head. I’m sure it was a lot to manage , but we were all very passionate about basketball.”  Of course, again, Don had the complete backing of the Friel parents, so any reasonable punishment was supported without question.

The Brady squad was no slouch with a core of excellent players, many of whom went on to play in college, including the Collins brothers and Marshall Crane. As Don recalled, the following season the Bobcats, with only Greg Friel back from the 1995-96 core, nearly pulled off a major upset over the heavily-favored Giants in the quarters at UNH. “It would have been the biggest upset of my coaching career,” Don said. “Instead, it’s one of my hardest losses.”

In the waning seconds of a tie game, Greg was fouled and stepped to the line to take two foul shots with two teammates back to defend. He hit the second one to give OR a one-point lead with 1.4 seconds to play. Brady’s Billy Collins quickly inbounded the ball after the make, throwing a baseball pass the length of the floor to Crane who somehow caught the ball under the basket with two defenders on him and was fouled trying to score. He made both foul shots for the win. “That was tough,” Don said. “To this day, I second guess that.”

It just went to show that you never know. Don mentioned a game just before the 1992 playoffs in which the Bobcats were throttled by Pembroke by almost 40 points. The Concord Monitor called it “The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.” Two weeks later, OR beat the Spartans by one point in the semifinals. “I tell kids, you never know,” he said. “That’s why you play the game.”

Don continued to coach through 2008. He coached another Friel (Jeremy) and later his sons, Steven and Trevor, and even, as an assistant, coaching his daughter, Riley. He enjoyed that experience. “”The only rule I had was, I would not talk basketball at home or in the car after practice unless they brought it up,” he said. “In the gym, I was ‘Coach.’ Any other time I was their dad.”

Trevor Maynard loved playing for his dad. He still gets the odd comment about how playing for his dad must have been tough. He pushes right back. “No, I absolutely loved it,” Trevor said. “Looking back, I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.”

Not that Trevor had it easy. He certainly felt at the time that because he was the coach’s kid he had “to justify my playing time and be good enough so that when he put me in and I was getting my minutes, there was no doubt in my mind or anybody else’s mind that I was playing because I deserved it and not because I was the coach’s kid.”

That’s why Trevor worked so hard. “I didn’t want anyone to go to him and say ‘why the hell are you playing your kid when my kid should be getting playing time over him?’ I always tried to take that upon myself. I need to be the best one out on the court, so that when I do play every minute or I play a majority of the minutes, no one’s going to question that. Parents could be really tough, and he always handled those conversations really well.”

Don acknowledged that while he enjoyed the experience of coaching his boys, it was also tougher for them. “They were the first ones to come out of the game. Maybe they were the ones that had to more than prove themselves,” he said. “That part was a little bit tough.”

But the positives by far outweigh the negatives. Don’s kids were around the game at a very young age and that meant being around the Oyster River program. “They were in the gym during basketball camp and they were in the gym during basketball practice,” he said. “I think every one of my kids ended up being in a backpack at practice at some point. That’s the way it was. They grew up around it.”

Don’s final year was 2007-08 with the boys team, although he would coach the girls as the head coach later on. It was a great year until the end. The Bobcats put together the program’s only undefeated regular season, but were upset at UNH by Pembroke in the quarterfinals. The Spartans had a quality player who missed a chunk of the season, but was ready for the playoffs to make them a much tougher nut to crack than their lower seeding suggested. Don recalls in the final 10 seconds down one, his point guard was knocked down at the top of the key by several Pembroke players. “Game over. The referees left the court. It was just over,” he said. At the time, the tournament was running three referees, which was not the case during the season. Don said the referees looked at each other like it was someone else’s call. “No call is ever made. The horn goes off. Game over. ‘Are you kidding me?’” he said. “It ended up being my last game in Trevor’s senior year.”

Looking back, Don recalls his practices which were always in motion with not much standing around. “We’d frequently start out with some ball control drills,” he said. “For 90 minutes I wanted my team moving. We didn’t do a lot of actual running or conditioning. I figured we had them going for 90 minutes. That was the conditioning.”

He also didn’t announce starters. “We’re a team,” Don said. “No one is going to have the title of starter. People would know. They’re part of the team. You’re not a bench warmer. You’re not a starter. You all have your own roles. We’re a team.”

In practice, Don would mix the players up. But at some point, he would make sure those who would be starting were playing together. “I just wanted every kid to feel like he had a role,” Don said.

The Oyster River experience was an excellent one for Don Maynard. “”I’m so appreciative of the quality of kids I had to work with,” he said. “I had so many kids who worked so hard. The older I get, the more I appreciate that.” And, of course, that appreciation works both ways, certainly more than the overly modest coach would ever care to admit. But it’s absolutely true.

Mike Whaley can be reached at whaleym25@gmail.com

Destination Buffalo: Great Bay embraces its journey to the nationals

By: Mike Whaley

A direct route to your final destination is not always the way it goes. How about the paths taken by four key players for the conference champion Great Bay Community College men’s basketball squad? Three started at other schools before winding up at GBCC, while a fourth began there fresh out of high school, left for two years, but now is back. All four are playing key roles as the Herons prepare for their second trip to the United State Collegiate Athletic Association (USCAA) Division II Tournament, set for March 11-15 in Buffalo, New York.

Great Bay is currently in the midst of the finest season in program history. On Sunday, the Herons captured their first Yankee Small College Conference playoff championship with a 71-55 win over VTSU-Randolph to improve to a school-record 22-5. No. 4 GBCC opens up the nationals on Wednesday, 10:30 p.m., in Buffalo against No. 5 Penn State Schuylkill in the Elite Eight.

Two years ago, the Herons barely qualified for their first national tournament as the 10th and final seed. But they made some noise with two upset wins to make the USCAA Final Four before they were eventually eliminated. Last year the team went 18-8 and lost in the conference semis.

All-Conference forward Theo Wolfe, a 6-5 senior, originally came to New England from Kissimmee, Florida, in 2019, spending a year at UMaine-Machias with some ex-AAU teammates. He returned to Florida when the school’s athletic programs were suspended during the Covid-19 pandemic. They are still suspended. Junior Mpore “MP” Semuhoza went from Deering High School in Portland, Maine, to Central Maine CC, where he had a solid first year, but was looking for something else. Keith Landry, a 6-5 senior forward, graduated from Belmont High School in 2020, enrolled at Plymouth State University, but was cut from the basketball team. Ethan May headed to Great Bay in 2019 from Londonderry High School, played two years and then moved on with his life equipped with a welding certificate.

All four eventually ended up at, or back, at Great Bay. It is impossible to imagine the Herons’ current run of success without them – or without the deepest team in the conference. “We rotate 10 guys, so there’s plenty of contribution going on,” coach Alex Burt said. “Other (teams) might go 6, 7, 8 (deep), we generally go 10.”

May might just have been the missing piece on this year’s team as a quality secondary scorer and a veteran defensive stopper. He played two years at Great Bay (2019-20, 2021, 22), sandwiched around a missed Covid year. Once he had his welding credentials he felt he was ready to move on. It had been a difficult three years juggling a commuter school’s academic schedule, basketball and working full time. “It was hectic. I thought I was just ready for life,” he said.

It turns out he wasn’t. He was away for two years working, but his basketball passion was still there pulsating in the background. “I was coming to games,” May said. “I saw them get smacked by NHTI (in the 2024 conference semifinals, 95-78). I played pickup and stuff. I still kept relatively with it. It’s always been my first love. I’m a defensive guy. So (it was tough) to see them get smacked because of defense. I was in the stands rubbing my knees; like, man, I want to get out there.” He was convinced he needed to return to Great Bay.

Semuhoza, at 6-4 forward, went from high school to Central Maine CC. in 2022-23. He played 13 games, averaging a very solid 7.9 points and 5.8 rebounds per game as a freshman. He had some buyer’s remorse because Burt had recruited him out of high school. “I just felt like Great Bay would work better for my game,” he said. “I felt like I was something Great Bay needed at the time, like a spark. He (Burt) gave me a chance and I appreciate Coach for that.”

Landry went to Plymouth, but got cut from the team in 2020. “Burt reached out the next day asking if I wanted to come run with the team and see if I liked it here,” he said.

Burt said Landry “was a kid I had on my radar in the past. I didn’t care if I was Plan A or Plan B, for anyone really. I just know who I want and when they’re ready to come to me, I give them everything I’ve got. It’s been a long-term relationship.” Landry has played four years, which is allowed, even though Great Bay and many colleges in the YSCC are two-year institutions.

When Wolfe left UMaine-Machias after one season in 2020, he thought he was all done with basketball. “I put down the basketball and started pursuing some other things, pursuing photography,” he said. One of Wolfe’s old teammates returned north to play for Great Bay. He reached out to Wolfe and eventually Wolfe reached out to coach Burt. He remembered Great Bay from his Machias days. “I really admired the way they were moving the ball and the way they were playing as a team,” he said. After two years away from the game, Wolfe was ready for a comeback at Great Bay. “I gave up basketball and Coach kind of talked me back into it,” he said.

The impact of these four players this year has been evident. “Ethan May was the x-factor,” said Wolfe. “I wholeheartedly believe if it were not for Ethan May we would not be where we’re at.” Wolfe noted that in the championship game, May held Randolph star Jaylon Calvin to seven first-half points that allowed Great Bay to jump out to a 35-27 lead at the half and eventually pull away in the second half to claim their first conference championship.

“He’s definitely our hidden gem defensively,” coach Burt said of May. “He’s a winner at heart. He’s willing to do whatever it takes for the team. He was ready to dive back in and give a little more for the guys around him.”

May wasn’t initially sure if he was going to go back to Grreat Bay, and then when he did, he wasn’t sure what he would be able to bring to the table. He was part of a team reset that pulled the team together after an 0-2 start. “To see it unfold and everyone understand what they needed to bring,” May said. “It was amazing to see. We put our egos aside and did exactly what we needed to do.” The Herons rattled off 14 straight wins.

It took May a while to regain the old confidence. By mid January he started to see remnants of his former self. “It was tough getting that rhythm and flow back and feeling confident in my shot,” he said. “I was zero percent from 3 the first semester. It was good for myself to finally see that ball go in. I started to get more confident.” His stat line is quite tidy: 9.3 points, 4.5 rebounds, 4.2 assists, and 2.5 steals per game.

“He really painted the picture of what the program could be with us trying to be more defensive,” said Burt of May’s return to Great Bay, which came at a time when the team was switching its emphasis to defense. “Thankfully he was ready to go. He was guarding the best guards, the best wings, literally every single night. We were asking him to cover ridiculous tasks. He was just more than willing, more than able to do it.”

Semuhoza came in last year and had an immediate impact averaging 12.3 points and 5.4 rebounds per game. The Herons went 18-8, but lost in the conference semis. This year, he has been one of the main guys – second in scoring (15.6) and rebounding (8.6), which has helped to soften the blow of losing a pair of big scorers in All-American Kingsley Breen and Bryce Gibson. “I’m kind of an all-around guy and one of our leaders,” said Semuhoza, who was named All-YSCC Second Team.

“MP made a massive jump from last year to this year with his belief in what I was trying to do with the team,” said coach Burt. “He fit in with that.”

Landry has grown in his four years to the point he is now a veteran, a captain and one of the team’s key players. “I’m definitely more involved in the offense and I’m one of the primary defenders,” said Landry, who is averaging 7.7 points, 3.8 rebounds and 2.3 assists per game. “I definitely needed to space the floor for people like Theo and MP to make life easier for those guys.”

Wolfe has been a great three-year player for the Herons, scoring a school record 1,475 points. As good as his first two years were, this season he was even better. He led the nation and the YSCC in scoring (24.9 ppg), and was tops in the YSCC in rebounding (12.2) and second in the nation. He was named All-YSCC First Team. “We were a little motivated by that (losing in the semis last year),” he said. There was also a sense of urgency to find success because it was his last year.

Burt has seen Wolfe’s game expand in three years. “Theo has gained a stronger understanding of how to be effective,” the coach said. “There are times we need him inside, on the outside, off the ball, on the ball. He’s grown tremendously as a person and a player.”

All four were pivotal in Sunday’s championship win over Randolph. Wolfe led the way with 18 points and 13 rebounds. Landry sparked the Herons in the first half with 14 of his 17 points, making 5-of-8 3-pointers in the game. Semuhoza did not score in the first half, but he stayed composed and helped in the second half, ending with seven points and eight boards. May did a nice job defending Randolph’s Calvin, making him work for his 18 points. He also scored 12 points of his own, 10 coming in the second half. May and Semuhoza split eight points during a devastating late 13-0 run that built the lead to 71-50 in the final minute to put the game on ice.

Landry was laser focused on Sunday, especially after what happened in the semis last year against NHTI. It was personal. “It was my birthday,” he said. “I couldn’t lose on my birthday. I lost on my birthday last year to NHTI (by 18 points). I just couldn’t lose on my birthday again.” And by winning, Landry (and the Herons) got the best birthday basketball gift of all – a bid to the nationals.

Mike Whaley can be reached at whaleym25@gmail.com

Check out a full photo gallery of the YSCC title game by Michael Griffin…

Great Bay Men vs. VT Randolf (03.02.25) - Michael Griffin
Great Bay Men vs. VT Randolf (03.02.25) – Michael Griffin
110 photos

Buddy of the North: Trask established Colebrook’s winning tone and legacy

By Mike Whaley

(This is the fifth in a series on the 2022 and 2024 inductees into the New Hampshire Basketball Coaches Organization’s Hall of Fame. The stories will run periodically during the winter season.)

It’s funny how things work out. In 1976 George H. “Buddy” Trask III and his future wife, Mary, were all set to throw caution to the wind. They were heading to Florida without a definite plan other than to try to find work as teachers and coaches.

It was Labor Day Weekend. Buddy was finishing out his job for the Mount Washington Cog Railway. The seasonal position ended in October and then Buddy and Mary were headed to the Sunshine State.

Both young Plymouth State University graduates tried to find teaching jobs but with no luck. The telephone situation at the Cog Railway wasn’t perfect. You didn’t get calls. You got messages. Sunday morning of that weekend, Buddy had a message from Mary Nugent, a teacher at Stratford High School in North Stratford, where Buddy went to school. He called her and was told that Stratford’s physical education teacher had left for another job. Could Buddy come in and substitute? Of course he could.

That phone call opened a door to teaching and coaching that spanned 45 years in the North Country. Buddy went on to teach physical education and coach soccer and basketball at Stratford and then Colebrook Academy. At the Academy, he was the force behind pushing the school’s athletic teams into the spotlight. When he got there in 1980, Colebrook had never won a state championship –  in any sport. When he retired for good in 2022, the state titles count was 12 under his watch (the girls hoop team added the school’s 13th in 2023). Three of those championships were for boys basketball coached by Buddy, including the school’s initial state title in any sport in 1997. He is one of five high school coaches in New Hampshire with 600 or more wins in basketball with 606, all for boys. The others? Dan Parr (704, 627 boys, 77 girls), Dave Smith (669 boys), Gary Jenness (641 girls), and John Fagula (624 girls).

The Colebrook gymnasium was renamed Trask Gymnasium in 2022 after Buddy and Mary, who have a combined 70-plus years of coaching and teaching between them.

In 1997, Buddy Trask coached the Colebrook Academy boys basketball team to the Class S championship, the school’s first-ever state title. [Courtesy photo]

In addition, Buddy was the perfect ambassador for the North Country, representing the northern schools on various New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Association (NHIAA) committees for more than a quarter of a century. “The North Country got well represented,” said Jenness, who coached at Groveton and White Mountains.

Last November, Buddy was one of seven inductees into the New Hampshire Basketball Coaches Organization’s Hall of Fame in Concord. The NHBCO honored its 2022 and 2024 classes.

Back in 1976, of course, Buddy didn’t envision the longevity or the success. He was just trying to get going in life. The railway was accommodating when Buddy told them of his work opportunity at Stratford HS. “I was supposed to stay through the fall,” he said. “‘I might be back in a week. I’ve got to take this. They said ‘go ahead.’”

Monday he packed his stuff to head to Stratford where his mother still lived, so he had a place to stay. Tuesday he was sitting in a teacher’s meeting and Wednesday he was teaching. It was a good fit for Buddy. He had gone to school there, so he knew all the teachers. “I knew the system. I knew how the classes went,” he said. “I knew all that stuff. I wasn’t going in (blind). Except I wasn’t planning on teaching (there) two days before.”

A week later he was called into the office. They liked what he was doing. Did he want the job for the rest of the year? “I obviously said ‘Yes,’” Buddy chuckled. “Sometimes it comes down to luck. Who knows what would have happened if we ended up going to Florida? I have no idea what the deal would have been.”

Buddy Trask hoists the 1997 Class S championship plaque. [Courtesy photo]

His contract at the time was $5,200 for that school year. He was also asked to coach basketball and baseball. Within a month he added athletic director to his work load.  Ken Grimes, one of his old baseball coaches, approached him with a folder. “‘I know you want to be the athletic director,’” Grimes said. “‘Here’s the folder. I’ll go up to the office and tell the principal that you’re the new AD.”

Grimes and Larry Clough were the baseball co-coaches when Buddy was in high school. When he was a junior and a senior they let him and several other players do some coaching – making the lineup, coaching third base. “They wouldn’t let me go hog wild,” Buddy said. “But they kind of let me do stuff, which was very nice of them at the time. I guess they saw something in me that I didn’t see.”

You’re thinking that Buddy coached basketball for 45 years and won 606 games, so right out of the gate his teams were successful. Right? Wrong. “It was an experience. My first year we were 2-18,” he recalled. “Stratford was definitely in a downturn at the time.”

Buddy did not make it easy for the Stratford kids. “It was the Bobby Knight era,” he said. “There was a lot of running, a lot of discipline involved. A lot of ‘who’s the boss!’ This is how I’m going to do things. … Those kids hung tough. They stuck with it. I give them all the credit in the world. I was probably not the best person to get along with.”

Stratford certainly wasn’t winning games. Buddy’s close friend Dale Ramsay recalls he was home from Keene State College for an extended six-week winter break because of the energy crisis. The first thing words out of Buddy’s mouth when he saw Ramsay was hardly a greeting. It was a no-nonsense announcement: “‘You’re coaching the JV team.’ He didn’t ask me. He told me.” It was a whirlwind schedule. Buddy had scheduled 12 games in six weeks. “We went 1-11. It was a miracle we won one,” Ramsay said.

The one game on the schedule that presented itself as a possible win was Orford, which is no longer a school (it’s now part of an interstate school Rivendell Academy. It plays in Vermont with the Green Mountain State towns of Fairlee, West Fairlee and Vershire).

Colebrook Academy’s gymnasium is named for Buddy and Mary Trask. [Courtesy photo]

Ramsay and Buddy remembered the game. “We’ve got a chance,” Ramsay said. “We’re in the game. Buddy gets a technical to fire everyone up. We end up winning.”

Buddy remembers getting back to his house at midnight and he and Ramsay celebrated. “We stayed up until six in the morning because I didn’t know if I was going to win another game,” he recalled. “Fortunately, Orford came to our place.”

That was the inauspicious beginning. It got better. From two wins, his teams won 8, 10 and 11 games at Stratford. Jenness recalls reffing some of those Stratford games, which were hard to officiate. “They had some talent. They were quick,” he said. “I don’t know if he called it a scramble defense. I called it kamikaze because they were all over the place. Everywhere he coached he just made them better than they really were.”

Buddy had some good groups coming up at Stratford. He was getting excited and then in 1980 he got called into the office again. This time the news was not so good. His teaching job was being cut in half. That wasn’t going to work for Buddy, even if he was living at home.

As Buddy recalled, there were some Stratford teachers who lived in Colebrook and they really liked him. He wanted to see through the current Stratford group, but the pay was a problem. A job opened at Colebrook. He went in for an interview with the School Board, superintendent, principal and an elementary school teacher. “I go in for the interview. Every single question was about athletics,” he said. They weren’t having me there to teach. The teaching was a secondary job. Athletics was the job.”

Buddy pauses for a few seconds. “I got the job,” he said. “There I was for the next 40-something years.”

The job description was full. Not only did Buddy teach elementary PE, but he was also the athletic director and coached three high school sports: soccer, basketball and baseball. That didn’t last long. “We were Class M when I got there,” he said. “Sixty to 70 percent (of the athletes) played three sports. I kind of realized that come March, they’re probably sick of me and I’m sick of them.” He cut baseball loose after a year or two.

Buddy and Mary Trask are pictured with their two children, Corey and Kevin. [Courtesy photo]

But he was still very busy. In fact, once he married Mary and she got a job teaching PE  and coaching at Colebrook, they rarely saw each other for a 25-year span. Mary coached the girls soccer team, winning a state title in 2002 with their daughter Corey on the team. She was also an assistant coach with the girls’ hoop team.

Buddy remembers his third year was his first year going to the playoffs at Plymouth State as the Colebrook coach. They traveled down in limousines. “Well, this Colebrook thing isn’t bad,” he thought. “If we make the playoffs, we’re all going in limos. That apparently was a one-year deal.”

Those early years were a struggle for the most part. Class M was too big. Eventually they were able to get to Class S where they belonged. Another challenge Buddy had to contend with was established coaches at the younger levels who were doing their own thing. “My deal was I can always fix it when it gets to me,” he said. “After a while I knew that wasn’t happening. There had to be a revamp at some point, which would happen.”

What was concerning was that Buddy had several losing seasons in a row. What quite possibly held things in check was that he had better success at soccer, a sport where he had less experience. “The soccer was taking off so you didn’t hear much about basketball,” he said. He coached soccer for 27 years at Colebrook over two tours, winning 242 games and making 24 tournaments, including a trip to the final in 1994 (3-1 loss to Derryfield).

As the 1980s came to a close, Buddy was able to start making coaching changes at the younger levels. “By then I had been around long enough. I had some of my kids who had played for me involved in taking over the elementary program, etc. We were getting our basketball level up to par. Gradually we started to have some kids.” The good groups began to come.

Buddy always told his youth coaches that he wanted two to three new players every year to come up and help the team. If there were more, even better. “They didn’t have to be really good,” he said. “I wanted two or three people who were going to stay with the program. We run a hard program. They weren’t going to quit. They were going to be able to deal with the stuff we were throwing at them and stay. We gradually started to get that.”

Buddy Trask’s first year as a head basketball coach was in 1976-77 at Stratford High School. He was 22. [Courtesy photo]

Indeed Buddy was hard. He practiced six days a week, two and half to three hours a day in the preseason, and then two hours a practice once the season started. As he got older and smarter, he joked, he shortened the lengths, but the difficulty factor remained.

“Those kids had to be prepared mentally and physically,” he said. “Hey, when you come to our program and when you get done with our program, you know you’ve accomplished something. You’re going to be ready for anything in life that’s going to be thrown at you.”

The big thing with Buddy was no excuses. “That was a key word from day one. There are no excuses. I don’t want to hear anyone talking about the officials or a mistake anyone else made. We lost because we didn’t do the things we needed to do. We need to get better.” Which they did.

The first season Buddy noticed the turnaround in motion was 1989-90 when a team led by Dan Fournier made the quarterfinals. The following year they got to the finals against a strong Epping squad that was in the midst of a three-year title run in four years. The Blue Devils were a heavy favorite to win. Colebrook earned its berth by edging Orford (remember them?) in the semis by a point. “Once we got over the initial shock of being in the final, I was thinking I hope we score in the first quarter and don’t get embarrassed.”

Colebrook did not embarrass itself. Far from that, they made it a game. They were ahead of Epping at times in the first half. They ended up losing by a very respectable 62-54. They felt really good about the following year with a lot of their top players back. What Buddy did not factor in was the huge leadership void they lost when Quinn Hurlburt graduated. “You don’t realize it at the time. He was the leader on the floor.”

A proud moment for Buddy Trask was presenting his son Kevin with a game ball after he scored his 1,000th career point for Colebrook Academy. Kevin played for the Mohawks from 1997 to 2001. [Courtesy photo]

The following year the Mohawks had a very good season, earned a first round bye and played a less formidable Epping squad in the quarters with only two returning starters versus the four that Colebrook had. Epping blew them out by 15. “That was a huge downer,” Buddy said. “But we were on our way just the same.”

From 1993 to 2000, Colebrook was winning 80-percent of its games. Now they were getting to the semis or the finals almost every year. “We were there. Group after group was coming. Everything was clicking.”

Of course, Colebrook had its history still hanging over its head. The success was changing, but the number of championship banners remained the same – zero. Buddy knew one was coming.

That first championship group came in as freshmen in 1993-94, led by Lance Boire, Adam Martel and Travis Haynes, a strong core of three-sport athletes. They had excellent leaders that helped set the tone when they were younger.

By the time they were seniors, they were ready. They lost one game during a season in which they did not have a lot of close games. Profile provided the staunchest opposition, beating the Mohawks once and losing by a handful in the second. In the playoffs Colebrook stopped a tough Stratford squad in the quarters, and then overwhelmed high-scoring Nute in the semis by 20.

Their opponent in the final was surprising Alton, but Colebrook looked like it was going to get it done, carrying a double-figure lead into the fourth quarter. Buddy mentioned a big key is trying to win at the end of the quarter, and they did it three times. The Mohawks hit a 3-pointer at the end of the first, had a steal and layup to go into halftime, and another 3 to conclude the third, Eric Biron’s only hoop of the game.

Eight minutes to go. “Fourth quarter,” Buddy said. “Colebrook has never won a championship. Ever. In anything. That’s all these kids have heard about for years.”

Colebrook started to feel that pressure. Things began to unravel. They did things they didn’t normally do. When Alton slapped a press on, usually the Mohawks would have had no trouble with it. They turned the ball over. Alton hit some shots. Down to the final minute and it’s anybody’s game.

“We were playing conservatively,” Buddy recalled. “We were playing not to lose. Usually when you play not to lose, you lose.”

Colebrook had the ball in a tie game with under a minute to play. Twice they hit one foul shot to go up two points. Defense was huge. Always a zone guy up until that point, Buddy was convinced to go man-to-man with the help of his then assistant coach Tim Purrington. Man-to-man defense became especially necessary on the big floor at Plymouth where the season concluded. “With this group we changed to man,” he said. “Teams even then were learning to pull (the ball) out. At some point we’re going to need to be able to play man. We might as well be able to play it all the time.” 

With under 10 seconds to play, Alton had the ball on the end line under Colebrook’s basket. They had to go the length of the floor to tie or win it. “We were not going to lose to them,” Buddy said. “We were playing to win. We manned up; denied up, stole the ball and we won. … When push came to shove, they defended and they won.” Final score: Colebrook 52, Alton 50.

Bedlam. Euphoria. You name it. “The town of Colebrook went nuts,” Buddy said. “The line of cars, fire engines and stuff from Twin Mountain to Colebrook was like three miles long. When we got to town, they had fire alarms going off everywhere. It was an amazing, amazing scene. The gym was full – 600/700 people. The monkey was off.”

Colebrook was always in the mix for the next 15 years. Good groups kept coming. At that point, Buddy’s son, Kevin, was nearing the age when he could play for his dad. He played four years for the Mohawks, scoring a school-record 1,645 points. Buddy remembers that even as a freshman, Kevin was drawing specialty defenses to stop him. They had their moments too, but most of that was early on when Kevin incurred a case of “sophomore-itis” as a freshman (a know-it-all malady). They butted heads a little bit. It smoothed out as Kevin got older. He knew the drill. He knew what was expected. After Colebrook, Kevin went on to a Hall of Fame career across the Connecticut River at Vermont State University–Lyndon.

There were several losses in the semis and then Kevin’s senior year came around in 2000-01. It was Colebrook and Groveton as the favorites, and when the dust cleared on championship day, they were the last two standing. Buddy was going against his good friend, Mark Collins, who he had convinced to take the Groveton job in the late 1980s. Groveton to that point had Colebrook’s number. In fact, the Eagles were in the midst of an impressive run of success having won the last three titles.

“Our history is Mark Collins, the coach, and I are best friends,” Buddy said. “Our families are best friends. We grew up together. Our kids grew up together. We’re always at each other’s houses all the way up through. Now we’re in the final against each other. We’ve got that whole dynamic going. They were going for their fourth.” Another storyline was that in addition to Buddy’s son Kevin playing in his last game for Colebrook, Collins’ son Tod was suiting up for his final game for the Eagles.

Jenness recalls when Kevin and Tod were youngsters, they were fixtures at the after-game get-togethers at one house or the other. “They were funny when they were little. They had a little five-foot hoop and they would be playing basketball. ‘Colebrook’s better than Groveton.’ ‘Groveton’s better than Colebrook.’ They’d be dunking the ball. When they were little like that, when their father’s team lost, they would cry. It was good watching them grow up.” Tod sadly passed away at age 22 in 2005.

Except, of course, now the hoop was 10 feet high and there was an actual state championship on the line in a packed gym. Groveton ended up pulling out a 74-73 win in what Buddy feels is one of the best championship games in New Hampshire high school history. “You couldn’t ask for a better final,” he said. “As far as comeback, as far as drama, as far as excitement.”

Because of foul trouble and a game-ending injury to the indispensable Mike Porreca (broken collar bone), Buddy had to use several players who had not had any meaningful minutes all season. Plus, several key juniors had off games.

The defining moments came in the game’s final 30 seconds. Up one, Colebrook had the ball out of bounds and could not pass it into play. They lost it. They forced a Groveton turnover, but then missed the free throws. The Eagles came down the floor with less than 10 seconds to play, making a pass to a kid situated below the foul line. Buddy recalled the shot: “He turned around, threw up (a shot) underhanded and the ball went in the basket.” Groveton was up one.

Colebrook had five seconds to go the length of the floor to win it, but they couldn’t and they lost. “That was heartbreaking,” Buddy said. 

“We basically got the last shot. That’s why we won,” added Collins, who finished his 38th year at Groveton on Thursday with a loss in the tournament quarterfinals at Concord Christian. “It was a big game. We ended up winning that night.”

During that era, Colebrook-Groveton games were standing room only – the kind of crowds that screamed fire-code violation. “The lines started about two hours before the game to get into the gyms,” Collins said. “When that game was coming, that was the talk three days before. ‘Who’s going to win? Who’s going to do this? Who’s going to do that?’ Both teams were very good back then. That’s basically what it was. The place was packed.”

Coming off the 2001 heartbreak, Colebrook still had a very good team returning. Good enough, in fact, to get back to the final and against Groveton, who was now going for its fifth straight title.

Plus, of course, Groveton had Colebrook’s number. Well, at that point, everyone’s number. “They’ll let you know that they’re the champs, for sure,” Buddy said. He recalls the bus ride to Plymouth for the championship. Once they got near Groveton driving south, signs started popping up along the road – “Five in a row.” “One for the Thumb.” Buddy was shaking his head. “There was all this stuff – ‘Colebrook’s good until they get to Plymouth.’ It was like that all the way down. Our kids were looking at this all the way down.”

It wasn’t a bad thing. In fact, Buddy felt they were getting focused. “Not a word was said. The bus was dead quiet all the way down. Nothing,” he said. “I kind of knew we were ready to go.”

The key player that season for the Mohawks was senior point guard Seth Boutin, who had played poorly in the previous championship game. “He knew he was good and wasn’t afraid to say so at times,” Buddy said. Boutin would start running his chops during the season and Buddy would cut him off. “You’ve got to prove it when you get to Plymouth. We’ll see what happens when we get there,” the coach would say.

Buddy recalls before an early tournament game, Boutin did something dumb during a walkthrough. “I just ripped into him,” the coach said. “Ripped into him big time.”

The two knew each other. Once Buddy was finished with his evisceration, it was done and time to move on. As they were getting on the bus, Boutin offered Buddy a few pieces of candy from a big bag he always had with him, just to let him know they were good.

Boutin was absolutely immense in the tournament – the tourney MVP as far as Buddy was concerned. In all three playoff wins, he dominated the three big-time opposing point guards. Groveton and Colebrook had split a pair of tight games during the season, but at Plymouth it was all Mohawks. They rolled to a commanding 71-44 win. “We totally destroyed them,” Buddy said. “We could do nothing wrong. Everything was right there. It was good.”

Buddy felt bad for the kids who graduated the year before, including his son. “That was actually a better team,” he said. “That’s the breaks sometimes. We got the Groveton thing off our backs. We didn’t have to listen to that anymore.”

Colebrook kept it going. They made the tournament again and again, lost in the semis here, a final there. But Buddy knew another title was coming. Colebrook had this great class coming led by Ryan Call. Many were on the 2006 finalist squad as sophomores and a team that lost in the semis in 2007 as Lisbon’s run was coming to a close. The 2007-08 season had the potential to be big. In fact, the whole school year did. That class ended up leading Colebrook to the rare trifecta – championships in soccer, basketball and baseball.

The Mohawks lived up to the hype. They rolled through the regular season with one loss – an early-season setback at home to the other favorite Wilton-Lyndeborough, 78-70. They played the game straight up, not giving anything away. “It wasn’t a bad thing,” Buddy said. “They didn’t get full of themselves.” It certainly took care of the best team conversation. As far as Buddy was concerned, Wilton was the best team until someone beat them. He didn’t want to hear any talk about Colebrook being the best team. 

The tournament came. The Mohawks breezed their way to the final. Wilton was the opponent. “Now we release all our stuff,” he said. “All our doubles and different rotations off the ball. They got extremely frustrated.” Colebrook jumped out early and was in control en route to a commanding 68-52 win – their third title since 1997.

But the program was on borrowed time. The enrollment was starting to decline. Fewer boys came out for the team. The commitment level was not what it was. “We always had a core of kids we always told, ‘we don’t want you to be the best in Colebrook. We want you to be the best players in the division.’ That gradually started going down.”

As the talent pool decreased, Buddy felt that he and his staff were coaching at their best, getting every last ounce of effort from those groups in the 2010s. “We weren’t blessed with a whole lot of talent,” he said. “We got them to play. We did stuff we didn’t want to do.”

Up to that point, Buddy’s teams played like a buzz saw. “We’ve always been full court, man in your face, run and jump, double team, halfcourt trap stuff,” he said. “We gradually had to scale back and play a dreaded zone once in a while.”

The biggest change was to run a delay, which they uniquely ran off the high post. It was something no one else was doing. They ran this to keep the score close, to have a chance to catch up if they were behind. Essentially, they did it to have a chance to win.

It was not popular. “Sometimes the kids didn’t want to run it,” Buddy said. “Our fans certainly didn’t want to see it. You just about hear a groan. But if we don’t run this, we’re not winning. I’m here to win. I’m not here to run up and down and lose.”

If the kids did question the delay strategy, Buddy was pretty clear why it was being used. “We’re in a delay because we can’t score points. We can’t shoot. You don’t work (on your game) in the summer.”

That’s kind of how it played out. Buddy stopped teaching in 2016. His former player Ryan Call inherited that post and then took over as AD in 2019 when Buddy got done with that. Call then became the basketball coach when Buddy finally bid adieu to his most cherished position in ‘22. He coached in 2019-20, but took the following year off to deal with prostate cancer. He had 599 career wins. “My whole life I coached,” he said. “I never dreamed of not coaching. The year I took off, when it was all done, ‘Well, I’m alive.’ You know what? I missed it. But I didn’t miss it that much. I promised Ryan I would come back and I needed to come back. I was one win away from 600. I’m coming back.”

But, of course, it wasn’t the same. He didn’t have the same Buddy Trask passion. “It was starting to become a job for me,” he said. “I wasn’t having fun anymore. People said I’d miss it. No, I had my time. I could keep coaching. I didn’t want to do it anymore.”

He got his 600th win. He’d been around long enough that his alma mater, Stratford HS, the first school he coached and taught at back in the 1970s,  closed its doors in the 2000s. Its students now go to Groveton. His final Colebrook squad went 7-11 to get that win total to 606. He ended his last season like he began his first way back in 1976 – with a loss. It was to Pittsburg/Canaan who Colebrook had owned for the last quarter century or so. The game had additional juice in that the winner qualified for the Division IV playoffs and the loser stayed home. “It was at our place,” he said. “Everybody likes to go out on top. Losing my last game to Pittsburg/Canaan, that’s how things go. That’s athletics.” It sure is. Of his 45 seasons coaching basketball, his teams missed the pl;ayoffs just seven times – twice at Stratford and five times at Colebrook.

There are plenty of good memories with great players, assistant coaches, parents and principals. He has no regrets. One of his favorite memories outside of the Colebrook bubble was coaching the New Hampshire senior squad in the old Alhambra all-star game against Vermont with Lebanon coaching legend Lang Metcalf. In 1997, he got a call from the New Hampshire Basketball Coaches Organization asking him if he minded if Metcalf, who was retiring, coached with him. “No, I don’t,” was Buddy’s response. “Lang can do it. I’ll step down. I’d just be happy to spend some time with him.”

Metcalf wasn’t having it. He called Buddy and made it clear he was coming along as an assistant and that was that. “The stuff I learned from him,” Buddy said. “The jokes and stories. It was one of the best four days that I had coaching during that time, being around him.”

Kevin showed up for the practices the last couple days. Metcalf took a shine to him. He quizzed him, wondering if he was on the high school team. “Not yet,” was Kevin’s answer. Metcalf then asked if the Colebrook teams made it to the tournament in Plymouth. “We’re there every year” was Kevin’s reply. Metcalf said if they made it to Plymouth, he would come to the game or games to see Kevin play. And he did. “He might have missed one game,” Buddy said. “But he made a point to see him. I’ll never forget that. That was just amazing.”

Buddy left an imprint on the North Country and a legacy at Colebrook. His friend and rival coach Mark Collins admired Buddy’s “attention to the details.” He was also impressed with how Buddy’s former players came back to pay their respects to him. “Whether they played four years ago or 15 years ago, when they come back and see him it’s good to see,” Collins said. “You can just see how much they care about him.”

Collins added about Buddy: “You do it the right way or you don’t play for him pretty much. You do it right and (if you’re not doing it right) you keep doing it until you get it right.”

Buddy and Dale Ramsay have remained close friends 50-plus years later. Ramsay, who lives in Louisville, Kentucky, remembers growing up that even before he got to college it was pretty obvious Buddy was going to be a coach. “He just saw the game at a different level, even in high school. He was three or four plays ahead. It was clear what his path was going to be.”

Gary Jenness was in his first year at Groveton in 1975-76 when Buddy did his student teaching under him in the spring of ‘76. “He was a very good student teacher. He wasn’t very good on Monday morning because he’d go to Plymouth State on the weekend because his wife Mary was a student there and they’d go out. He’d be back around 9 on Monday. Buddy was excellent. You knew he was going to be a great teacher and good coach.”

What  struck Jenness about Buddy’s coaching was “he got more out of his kids over the years than many coaches I have seen. He would not have a very good team and they would be very competitive. The one thing he did when he went to Colebrook, he made them competitive. Anytime you played them, you knew you were in for a dogfight.”

Ramsay said when you walk into the Colebrook gym – now the Trask Gymnasium – you see all the banners. “That’s Buddy’s work. They won all those championships in all those sports boys and girls when he was athletic director. That’s saying something.”

Back in 1976, Ramsay and Buddy were watching the sun rise after a night of celebrating a young coach’s first career win at Orford. “All we could think about was that we won one game,” Ramsay said. “You knew, even then, he was going to be successful.”

Double Fun: Flashy Joe G. made it happen at ConVal and Conant

By: Mike Whaley

(This is the fourth in a series on the 2022 and 2024 inductees into the New Hampshire Basketball Coaches Organization’s Hall of Fame. The stories will run periodically during the winter season.)

Arthur “Joe” Giovannangeli Jr. had two distinct careers that spanned nearly 40 years as a colorful high school basketball coach in New Hampshire. The first 24 years (1968 to 1992) were spent coaching various levels at Peterborough High School and then Contoocook Valley Regional High School (ConVal). He was fired in ‘92 from the ConVal job after 20 years as the head coach, even though the program was at the top of its game in Class I/Division II. Did that slow Joe down? Hardly. He was fortunate to find a second career waiting for him 10 miles down the road in Jaffrey at Conant High School. He guided the Orioles for 15 seasons, making them into a Class M/D-III power. They won six state titles. His teams captured seven overall between the two schools and appeared in another four state finals. He was a chemistry teacher at ConVal for 30-plus years, staying there even when he was coaching Conant.

Joe was one of six inductees into the NHBCO Hall of Fame last November in Concord. Now living outside of Houston, Texas, he was unable to attend the event.

It seemed only natural that Joe would go into education and coaching. His father, Arthur Sr., taught science at Keene State College for 42 years while his Aunt Clara served as the KSC bursar for 44 years. Joe and his dad are the only father/son combo to have been inducted into KSC’s Sports Hall of Fame. Arthur Sr. was part of the inaugural class, honored for his basketball and baseball exploits, while Joe was inducted in 2001 for golf and basketball. He still holds the KSC men’s single-game scoring record with 50 points against Castleton State in 1966.

“I liked it,” he said of education and coaching. “I wanted to be a coach.” He was hired in 1968 to teach science and coach freshman boys basketball in 1968 at Peterborough Consolidated School. Two years later ConVal was built and he was soon the head coach of the boys team. He also started a golf program, winning a state title in 1985. In addition, he coached girls softball for 13 seasons.

Conant turned in an undefeated 2006-07 season, en route to the Division III State Championship.

Joe made ConVal into a regular basketball tournament participant and eventually a contender in Class I. He said an integral factor was that when the regional school was built, it welcomed several blue-collar communities, Antrim and Bennington – grittier areas compared to privileged Peterborough. “Those kids were tough. They played hard,” Joe said. “I played a lot of those kids. Some of the doctors’ kids (in Peterborough) were pretty good athletes. They didn’t really work hard. That’s where the sh*t started.” Eventually an angry parents group forced out Joe despite the fact he coached the Cougars to the state final in that final season.

“We worked hard,” he said of his teams. “We ran the ball like (John) Bagonzi (the Woodsville legend). I coached against Bagonzi (in Christmas tournaments) a couple of times. We became friends.”

Joe added: “I was hard, but I was very fair. If you worked hard in practice, you played. If you didn’t, you would still play a little.” Joe’s willingness to play the hard-working boys from the surrounding villages over some of the Peterborough kids became a sticking point.

Joe recalls winning ConVal’s first state title in 1986, light years after old Peterborough High School captured the last of five small school state titles in 1941. The unlikely hero was the unassuming Clinton Burgess, one of three brothers to play for the Cougars. In a game that was headed to the wire, Clinton Burgess stepped up and hit six straight foul shots to secure a 52-48 win over Fall Mountain. “He was a good player, but he was not that athletic,” Joe said. Burgess, of course, didn’t need to be talented, he just needed to be mentally cool enough to step to the foul line to drain those six shots, which he clearly was.

New Hampshire Basketball Coaches Organization Hall of Famer, Arthur “Joe” Giovannangeli Jr.

Joe lit up the sideline with flamboyant outfits – bright colors and plaids – a calculated ploy to draw the referees’ attention to him and away from his team. “I enjoyed it,” Joe said. “I was a vocal coach and I wanted the refs to see who was talking. I told my team, ‘I get all the Ts (technical fouls).’ I’ll complain for them. As a team, we got very few Ts. My wife, Judie, made most of my outfits dealing with hoops. She was a great seamstress, even making most of my sports coats, and sweatshirts I wore to practice.”

Joe recalled the story about two elderly women approaching him in a Jaffrey grocery store. They told Joe they came early to the Conant games so they could get seats. “We love the way your teams play,” they told him. “They work hard and are unselfish, and therefore are fun to watch. To be completely true, we also come to see what you are wearing.”

Then assistant coach Eric Saucier remembers Joe’s lively persona and loud outfits. “I think Joe’s personality and his outgoing nature were summed up in his legendary flashy outfits,” said Saucier, who was an assistant from 2005 to 2008 and then the head coach from 2008 to 2024 (five state crowns). “That is what most coaches remember Joe for. During Christmas, it was the red pants and bright green jacket. During the season it was the plaid pants or plaid jacket. Everyone always knew when Joe walked in the door.”

Mike Lee coached against Joe at the end of his own career in Farmington, which spanned 1977 to 1998. “Colorful is the best way of describing him,” Lee said. “Your first impression was ‘Who is this?’ Your second impression was ‘I know who this is.’ He was very outgoing. Flamboyant. He had charisma.”

After Joe was fired as the coach at ConVal, he was out of the game for a year, although he remained at ConVal as a teacher into the new millennium. When he lost the ConVal basketball coaching job, the school intended to retain his services to coach golf and softball, but he resigned from both posts. The school’s logic escaped him. They had a problem with his basketball coaching, but not with how he coached golf and softball. It didn’t make sense. Then the head boys basketball position opened up next door at Conant. The principal there knew him. He got word to Joe to apply for the job. He knew a little about the school through some golf buddies from the Jaffey area.

At the time Conant’s program was in decline after some very good success in the 1980s – a runners-up in 1984 and a state title in 1985. But by the early 1990s, the Orioles were losing. The coach was fired after back-to-back winless seasons. “I applied and I got the job,” Joe said.

His first season in 1993-94, the Orioles went .500. The next year they made the state final. “We had a couple of good years and then we got hot,” he said. “We had some good kids coming up and we won a bunch.” At one stretch under Joe, Conant won six titles in 11 years and two more after he left as part of a streak of five from 2006 to 2010.

“We had some great times at Conant,” Joe said. “The kids worked hard. It was a lot smaller. It was Class M. The gym was always packed. It meant something to them, I had kids who really wanted to work.”

With The Orioles, Joe ran the ball all the time. “We pressed you a thousand ways,” he said. “We dropped back into a zone. We worked on the defense. The kids at Conant were a little quicker. They would hit you harder. They were tough kids.”

Because Conant didn’t have football, Joe felt that made a difference in helping those types of tough kids to focus on basketball. “If there’s no football, what are you going to work for?” He said. “We had the one good sport, let’s work on that.”

Joe remembers his first group at Conant. The team hadn’t won in a while. They got to the ‘95 championship game against Newfound. “They had a prom the night before,” he said. “They didn’t know. They never did that again. I’m not saying that’s the reason we lost. We lost to a very good team.”

Several years later they got it right, winning the 1998 title behind 6-foot-4 Craig Griffin, who Joe said was the best overall player he ever coached. The Orioles handled Coe-Brown in the final, 72-51. But the key to the whole thing might have been the defensive effort on Farmington star Tim Lee in a 50-38 semifinal win. Conant limited the high-scoring Lee to 12 points after he had tied a tournament record with a 45-point explosion in a quarterfinal victory over Gilford. “We were on him when he was out of bounds,” Joe said. “We were next to him.”

It was coach Mike Lee’s final game. He recalls the defensive effort on his son – a withering box-and-one: “There were no good first-half looks. None.”

Conant took home the 2006 Division III State Championship, starting a run of five-straight titles.

Griffin was the Orioles big star. He went on to an outstanding career at Merrimack College where he scored 1,454 points and pulled down 854 rebounds (second all-time). Joe recalls when Griffin went to Bridgton Academy in Maine for a post graduate year, the coach told his dad he might not get much playing time. Joe said Griffin would be starting after three practices. “I was incorrect. He started after two practices,” he said with a laugh. “What a worker.” The Merrimack College coaches told Joe that had Griffin (6-5 in college) been 6-7, he could have made the NBA.

Coach Lee recalled working a senior all-star game with Joe. “He was there to have fun and I was honored that he selected me,” Lee said. “The whole concept with him there was not to worry about the offense. He knew kids had been doing that forever. Let’s go out and win every ball. That’s kind of the approach he took. And from there, it was just run and have fun.”

Saucier said this of Joe: “Joe was very passionate about the game and coaching. He was always prepared, and his energy was unmatched. He was very driven to win, and to get the most out of his players, he never let them give anything less than their best. Players knew if you were going to play for Joe you had to play hard.” Saucier is now the head boys hoop coach at Bow High School.

When Conant won back-to-back championships in 2001 and 2002, Joe recalled that the second championship season did not begin so well. “We had most of (the kids) back, so we should be good,” he said. “They were a little out of shape and we started the year kind of bummy.” After losing at Monadnock, Joe told the team in the locker room, “You’re good enough to win this. But you’ve got to step it up in practice. It’s up to you guys. I can holler at you as much as I want but it doesn’t do any good. You guys have got to want to do it.”

The team got together on its own for a meeting shortly after that and effectively refocused. “We just crushed people,” Joe said. “We won every game.” Conant, led by Justen Nagle and Jared Van Dyke, capped the season with a 58-44 win over Hillsboro-Deering in the championship, avenging a loss to the Hillcats in its season opener.

In the 2007 championship game against Gilford, the Orioles were up two with 90 seconds to play. “Who wants to shoot these foul shots?” Joe asked the team. A little guard by the name of Trevor Young confidently quipped “‘Don’t worry coach, I’ll make these.’ I said ‘OK’ and every out of bounds we got the ball to Trevor. He made six in a row.” Conant won the title, 53-49.

The most emotional win was his last one in 2008. The Orioles had won the previous two championships and were on their way to a third when their best player, Stephen Record, was killed in an automobile accident just after Christmas. “They held together,” Joe recalled. “We had two freshmen who could play. We were lucky to win that one.” Newmarket pushed the championship to overtime, but Conant was able to pull away at the end, 55-49. Center Kyle Todd was instrumental in all three of those championship wins.

It was Conant’s third championship in a row with more on the horizon with good players coming back and others in the pipeline. Joe decided to go in a different direction. Having spent his summers growing up on Kennebunk Beach in Maine, it seemed like a good place to make a move when the Kennebunk High School boys basketball position opened up. “To me, that’s where I wanted to be,” he said. “Or so I thought. This came up. I’m retired. I’m just coaching. I’m doing science chemistry labs at Franklin Pierce University. I talked to my wife. ‘Do what you want. But you’re leaving a pretty good place (in Conant),’” she said.

“‘I know, but we might find a place over there and I could still coach a little longer,’” was his response. They decided to give it a try. They stayed for the year, but they could not find the house they wanted. They came back to Keene and Joe made the biggest mistake of his life – he accepted the Keene High boys hoop job. “That was the worst experience I ever had in basketball,” he said. “I was happy to get out of there after one year.”

What Joe and Judie really wanted to do was move to Houston to be near their son and his family. “That made it easy,” Joe said. They moved there in 2010 and Joe has lived there ever since. Judie passed away in 2017. She was a ConVal physical education teacher for 35 years.

Looking back, Joe can see how fortunate he was. He built ConVal into a tournament contender and guided the school to its first title before things went bad. And then he got lucky after a year off when the Conant job opened up – and that allowed him to coach the sport he loved and have even greater success. This was Judie’s assessment: “God closes a door and opens a window.” Conant was a picture window for Joe.

Mike Whaley can be reached at whaleym25@gmail.com