Category: Jam Session

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

Fresh Start: Williamson, Whitmore clear the slate this year at Trinity

By Mike Whaley

Albeit for different reasons, it’s been a renewal this season at Trinity College for first-year women’s basketball head coach Maria (Noucas) Williamson and junior forward Melissa Whitmore.

Williamson, a native of Portsmouth, comes to Trinity from the University of Chicago where she was the head coach for four seasons (53-24, NCAA Division III Sweet 16 in 2023). It’s a reunion of sorts for Williamson, who played in the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) during a four-year career at Bowdoin (2005-09). While she was there, the Polar Bears made four trips to the NCAA tournament, including twice to the Elite 8. Williamson, when she was Maria Noucas, was a team captain as a senior, leading Bowdoin to a 24-5 record. She’s been a college basketball coach ever since – 11 years as an assistant at the U.S. Naval Academy, Dartmouth and Loyola-Chicago, before getting her first head job in 2020 at Chicago.

The slate is clean for Whitmore, who played at Hanover High School.  Her freshman year was spent on scholarship at NCAA Division I Stonehill College. She transferred to Trinity as a sophomore. Both seasons were discouraging for Whitmore. At Stonehill, she did not enjoy the culture, while last year at Trinity she suffered an early-season ankle sprain and never completely regained the coach’s confidence.

Trinity coach Maria Williamson talks with the team. The second player fromt he left is Melissa Whitmore. [Courtesy photo]

This year, under Williamson, she vowed to clear the board and start anew, putting forth her best effort to break into the starting lineup. It’s been a breakout season. The Bantams are 16-6 overall and 5-3 in the NESCAC. Whitmore has started all 22 games with an 8.2 scoring average, while pulling down 4.9 rebounds per game. She also has 56 assists.

It’s been a journey to find herself in a good spot. After leading Hanover HS to the 2022 New Hampshire Division II state title, she accepted a scholarship to Stonehill in Massachusetts. She made friends, but she did not enjoy the coaching. She did play quite a bit, especially during the second half of the season when a starter was injured. “But mentally it was not the best situation,” she said. Whitmore played in 20 games with 13 starts. She averaged 5.8 points and 2.8 rebounds per game.

“The school was OK academically,” she said. “I was looking for something more rigorous. So I decided to transfer and I found Trinity. The academics are high level and I really like it here. The basketball and the coaching was really what I was looking for. I was really looking for a coach that would truly care about me on and off the court because basketball comes and goes. You have good days. You have bad days. I wanted to make sure I really felt comfortable going to my coach, talking through things, if that was necessary. Or lifting me up on the good days as well. I really felt that coach (Emily) Garner, my previous coach, would really help me with that.”

Another question Whitmore asked herself was if she couldn’t play basketball could she still enjoy the school? “Would I thrive academically?” she asked herself. “Trinity is what I landed upon.”

Trinity coach Maria Williamson. [Courtesy photo]

She also liked the city setting in Hartford, Connecticut. “I was looking for a more urbanish environment, so I can kind of be connected to the community and have a lot of resources around me.”

Leaving her scholarship behind at Stonehill was difficult. “It was hard to leave that as well,” Whitmore said. “It’s such a big deal. Ultimately, my mental health comes first. I believed I could thrive elsewhere.”

Her first year at Trinity, from a basketball perspective, did not go quite as well as she would have liked. “I got hurt at the beginning of the year and it was difficult to come back from that,” she said. “

Whitmore sprained her ankle early in the season. That took her out of the mix in practice and games for a while. “That was a little frustrating,” she said. “Towards the end of the year, in practice, I started to feel better. I started two games, which made me feel good.”

But other than those two starts, her late-season playing time was minimal. “It was hard for me to come back in my coach’s eyes,” Whitmore said. “They also knew that ankle injuries can be nagging. I tried my best to make my way back in. It’s hard. It was a setback.” She played in 18 of the Bantams’ 27 games (19-8), averaging 2.8 points and 2.1 rebounds per game. Trinity lost to Bates in the NESCAC playoff semis.

The Bantams received a shock in the spring when coach Garner left the program to take the head job at Division I Cornell University. Whitmore liked Garner, but she saw it as a new opportunity with coach Williamson. “It’s a blank slate,” Whitmore said. “She (Williamson) doesn’t know anybody (although she in fact knew of Whitmore). The preseason was a really good time for us to show our skills and our ability. I sort of took that as a challenge. ‘OK, let me show what I can do because everyone’s in the same boat. I just thought it was really fun. I love coach Maria. I know her a little bit.”

Indeed, the two were familiar with each other when Williamson was an assistant at Dartmouth College (2013-16) and Whitmore was in elementary school. Whitmore knew of Williamson as an assistant coach, and Williamson knew of Whitmore through Whitmore’s dad who worked at Dartmouth. “She was young then,” Williamson said. “Her dad talked about her U11 or her U12 team. It’s kind of come full circle.”

In fact when Whitmore declared she was transferring from Stonehill, Williamson tried to get her to come to Chicago. “That was fun reconnecting,” the coach said. “At the end of the day, she wanted to stay in New England and the NESCAC and all that. Which is totally fine. We got pretty far along in the recruiting process. So it kind of felt like a gift to reunite here.”

Former Hanover HS star Melissa Whitmore is thriving this year at Trinity College. [Courtesy photo]

That it has. Williamson loves Whitmore’s presence on the Trinity team. “She’s a super talented player,” the coach said. “More than anything, she’s awesome. She’s really positive. She keeps it really light. She really cares about the team. She’s really stuck with it this year. She’s been trying to find her confidence and what that needs and looks like. She’s been so good. She’s playing her best basketball right now. There’s no doubt about it.”

Whitmore has bought into Williamson’s coaching style. “She’s very up front. She wanted to build all our confidence,” Whitmore said. “She wants to be there for us. It really showed. Especially when games started. She knows when to push us and she knows when to give us confidence. She knows when to be harder on us and also laughs with us at the same time. That atmosphere, I feel like I’ve been able to thrive here with Coach Maria.”

Whitmore feels like her confidence has grown this season. “Being a starter helps,” she said. “Knowing the coaches have my back is really important. If we make a mistake they obviously let me know how to move forward and know what to fix. But they are also – ‘You got the next one.’ Which has been very helpful. Everyone makes mistakes. No one’s perfect. Just knowing that in the back of my mind has been helpful.”

Probably the biggest gain for Whitmore is recognizing that her contribution can come from many different areas. “Knowing some days I might score. Some days I might not,” she said. “But I want to make an impact in some way. Play good defense one game. Having a lot of rebounds one game. Score one game. Doing something rather than just being a body on the court.”

At 6-2, Whitmore is a matchup problem because of her size. “She’s one of our best 3-point shooters,” coach Williamson said. “Now she’s starting to play inside a little bit more. She uses her length defensively to really impact shots. She’s become a really good rebounder. Those have been her big roles for us.”

With a grandfather, aunt and uncle who coached basketball, it seemed only natural that Williamson would want to coach the sport as well. “When I was in high school, I had a really good AAU coach – Kara Leary with the New England Crusaders. She kind of put the bug in my ear.”

Williamson started coaching an AAU team in high school and continued that in college. “I just really enjoyed it,” she said. “I like being around young people. I like helping them shape their lives and help them to be able to grow at basketball. Most of the environments I’ve been at have had high academics, which is something that has been near and dear to my heart too.”

Portsmouth’s Maria Williamson was a four-year performer at Bowdoin College (2005-09). [Courtesy photo]

When Williamson got her first head gig in 2020 at Chicago, it was a dream come true. Unfortunately it was in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, so it was not ideal. In fact, Chicago did not play any games during her first year. “We just practiced for like 11 weeks,” she said. “It was a coach’s dream, but for a team not so much of a dream. But we tried to keep it light. That’s a big part of who I am as a head coach. I’m really optimistic. I believe in positive coaching. It was really fun to finally do that at the University of Chicago. We had a lot of success there, too; just finding joy in every game and competing at a super high level. I really enjoyed being able to develop culture and enjoyed developing great teams and just enjoyed the journey through the whole season.”

Knowing that she had loved her experience at Bowdoin and the NESCAC, Williamson knew she wanted to come back to the conference in some way. There was a connection at Trinity with atheltic director Drew Galbraith, who she had known at Dartmouth. “When he reached out to me, it was kind of a no-brainer,” she said. “I could go back to a small community, a small college and then a program that’s been really, really good over the last five years or so. And then being back in the conference.”

Another big factor driving her decision was being back in New England to be closer to family. “I’m a big family person,” Williamson said. “My wife is a big family person. We now have an 18-month old son. Having him around, my parents and my wife;s parents. It’s been awesome. If you come to Trinity, you’ll probably see our whole family. On our side of the family are all boys under the age of 3. A lot of them come to most of our games. It’s a circus. Family is a huge part of it too.”

Because Williamson was hired so late, there was no recruiting for this season. The roster was set. It was just a matter of getting to know the team and understanding the Trinity culture. “We have a young team this year,” she said. “We have some good senior experience, but a lot of other people who are getting a lot of opportunities on the team are sophomores and juniors. It’s really been a journey of one game at a time.”

What Williamson likes about this team is that it’s learned big lessons from losses. “That doesn’t always happen with a team,” she said. “Teams are not as resilient over losses, but it usually leads to big success. It’s something that’s been really fun with our group. We keep saying our team is a happy team. We have fun together. We enjoy being around each other. Yes, we also want to be really good. That’s just been the story line.”

When she was trying to get to know the team, one thing that jumped out at her that all the women mentioned was a Trinity traditional pregame ritual. “They sing songs. Do some chants. They dance,” Williamson said. “The program has done it for a long time. It’s good to have that tradition. Any good winning culture has something like that.”

Because she was hired so late, another thing that Williamson wrestled with was how much do you change things. “At the end of the day, the biggest change or enhancement we made was we play faster,” she said. “That’s a style I really enjoy anyways. I think it’s really effective, really in any conference you play in.”

What Williamson likes about the Bantams is that if they get down 10 points, they can come back quickly. “That’s because of our style of play. … We shoot a ton of 3s because of that,” she said. “We have always had the ability to stay in games. That’s something we are going to latch onto no matter what.. We made some other adjustments. But that was the biggest thing.”

Melissa Whitmore has thrived this season for the Trinity Bantams. [Courtesy photo]

Returning to the NESCAC definitely brought back some memories for Williamson. She recalled the first conference game at Middlebury. “We struggled a little bit in tha game,” she said. “Part of it was the bus trip to Middlebury. It’s long. Halfway through the game, ‘Yeah, I remember that feeling watching my team out there. I totally know what their legs feel like right now.’ Stuff like that has popped up in every NESCAC game. It’s been fun memories more than anything – the little rivalries. I’ll be raring to go when we play Bowdoin (Saturday).”

The one thing she has been able to call on from her NESCAC experience as a player to help her team is the back-to-back games part of the schedule. For the most part, the conference plays its games on Friday nights and Saturday afternoons. “What it really takes to win on Saturday (after a Friday game),” she said. “The mentality you need on Saturday to show up and grind it out and do whatever you need to do. Yeah I remember the familiarity of those and trying to help our team through that too. It’s been fun. That’s what makes the conference so unique, that quick turnaround.”

Speaking of a quick turnaround, that’s what the Bantams have in their final two games of the regular season tonight and Saturday at home against the top two teams in the conference – Colby (12-9, 6-2) and Bowdoin (22-0, 8-0). A sweep will secure home court for the first round of the NESCAC tournament on Feb. 22. A split could as well, but they will need some help. “We’re thrilled to be at home,” Williamson said. “And we’re just as thrilled to have our destiny in our control in some ways.”

Mike Whaley can be reached at whaleym25@gmail.com

Ball603’s Whaley releases book on forgotten small-college basketball division

“Floor Burns” captures the NAIA’s New England essence with many anecdotes, stories & photos

Ball603’s Mike Whaley, a veteran New Hampshire sportswriter, has written a colorful, intimate and sprawling book that celebrates small-college basketball in New England, centered around the lesser-known college sports organization – the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA). Whaley’s book (620 pages, more than 190 photos) highlights all six New England states, starting in New Britain, Connecticut, in the 1940s and wrapping up in present-day Boston at tiny Fisher College.

“Floor Burns: A Wild Journey Across the Forgotten Backroads of NAIA Basketball in New England” has been published by Bondcliff Books in Littleton for $29.95 (plus S&H).

Whaley was a college player himself in Vermont, so the book is part memoir. Mostly, however, it’s a definitive chronicle of the NAIA in New England, rich with stories and anecdotes from 120-plus interviews, mostly with former and current players and coaches.

Glenn Theulen coached Keene State College to three NAIA district championships in the 1970s. [photo courtesy of Mike Theulen]

For New Hampshire hoop junkies there are stories on players and/or coaches from Franklin Pierce University, Keene State College and New England College, as well as defunct Nathaniel Hawthorne and Notre Dame colleges. It will be a stroll down memory lane recalling Bruce Kirsh, Greg Trotman, Bob Witts, Paul Trocki, Al Hicks, Glenn Theulen, Joe Yaris, Dave Morissette, Josh Lee, Phil Rowe, and others.

The book’s cover has some Granite State flavor. Featured is Franklin Pierce’s Larry Leach, who starred for the Ravens during their NAIA era from 1978 to 1982. He still holds the men’s career scoring record with 2,226 points. 

Franklin Pierce’s Greg Trotman, left, and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Bob Witts eclipsed the 2,000-point scoring mark as the 1980-81 season came to a close. Witts also led the NAIA in scoring with a 35.4 average. [photo courtesy of Bob Witts]

There are National Basketball Association (NBA) connections with Stan Van Gundy, the former NBA coach with Miami, Orlando, Detroit and New Orleans who got his start as a head coach in Vermont at Castleton State; as well as ex-coach and current NBA executive, Steve Clifford, who cut his teeth as a player in the NAIA at the University of Maine at Farmington. The popular “Jungle Jim” Loscutoff retired from the pro ranks in 1964 after nine seasons and six NBA championships with the Boston Celtics. He quickly segued into coaching at old Boston State College (1964 to 1976), building the program into a regional NAIA power.

“Floor Burns” can be ordered online at www.shopball603.com or purchased at select bookstore locations (coming soon).

Whaley has been an award-winning sportswriter in Maine and New Hampshire since 1987, and has written for Ball603 since its inception in 2021. A two-time New Hampshire Sportswriter of the Year, he played basketball at Lyndon State College (now VTSU-Lyndon) in northern Vermont from 1979 to 1983 in the era of short shorts with no 3-pointer or shot clock. This is his second book. Whaley lives in Portland, Maine, with his wife, Jill Rosenblum. You may contact him via email (whaleym25@gmail.com).


Dave Morissette, left, and Phil Rowe both coached in the NAIA in New Hampshire: Morissette at defunct Notre Dame College in the 1990s and Rowe at New England College in the early 1980s. [Mike Whaley photo]

Cloe’s Pembroke Path: Discipline, structure, relationships at heart of coach’s success

By Mike Whaley

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

Roy Annis was describing his friend and former coaching compatriot Ed Cloe’s style during last November’s New Hampshire Basketball Coaches Organization’s Hall of Fame ceremony in Concord. He smiled and said “immediately I eliminated cuddly and huggy. That’s not Ed. I would say he is best classified as old school.”

That was Cloe. An undeniable old school coaching force of nature during his 36 years, of which 34 were spent at Pembroke Academy. He had 543 coaching wins, guided PA teams to seven trips to the state finals and four championships. The Pembroke gymnasium now bears his name – Ed Cloe Court – where you can see his number of career wins emblazoned on the hardwood.

“He taught players to set goals,” said Annis, a long-time Cloe assistant. “He instilled in them the tenacity and the fortitude to see those goals accomplished. He taught them how to win with grace and even more importantly, lose with dignity. A great coach makes a difference in someone’s life. Ed did that.”

It didn’t start that way. When Ed spoke about his coaching career, noted that he didn’t immediately go into coaching and teaching out of college in 1962 after going to school and playing basketball at Champlain College, a two-year school in Burlington, Vermont. He tried numerous things, including brief stints with the Air National Guard and at a finance company. “I found out that my first love was obviously physical education,” he said. “I went back to Plymouth (State) and got my degree there and started coaching at Colebrook (Academy) in 1968.”

It was a great place to start. “Those small towns, they were so pleased to get somebody up there that would put in the time,” said Ed, who lives in retirement outside of Sarasota, Florida. “A lot of people simply didn’t want to go that far north. It’s a great town. I still have a lot of friends I stay in touch with. That’s the beauty of working in a small town.”

Ed Cloe spent 34 of his 36 years coaching high school basketball at Pembroke Academy, guiding the Spartans to four state titles. [Photo courtesy: Ed Cloe]

Ed taught PE and coached basketball at Colebrook, as well as soccer for a year. “I just loved the sport,” he said of basketball. “It’s exciting. Basically back in the ‘60s, the choice was either baseball or basketball. They were the ones I enjoyed the most. … But basketball was always a thing for me.”

While at Colebrook, Ed struck up a good working relationship with a veteran sporting goods guy from Bristol by the name of Chet Wells. “He’d come up and visit,” Ed said. “I’d buy a few things. I didn’t have a big budget. He kind of liked me.”

Wells gave Ed’s name to Bill Marston, the principal at Pembroke Academy. “I applied down there,” Ed recalled. Marston liked Ed. He also received a good recommendation from one of his opposing counterparts in the North Country, Woodsville’s John Bagonzi, who was inducted in the same Hall of Fame class. “Basically, I went down, interviewed with Bill Marston and got the job,” Ed said. The job was to teach high school physical education and coach the boys basketball team, starting in the fall of 1970.

It was a big jump from a Class M/Division III school in the relative anonymity of the North Country to a higher profiled Class I/D-II school. “They had great expectations at Pembroke,” Ed said. “They always had for basketball.” When he got there in 1970, the Spartans were two years removed from the program’s first state title. 

“The fans really expected to win there,” he added. “It was interesting. I accepted the challenge.”

A pivotal period for Ed came in his second year. The team had gone 8-12 the previous season. They just made the playoffs as the 12th and final seed, tied with Franklin but getting the nod because they had a Class L team on their schedule. “But that wasn’t satisfactory,” Ed said. “They had come off a championship two years before. I was a little stressed with the losses. Things have got to change in a hurry if I’m going to keep up this tradition.”

At the beginning of that second year in 1971, Ed contacted Littleton coach Richard Bouley for a preseason scrimmage against the two-time defending Class I champs. “So we got in the van and went to Littleton and got our asses whacked by 25-30 points,” he recalled. The Crusaders had tremendous size with a pair of 6-foot-7 players in future major league pitcher Rich Gale and Dennis Sargent. Both later played basketball at the University of New Hampshire. They also had a pair of very good guards.

Ed Cloe, center, guided Pembroke Academy to the Class I championship in 1972 in just his second year as head coach. Cloe, before he started sporting his trademark mustache, is pictured with co-captains George Gordon, left, and Craig Keeler. [Photo courtesy: Ed Cloe]

That poor preseason followed the Spartans into the season where they didn’t play particularly well early on. At one point they were a middle-of-the-pack 8-6. Pembroke played an uptempo style. They pressed. They had a 2-2-1 zone press that they used most of the time. “It was OK,” Ed said. “But we needed to get a little more out of it. We put the two big kids up front.” The two big kids were Mark Yeaton and Craig Keeler, both an agile 6-foot-3.

“It was unbelievable how things just turned around,” Ed said. “I lay it to that one change in our defensive strategy. The big kids were hard to get around. The guards were in the second row of the 2-2-1. We just sparked from there.”

The first time Ed put that change in was at home against a very good Monadnock team that had beaten Pembroke on the road. The Spartans blew them out of the water, winning by 40 or so points. “And basically it was the press,” Ed said. “A lot of times you don’t know what to point your finger at. But a change here and there, and getting a little confidence. We never lost another game. It wasn’t even close, most of them.”

Fast forward to the Class I state tournament semifinals at UNH against Littleton, the colossus from the North Country. Pembroke was a far different squad from the one that the Crusaders had manhandled back in November. “We slowed them down,” Ed said. “They had two extremely good guards. We slowed them down and pulled them out on the floor a little bit from the basket. It took away a little from their inside game.”

While the Pembroke press didn’t create a bunch of turnovers, it helped to keep the control of the game in Pembroke’s favor. It allowed Keeler and Yeaton more room to operate inside. Keeler scored 41 points, which at the time was a tournament record. The Spartans shocked Littleton, 94-85. They shot extremely well, building a 50-34 lead at the half. Littleton did cut the lead to two at one juncture late in the second half before the Spartans regrouped. “I tell people, if we had played the next night, we might not have won,” he said. “They were that good. I’m not going to say we were superior on a daily basis.”

It was a landmark game for Ed and for New Hampshire basketball. Pembroke came out in the championship, which had to be anticlimactic after the semis, and handled Fall Mountain, 87-71. Fifty-three years later, that 1972 team’s incredible run remains etched in the Class I/D-II record books with 11 records. Most notable are Keeler’s 122 points scored in one tournament, Yeaton’s 36 points in the championship (shared with Fall Mountain’s Pat Aumand) and the team’s 357 points scored in four games – the most not only in the division but also in the state.

Ed Cloe looked up at the scoreboard at UNH as the final seconds tick off before Pembroke was able to celebrate the 1978 Class I championship. No. 20 is Mike Keeler. [Photo courtesy: Ed Cloe]

A few years later, Ed went into the local Concord radio station, WKXL, which had carried the Littleton playoff game. There on a different matter, he looked into the office of broadcaster Jim Jeannotte, who had called the game. “I stuck my head in because I was talking to somebody else,” Ed said. “‘I see you still have that Littleton game on the shelf there.’ Jeannotte responded, ‘that’s staying on the shelf. We don’t (normally) keep those games, but this one is marked forever.’”

That was Ed’s fourth year as a head coach. He remembers it being stressful. “We’re going to work hard and put in the time,” he said. “What will be, will be. We’re going to do it my way and we’re going to work hard. It’s either going to be a success or not. … That was a good starting point. Had I screwed up that ‘72 season, who knows how long I would have been there. … I kind of bought into that expectation. I expected to win as well. It kind of went hand in hand at that point.”

Ed embraced all of it and because of that, Pembroke kept winning. They won the 1978 championship with another Keeler (Mike) and Yeaton (Jeff). Keeler went on to play at UNH. Sandwiched around that title were runners-up finishes in 1977 and 1979, and then another second-place plaque in 1984.  In 1985, he won his third title with his son, Tim, on the team. Although it was special, it was not easy. “I told him right away, ‘it’s kind of a hotbed here,’” Ed said. “‘They expect you to go in and they expect you to play well. I have to tell you, you have to be a hair better than some of those other kids because I can’t give you a break. It just won’t work.’ They were waiting in the stands to see that happen (Ed favoring his son).” Ed would not budge on that.

“There were times that he’d come home and fire his duffle bag in the corner before I got there,” said Ed, noting that the Cloes lived a mile from the school. “He understood and he appreciates it today. He was a pretty good rebounder – actually the best rebounder we had in ‘84-85. It’s an experience a lot of coaches shy away from. There’s a negative to it. But I’m glad I did it. It worked out well. It’s something to look back at. It’s always something you did with your son and had some success.”

Ed Cloe’s last state title came in 1991 as Pembroke was led by one of the state’s greatest players, Matt Alosa. [Photo courtesy: Ed Cloe]

Ed’s final title came in 1991, led by Pembroke’s greatest player, Matt Alosa, who is one of the most prolific scorers in the state with 2,575 career points. A phenom before he got to high school, Ed knew, before Alosa even put on a Pembroke uniform, that he would be starting as a freshman. There was no doubt in Alosa’s mind that he would be playing for the Spartans and Ed Cloe. The Alosas had a house in Concord and a condominium in Pembroke, so he had a pick of the two schools. One big point that worked against Concord was at the time, as Alosa and Ed recalled, was the school had a rule that freshmen could not play on the varsity team. “That was a little bit of the deciding factor,” said Alosa. “I didn’t want to go to Concord High. I wanted to go to Pembroke all along anyways because I knew of Cloe and how good of a coach he was. And the school at Pembroke in general, we just liked the community.”

“Matt played four years for me,” said Ed. “He never missed a practice. He worked hard. He was good with the other players. He was a good leader out there. I have nothing negative to say. He was excellent. He helped bring the other kids along on the floor.”

Although there was no real drama over Alosa coming in and playing for Pembroke as a freshman, Ed does recall a funny story where he had to convince at least one player that Alosa was the guy who was going to be playing point guard. It was a senior who had reservations about Alosa. Pembroke was scrimmaging at Trinity and Ed sat Alosa at the beginning and let this other player start at point guard. Obviously, Ed brought in Alosa off the bench not long after that. He recalls getting a call from Alosa’s dad, Frank, after the scrimmage, wondering if there was anything wrong because his son did not start. “Everybody knew he was good,” Ed said of Alosa. “The person I started in front of him – nobody expected that. He was a senior. I let him play himself out of the position. Matt took over from there, of course.” It suddenly dawned on Frank, “‘Oh, I see what you’re doing.’”

Ed added, “It was nothing that Matt did. I wanted to clear up this idea in everybody’s mind that this kid was going to be better than Matt. He proved it himself and that was it. I didn’t have any problem with that.”

Alosa remembers that scrimmage being the moment when the starting point guard position became his. But he added it was not given to him. It was something he had to earn. “In practice leading up to that point, I had not started on the first team in practice,” he said. “I would start on the second team and sometimes switch over during practice. After that scrimmage where I think it was evident I was going to be the starter, we switched and it went on from there. You had to earn everything in practice.”

It was a special era for basketball in the Capitol City area. Pembroke had Alosa and neighboring Merrimack Valley had Scott Drapeau, a talented 6-foot-8 forward who led MV to the 1989 and 1990 Class I titles. It was an intense rivalry that drew big crowds. Ed recalled dominating the series during the regular season, but MV was the one celebrating from the podium after the tournament. The 1990 semis was a particularly difficult pill to swallow, an overtime setback at UNH. “That was devastating,” Ed said. “We came back and won it next year (1991, 79-61 over Valley). It was standing room only that night at Lundholm.” Both Alosa and Drapeau started elsewhere for their college careers, but ended up together at UNH as all-conference performers.

Hard work and discipline were Alosa’s two big takeaways from Ed as a coach. “He came up with a game plan and then came at us to make us work and develop to try to execute on the plan that he had for whatever game or whatever season or whatever team. … You had to earn everything in our practices, from respect to hard work to the starting lineup. You had to earn all that. People respected him for that.”

An interesting sidenote: Alosa went on to coach at Pembroke after Ed left, guiding the program for 10 years and two state titles.

Ed Cloe gives his acceptance speech at the 2024 NHBCO Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony in Concord. [Photo courtesy: KJ Cardinal]

Ed said over time he learned to adapt his style as the culture changed. “I was still a disciplinarian and structured in my practices,” he said. “Very structured in practice, in how it was set up. I didn’t change that. I felt like I needed to be a little more lenient in my relationships with the players. It doesn’t mean you let them get away with anything. You have to be a little bit more available and be a little more understanding. And not be quite so my way or the highway. You shared a little bit of the highway with them without giving away your coaching philosophy.”

Ed said kids were different in the ‘60s and ‘70s, especially in the North Country. “I have no doubt that parents would have backed me 120 percent or whatever percent you want,” he said. “I don’t find that today. That changed throughout my coaching. You’d have more time when you would talk with parents. They wanted their son to be successful, obviously. But they were not as supportive as they were back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, particularly, as I said, in the smaller community.”

Hard work and discipline in practice was not going to change. “Kids had so many different things coming at them in the ‘90s and 2000s,” he said. “Different programs. Different ways to have your attention taken away from basketball. You had to deal with that stuff.”

While wins and losses were part of the journey, as time went on Ed grew to appreciate the relationships with other coaches. One in particular was a long-time friendship with Lebanon legend Lang Metcalf. “He’d say to me ‘Why do you drive all the way to Lebanon when you can play somebody closer?’ It was a measuring stick. Lebanon is always going to be very good under Lang Metcalf. He felt the same way (about my teams), I think. So we always played two games.”

Ed chuckled remembering Lang, who died in 2006 at age 73. “You’d get a guy like that who has a good program. We’d have overtime games. I think we had a triple overtime game once. He’d come up afterwards. He was a nice guy. He’d have that cheshire cat grin. He had that big mustache – much like Ed had his own. ‘Well Eddie, we had a good one tonight, didn’t we?’” said Ed, mimicking Lang’s distinctive drawl. “That’s the way he talked. It’s a camaraderie. I’m wondering if they have that today. I’m not sure they do. I don’t think they stay long enough.”

Ed planned to retire after the 2001-02 school year from both coaching and as athletic director. But Pembroke’s enrollment numbers rose and they were moved up to the state’s largest class (Class L/Division I). He decided to stay for that two-year cycle just to coach basketball. “I’ve got to tell you, my ass is still sore from getting kicked,” he said. “That was two great years in Class L. There were some outstanding teams. We were pretty good. If we were back in I for those two years we’d have been at the top of the pack. The teams were loaded. I never felt once that anyone was running up the score or anything. They were just that good.”

Why did Ed stay for those two years? “I didn’t expect it was going to be easy,” he said. “I didn’t think it was fair to throw a new coach into that situation. I didn’t want to let the kids down, so I stayed for two years and I retired in 2004.” He now lives in Sarasota, Florida, near his son Tim. Joanna, his wife of 58 years, passed away last April. Annis described her as the “foundation of Ed’s success.”

Ed Cloe has no regrets about the path he took. “Being a teacher/coach, honestly, where can you find relationships that keep on growing,” he said. “I can’t think of another occupation that has those kinds of relationships.”

Each of his teams had their own unique personality. “That’s what makes it,” he said. “If they were all the same, it wouldn’t be any fun.” He also remembered fondly the bus rides to Durham for the state tournaments at UNH. “There were a lot of trips to Durham and the pleasure we got out of them.”

Alosa said “to have a culture and to have a tradition, it doesn’t just happen. To build, that takes someone in charge that leads that program to whatever that ends up being. I just think in Ed’s case, his hard work, dedication and discipline over years and years and years, (led) to have that aura with that legacy and those banners. It’s a long tradition and he put a lot of dedication and hard work into that. That’s what I take away from the whole thing and that’s how I coached. It helped me throughout my career. So I appreciate everything Ed did.”

Indicative of that tradition that Ed helped to build at Pembroke, Annis had this to say as he wrapped his words about his friend at the NHBCO Hall of Fame event: “Boston Garden had Red Auerbach and when Red lit up his cigar, you knew the game was over. For any fans of Pembroke, they knew that when Ed got up and yelled ‘Blue,” the game was over. We were going to stall the ball and hold it for the victory. He did that for so many years.”

At the conclusion of his Hall of Fame speech, Ed recalled attending a long ago clinic run by NBA coach Hubie Brown. In summation, Brown said, “‘I’ve got one more thought to tell you. Important advice. Move on from your current position before your 11th and 12th man become school board members.’ That always stuck with me. I didn’t move on.” Pembroke Academy was all the better for it.

Mike Whaley can be reached at whaleym25@gmail.com

Blackbirds Rising: Amid grief, Keene bonds and its game soars

By: Mike Whaley

Discussions about contenders in New Hampshire Division I boys basketball rarely include Keene High School. The Blackbirds are normally a D-I outlier, both in location and expectations. But not this year.

Led by senior captains Javon Massiah and Fitch Hennessey, Keene has worked its way into the upper echelon of D-I with a 9-1 record, The Blackbirds are looking to make a run to the championship, which the program has never won in five previous tries going back nearly 90 years. Their last trip to a Class L/D-I championship game was over 30 years ago in 1992, a 48-43 loss to Winnacunnet,

The team has found an inner strength in dealing with the recent deaths of Massiah’s dad Stacey (cancer in September) and older sister Lydia (auto accident in November). The tragedies have brought the team even closer together and reinforced its resolve.

Through all this, third-year coach Ray Boulay (2009 Keene grad) has effectively kept the Blackbirds on course. The bigger tests loom as Keene faces the iron of its schedule in the coming weeks: Portsmouth (10-1) on Jan. 31, at Trinity (8-3) on Feb. 4, and at Bedford (9-2) on Feb. 11.

Javon with his late father, Stacey, and late sister Lydia. [Courtesy photo]

The most difficult task has been navigating grief in the aftermath of the deaths in the Massiah family that has affected the team and the Keene community at large. “It’s been tough emotionally,” Boulay said. “Everyone is going to have days when you’re not in it. To have to bury your dad three weeks before your season, yeah, it’s been tough. … Javon lost his dad and his sister. Everyone else lost a role model and a friend in Javon’s sister. Stacey was such an essential part of our community.”

Stacey Massiah played basketball at Keene State College in the late 1990s and then stayed and made his life there. He coached the boys freshman team at Keene and then the girls varsity squad. His son got a taste of the Keene programs growing up being around his dad and the Keene kids. Boulay recalls the younger players would stream into the recreation center to see Stacey dunk the ball. “He was the super hero of Keene,” Boulay said. “He made everyone feel welcome. He was a giant in presence (he stood 6-foot-7). He had a giant personality as well.”

It’s been difficult for Javon, but basketball has helped to lessen the pain. “My dad was great,” he said. “I did everything because of my dad. I played basketball because of my dad. After his death, I knew what I wanted coming into this season. I knew I had to try even harder to make him proud. All the hard work I’ve put in is really helping.”

Javon with his late father Stacey (back right). [Courtesy photo]

When Lydia died, Javon knew he had to go even harder. “Me and my sister were best friends,” he said. “Me, my dad and my sister, we were all close. I knew what I had to do. I feel like basketball is helping a lot; my teammates, my friends, my family. When I go to basketball, everything in my head goes away and I feel like I can be free on the court. I feel like that’s helped a lot.”

Still, it hasn’t been easy. “My mom has been great,” Javon said. “Any time I’m having a hard day, she talks to me. We sit down. My sisters are great. All my family and friends, they make sure I have everything I need. … I just try not to let my emotions get to me. Sometimes there’s not much I can really do – just talk to my family and friends about what I’m feeling.”

The team unity that has grown from this tragedy is quite special. “All of us are best friends,” said Hennessey. “So all of us have been there for Javon. We’ve been right at his door. We’re always hanging out. It translates right to the court. Honestly, we know that Lydia and Stacey are looking down on us and down on Javon. We also take some pride in that we’re playing for Javon and everything that he’s been going through. … It was a big loss for the whole community. Everyone loved Stacey. And Lydia, she was really super sweet. It really hurts losing them, but we  know what we have to do.”

 

Head coach Ray Boulay encourages Javon Massiah. [📸 Marc Hoak]

Boulay said that from tragedy has sprung a necessity for increased vigilance to take care of each other. “Me and the other coaches have made an emphasis to be there,” he said. “We eat with them a little more. Send them an extra text. That’s kind of trickled down with everyone. I’ve talked to Javon’s mom. There’s three or four players there (at the Massiah home) every night. It’s made us a closer family. We’re all doing it because it shows how much Stacey and Lydia meant to us, and how much Javon means to us too.”

Every day there is grief, but basketball has been good therapy to help lessen the anguish. It provides a common goal and experience to keep the Blackbirds busy trying to be good teammates in a positive and successful team atmosphere.

Keene has been building toward this season. When Boulay took over as head coach three years ago after seven years as the JV coach, there was a strong sophomore class led by Massiah and Fennessey that knew this day was coming. That first year with some strong seniors, they went a respectable 5-13 and missed the playoffs by a game.

While Keene is in second in D-I just behind Portsmouth, Boulay knows that the regular season means nothing if they cannot make some noise in the postseason. Last year, the Blackbirds were a surprise, winning seven of their final eight games to finish at 11-7 and earned the No. 7 seed in the D-I tournament. Sadly, it was the same old Keene in the playoffs as it lost to No. 10 Alvirne, 51-42. It was the Blackbirds lowest scoring output of the season.

“We came out and played tight,” Boulay said. “We played exactly like everyone expected: a Keene team that hadn’t been there before. It was a disappointing loss. But you learn more from your losses. We’ve really taken that lesson and remembered it. So far at least.”

The 2024-25 Keene Blackbirds. [📸 LJ Hydock]

It fueled Keene. They did not lose in league play through the spring, summer and fall months. Their only D-I loss was to Manchester Memorial in the second game of the season.

Looking back on the Alvirne loss, Javon put it pretty succinctly: “We were all just really nervous and not ready for that game whatsoever.”

But as Hennessey noted it hurt but they moved on. “As soon as it ended, we all understood that we had a huge opportunity, bringing most of our main guys back,” he said.  “We all went right to work when the summer started and it just grew from there.”

Which brings us to the present. Keene is near the top of the D-I standings trying to make a statement that they are a contender and not a pretender. Boulay knows all about Keene’s basketball history. It’s part of his DNA. “Growing up in Keene was all about baseball and more baseball,” he said. “The community wasn’t involved in basketball really at all.”

Boulay said there was a change in the late 1990s when Phil Hebert took over the program. Part of it was linked to the success that Keene State College was having and the popularity of the KSC camp. “Every kid in the community wanted to go to that camp,” he said.

Most importantly, the parents in the community started to see the work that Hebert was putting in. Crowds at high school games were bigger as the Blackbirds were enjoying success. “He was, in my eyes, one of those guys who started to build a program outside of just the winter season,” Boulay said. Hebert wanted Keene kids playing in summer leagues and going to hoop camps. 

Phil Hebert (far left) poses with fellow Blackbirds at the 2017 Keene High School Alumni Game.

Hebert coached through the 2006-07 season, the last year the Blackbirds went to the final four. There was a period after that where coaches were there for a year or two until Kevin Ritter took over and brought stability back to the program. At the time he took the program over in 2015, Boulay was just out of Plymouth State looking for work in the special education field. He got a job as a paraprofessional at Keene HS. Ritter asked him to coach the JV team. Boulay had played four years of football at Plymouth State, serving as a captain as a senior. But he had also played high school basketball and been recruited by Plymouth. “I knew the game,” he said. “I didn’t know how to coach it.”

He spent six years under Ritter as a JV and assistant coach. “I learned so much from him,” said Boulay, who now works in special education at a private school across the border in Brattleboro, Vermont. “He’s one of the best coaches I have been around in all sports. I owe so much to Kevin Ritter in taking my next big step in coaching. He  taught me so much. How to run a program. How to handle the booster club.”

Ritter left to take a job as an assistant coaching position at Keene State where he had played. Matt Azzaro, an assistant under Hebert, was hired as the varsity coach. He was there for a year, but in October of 2022, he decided not to come back. The school asked Boulay if he was interested in applying. “I had interest. I love coaching,” he said. “I was scared, though, to take that step as the head of the varsity program. You’re not just the varsity coach. You’re in charge of it all.”

He had seen those close to him coach. He’d been a college football captain. He’d captained his high school teams. The leadership trait was embedded.

“It’s my alma mater,” Boulay said. “I feel very comfortable. I know teachers there. I know the school. It’s funny when a kid thinks he can get something by you. You’ve been in that same situation in that building before. It’s easy to make those connections to the Keene kids.”

Javon remembers as a sophomore being unsure if Boulay was the right person for the job. “We weren’t too sure how he would be. We were wondering what our season was going to be like, how good we were going to be,”Javon recalled. “I feel he was the perfect (person) for that spot. He knew what he wanted right away, which was for us to make playoffs, have a home playoff game, which happened. He’s great. He knows exactly what he’s doing. Practices are awesome. We all love him.”

Hennessey has liked Boulay from the get go. “He’s a great leader, he really knows when to rile us up and when to really get into us. He knows us so well. How to coach us and handle us.”

Now New Hampshire gets to see what Keene is made of as they get ready for the stretch run. Boulay has been in Keene long enough to read the body language of others. He knows that the team’s 9-1 record is not enough. There are those who doubt the Blackbirds are for real because it’s in their history. “When I talk to people, they don’t say it,” Boulay said. “But I’m a Keene guy from 35 years. I know that’s what they feel. We feel the same way. Honestly, we embrace it. ‘Would you guys change your mind because we’re 8-1, 9-1 overall?’ We could lose games in the next couple of weeks. Even if we do, it’s still all about learning and getting better. When playoffs come, it will be time to put up or shut up. They still have a legitimate reason to think that. They have a right to their opinion. And we’ll see them on the hardwood. That’s our feeling. We’ll see you on the court.”

Senior Javon Massiah lends junior guard Jamal Stanley a helping hand. [📸 LJ Hydock]

The players are well aware of Keene’s history and outside perception. “We always play with a chip on our shoulder knowing that we’re always being overlooked,” Hennessey said. “We know that other teams think less of us. ‘Oh, we’re playing against Keene tonight.’” Case in point: You could tell Hennessey was a bit irked when he mentioned that he and Javon were cut from an underclassmen all-star game last year.

Then, of course, there is the location. Keene sits all by its lonesome in the southwest section of the state, at least an hour’s drive from all D-I schools, and nearly two hours from the five Seacoast schools. Boulay laughs when other teams complain about their one “long ride” to Keene. “Yeah, well, we do that 12 times a year.” – which included a trio of three-and-a-half-hour round trips in as many days to the Oyster River holiday tournament in Durham.

This is a well-balanced, talented team. Javon is the leading scorer with his 19.0 average, but he is far from the only option. Keene has four players averaging in double figures and a fifth (junior Kasen Abbott) checking in at 9.2.

Javon at 6-5 can score from deep, but he can also slash, throw one down and he can finish with finesse. He also handles some of the point guard duties. Hennessey (11.7) can score, but his true value is as a defensive stopper. “He’s going to guard your best player,” Boulay said. “He’s going to rebound. He’s like a second coach on the floor.” Javon plans to continue his education next year and play basketball at either a prep school or college. Hennessey is also a baseball player. He plans to play that sport in college.

Junior guard Jamal Stanley [📸 LJ Hydock]

Jamal Stanley (11.8 ppg) is a 6-1 junior, who Boulay says is a lot like Javon. “He’s a  better overall player. He’s going to rebound, defend your best player, and score the ball.”

One of the big surprises has been 6-6 senior Will Fontaine, who spent the previous three seasons on the JV team. “He worked so hard in the offseason that he went from not playing varsity at all last year to now he’s starting and averaging 11 points per game (10.8 to be exact). He’s so long. He’s not a center. He’s a  guard/forward. He can make the 3. He just makes our defense so versatile with his length.”

The fifth starter is Abbott, a  5-10 guard. In addition to sharing the point guard duties with Javon, he is an accomplished shooter. “He can really shoot it,” Boulay said. “He gets us set up offensively.”

That’s the starting five. The first player off the bench is 6-3 Alex Holmes, who is just getting back into things after missing some time with sickness and a rolled ankle. “He can shoot it deep and defend down low,” said Boulay. “We’re expecting big things from him.”

Junior guard Kasen Abbott [📸 LJ Hydock]

This is the year that Keene has been waiting for. The Blackbirds have proven their resilience in how they’ve handled and continue to handle their grief. It has drawn them closer together rather than breaking them apart, making them stronger. How much stronger remains to be seen, but this team is making some noise. Division I is taking notice. “We’ve done the work,” Boulay said. “Stop talking about it. Let’s show up and play. You can say all you want. Who cares about the preseason rankings? If you look at every score week to week, it’s really about who shows up, plays defense and gives the best effort. And then it’s who has the best talent.” Keene definitely feels it’s one of those handful of teams in the contender conversation.

That being said, the Blackbirds have kept their head down and focused on what game is next. In the preseason, Boulay said, they made their goals for the season: make the playoffs, get a home playoff game and get to UNH (the site of the final four). “Then win,” he said. “That’s been the goal since Thanksgiving. That hasn’t changed.” With those goals set, Boulay said the team has put the blinders on to focus on what is next and what is next only. “Because we are starting to get a little more attention,” the coach said. “‘Oh, Keene is 9-1. Are they for real? Blah, blah, blah.’ It still doesn’t matter. You still have to win in the playoffs. We’re trying to keep our heads down. ‘Thank you for the compliments, but we’re going to keep moving on.’ We know exactly what our history is. You can say all those nice things . You’re trying to butter us up. We want to get it done in crunch time.”

Last year, Keene learned something new every day from the games they lost. “Now this year, those close losses have turned into wins,” Boulay said. “We’ve shown up every day, challenged each other. We’ve taken our lessons from whatever happened in the previous games and tried to work on that in practice. We’re trying to be the best version of ourselves every single day in practice. Hopefully that will translate into winning games on Tuesday and Friday nights.”

Boulay can’t emphasize enough how important Keene’s practice sessions have been in growing the team this season as well as being a safe haven. “In some ways, whatever is going on in the world, when we’re together for those two hours on the court, whoever is texting you right now, it’s in the locker room. Nothing can bother us right now,” Boulay said. “We’re just together on the court. Let’s work out and get better for two hours.” It’s a recipe that seems to be working for the Blackbirds.

Mike Whaley can be reached at whaleym25@gmail.com

Championship Conductor: Bagonzi engineered a “will to win” at Woodsville

By: Mike Whaley

(This is the second in a series on the 2022 and 2024 inductees into the New Hampshire Basketball Coaches Organization Hall of Fame. The stories will run periodically over the next two months.)

The legacy of John Bagonzi remains alive and well, not only in his hometown of Woodsville, but wherever life has taken his ex-players who benefitted from the lessons he imparted as a coach and educator.

John died in 2014 at age 83. He coached multiple sports at Woodsville High School, building the Engineers into a small-school baseball and basketball power. During a 10-year span from 1967 to 1977, his teams appeared in 14 championship games and won 11 titles in three sports. Overall he coached Engineer teams to 13 state titles: seven in baseball (1959, 1964, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1976, 1977), five in basketball (1969, 1971, 1973, 1976, 1977) and one in cross country (1972). It is a rarity to have a coach guide teams to state titles in two different sports, but three is really quite unheard of. In a coaching career that spanned 20 seasons from 1958 to 1978, Bagonzi’s basketball teams won 361 games and his baseball team chalked up 261 victories. He retired from teaching biology in 1991 after 33 years. He also served as the school’s physical education director and athletic director.

John Bagonzi coached Woodsville High School teams to 13 state championships in three sports. [Courtesy photo]

A nationally celebrated baseball pitching clinician/instructor himself (he wrote several books on the subject), two of his players went on to be drafted by major league baseball teams: Steve Blood (Minnesota Twins) and Jim MacDonald (Houston Astros).

John was one of seven coaches honored last November in Concord with induction into the New Hampshire Basketball Coaches Organization’s Hall of Fame. Former player Scott Burrill (1976 grad) spoke on the family’s behalf.

John was renowned for his intense, bigger than life sideline persona. He was always on his feet, working the officials and barking at his players. He was a master motivator, pushing the Engineers to the limit of their abilities and sometimes beyond. One of his players, Scott Burrill, remembers reading a quote from John in a Berlin newspaper that concisely sums up what he was all about as a coach: “Life is simple. It’s a matter of setting goals and getting there.”

John grew up in Woodsville, starred on the baseball and basketball teams in the late 1940s with his good friend Bob Smith, the two forming a formidable pitching duo. After high school they parted company. John headed to the University of New Hampshire to play baseball and basketball, while Smith embarked on a professional baseball career that lasted 15 seasons of which part of five were spent in the major leagues with the Red Sox, Cardinals, Pirates and Tigers.

John signed a bonus contract with the Red Sox in 1953 after his UNH days, but before he could throw a pitch he enlisted in the United States Army as a commissioned officer. He served as a company commander, military trial counsel, and athletic and recreation officer. He also pitched for two years in the strong Fort Jackson Regimental Baseball League. It was during that time that he met his wife, Dreamer Jewel Deese of South Carolina

After his time in the service, John returned to the Red Sox to pitch in 1956. He tossed eight games between stints with the Corning (N.Y.) and Lafayette (Ind.) squads before an arm injury ended his professional career. That certainly changed John’s trajectory. Had he not had the injury, it’s possible he would have had some sort of pitching career, perhaps followed by professional coaching given his baseball savvy, especially in pitching. Pro baseball’s loss was Woodsville’s gain.

John Bagonzi talks to his Woodsville players during the Class M basketball tournament at the University of New Hampshire, [Courtesy photo]

By this time he had completed his master’s degree at Indiana University and began to pursue his Ph.D. John returned with Dreamer to Woodsville to teach biology, coach and raise a family. They had three children, including two sons – John III and Robert – who played for their dad. In addition to teaching and coaching, John also served as the town’s youth recreation director, which allowed him to have his hand on the pulse of the town’s youth athletes and future high school stars.

Steve Blood (1971 grad) was well aware of John growing up. His dad, Arnold Blood, had gone to school with John and played sports with him. “I heard a lot about him from my dad as a positive influence,” Blood said.

John formed a youth basketball league that was coached by the high school players. That was when those young boys, according to Blood, got their first whiff of Woodsville basketball, running the same drills that John had taught the high school players.

Frank Leafe (1970 grad) recalled “we knew from being around him with the youth programs what he was expecting.” Leafe said that once players got to seventh and eighth grade, they were playing for a coach who “kind of shadowed what John was teaching at the high school.”

What John was teaching was a style that was certainly fun for the players – uptempo with a lot of pressing in both the half and full courts.

John Bagonzi, right, instructs his Woodsville players on the proper way to hold a basketball. [Courtesy photo]

In addition, John opened up the gym on Saturdays from 1 to 4 p.m. for pickup games. According to Leafe, John felt that was a great way to learn basketball. “How to use the skills that you were being taught,” Leafe said. “We always had enough people for 5-on-5 pick-up games. You don’t see a lot of kids doing that much anymore.”

John Burrill (1977 grad) also remembered a small summer high school league with area towns Littleton, Lebanon, and Hartford, Vermont. John was all about giving kids opportunities to play and get better.

You also learned early on that John wasn’t going to put up with any shenanigans. Leafe as a freshman recalls leaving junior varsity practice and his classmate Billy Coon, who was on the varsity, came up from the locker room two minutes after four. “John jumped on him and asked him why he was late?” Leaf recalled. “Then he sent him home. We knew, OK, when he says to be here, you be here. We expected it. It wasn’t a shock to any of us.”

Unless you were an exceptional player, you were like Leafe. You played JV as a freshman and sophomore, sat the varsity bench, and then you had your time to shine as a junior and a senior. “But you were at all the practices learning the system and playing the system in practices and then playing as a JV player,” he said. “As a junior is when you would usually move up to a varsity role as either a starter or someone off the bench.”

John’s practices were long and covered a lot of ground. Leafe recalls they started at 4 p.m. and he would get home by 7:30. He said the first hour was fundamentals like passing, boxing out, catching, dribbling and rebounding. Then there was competitive shooting from spots all over the floor. The teams would be broken up into smaller teams of 2 or three for this drill. “There had to be over 30 spots on the halfcourt that you shot from with your left and right hand under the basket,” Leafe said. Then they’d work on rebounding and fastbreak drills. At the end they worked on their halfcourt and full-court presses. Practice ended with every player taking 100 foul shots.

Woodsville won its fifth and final Class M state basketball championship under John Bagonzi, back right, in 1977. Also pictured in the back are John Burrill (fourth from left) and Jim MacDonald (third form left). [Courtesy photo]

Blood recalls pretty much the same thing, noting that with the half- and full-court presses, “we went through every one of them every practice.”

Woodsville’s presses were its bread and butter. It’s what sets them apart from everyone else. “We pressed the entire game,” said Blood, who played on five state championship teams (three in baseball, two in basketball). “Everybody, the first, second and third teams, all pressed. Everybody knew their positions. Our favorite full-court (press) was called the 1-2-1-1 with a guy on the ball out of bounds, two wings, an interceptor spot (near the halfcourt area) and a long man. Everybody had a role to play in the full-court press no matter where the ball was.”

Leafe said the Engineers became such a fine-tuned machine that eventually they could press off missed shots. “We all knew everyone’s position,” he said. “We knew where we had to be. If I was on the guy with the ball, sometimes that’s not my position on the press. Somebody else knew they had to cover my position. We just cut off the passing lanes. It looked like helter skelter, I would tell people. But it was well-tuned. There was pressure right away and very rarely were they getting to half court.”

“That was pretty much every night,” Leafe said. “He believed in perfection. No matter how well you were doing, you could always do it better. It was fundamental basketball. That’s what it was. It wasn’t anything fancy.”

But it was something that he could get players to buy into. The style and intensity was a winning combination. The parents bought in as well. The Bagonzi way was gospel in Woodsville. “I know if you came home and complained about anything that was going on, you didn’t get a warm shoulder, “Leafe said. “They all understood that what John was teaching wasn’t just basketball. It was life skills.”

Woodsville coach John Bagonzi, center, celebrates the 1969 Class M state championship in Durham. [Littleton Courier photo]

He was willing to listen too. Scott Burrill brought up during practice that he felt they weren’t trapping as intensely as they should. John looked at Scott, put his index finger thoughtfully into his front teeth and agreed: “Yeah, OK.”

Leafe said the second team was nearly as good as the first squad, which made for intense practices. “It was a great environment practicing against five guys that could beat any team you’re playing. You had to be there. You didn’t want to miss practice. There were guys right behind you who could fill in and take over. You might lose your spot. Our practices were 10 times harder than all our games.”

As Leafe remembered, everyone could run, handle the ball, pass it, shoot it, dribble it, catch it. ‘That’s the basics of what we did,” he said. “We very rarely got into much of a halfcourt offense. Because of the rebounds, we were gone. We were up the floor. Back then that was pretty much ahead of the times for what high school basketball was supposed to be like. It was fun for us. It was fun for the spectators. The gym used to get so packed.”

While it was an enjoyable experience for the Engineers and their fans, it was less so for the opposition, especially on Woodsville’s small home court. “Back then the varsity played at 7 and if you weren’t there for the JV game, you didn’t get a seat,” Leaf recalled.

The prime seating was the right corner of the gym near the stairway that led down to the locker room. If you sat there you could hear John talking to the team, mainly because John’s delivery was loud and fiery. “Even though we might have been winning by 50 points, he was down there and he was intense,” Leafe said. “There was something you always could have done better.”

Former Pembroke Academy coach Ed Cloe was inducted in the same Hall of Fame class with John. He recalls when he got his coaching start at Colebrook Academy in the late 1960s, his team was down 35 points or so at Woodsville. In the locker room at halftime, Cloe and his team listened for a bit in awe as John’s booming eloquence in the adjoining locker room told his team what he expected from them in the second half. When John had finished, Cloe turned to his team and offered concisely: “That goes double for me.”

John Bagonzi, left, is pictured later in life with former Woodsville stat baseball and basketball player, Steve Blood, and Blood’s grandson, Kason. [Photo courtesy of Steve Blood]

When Cloe was hired by Pembroke in 1970, where he began a successful 34-yard career that included four state titles, he was told by the principal that he had called John Bagonzi for a recommendation.

If someone felt Woodsville was running up the score, John wasn’t having it. Scott Burrill said his coach told them “We’re never going to make excuses for the effort we put into this. If we beat you by 40, we’re not apologizing.”

Woodsville’s chief rival, especially during the late 1960s and early ‘70s, was Littleton, a bigger school, which played in Class I (D-II) compared to the Engineers in Class M (D-III). Littleton’s teams were huge with great guards. Their forecourt featured future major league pitcher Rich Gale, who at 6-foot-7 earned a basketball scholarship to UNH along with 6-7 teammate Dennis Sargent. A third player, Lou Ziter, also played at UNH.

While Woodsville was dominating Class M, Littleton was the toast of Class I, winning back-to-back titles in 1970 and 1971. Still, the Engineers had their bigger neighbor’s number. “We played them six times in my three years and we beat them five out of six,” Blood said. “Even though they were in a higher class and were much bigger than we were. They couldn’t run with us. They had a hard time getting through our press.”

That was something where John was at the forefront, scheduling bigger schools to beef up the schedule. Also, at the time, if you beat a larger school, you were rewarded with more points, which helped you in the standings.

Woodsville won its first basketball championship in 1969, capping an undefeated season with a commanding 97-41 victory over Pittsfield in the championship at UNH. To this day the 97 points remains the most scored by a New Hampshire team in a state final and their margin of victory (56) is also still a state-wide record.

A video of that championship game surfaced after John died, found stuffed in the back of a desk drawer at his house. It highlighted the game with no commentary, including some of the post-game celebration. “I never realized it,” Leafe said. “But at the end of the game, we picked him up and carried him to the basket to cut down the net.”

Along with the many big championship moments, there was some heartache, none more painful than the 1970 semis at UNH when unheralded Farmington shocked the unbeaten Engineers, 90-81. The Tigers beat Woodsville at its own game with their own uptempo style that included full-court pressure and navigating the Engineers press with the dribble.

Woodsville came back in 1971 to rule the roost once more, whipping Hollis in the final, 71-41, and then beat the Cavaliers again in ‘73, 61-53. John’s basketball run was capped with back-to-back titles in 1976 and 1977. “We never went into a game with the idea ‘we hope to win,’” said John Burrill. “It was always ‘we’re going to win.’ When we lost, it was like a shock to us. That will to win from coach Bagonzi, he stressed it so much.”

Another thing that John did was do a lot of scouting. The Burrill brothers remember during the 1974-75 season travelling with John to the southern part of the state to scout defending champion Hinsdale and its big star, Larry Scott, who was Class M’s preeminent scorer. While the location of the game has dissolved from memory, what the Burrills clearly recall is that when they got to the game, it was sold out and they could not get in. “It was a long drive for us to get there,” John Burrill (1977 grad) said. “Bagonzi was not about to turn around and go home without getting some information.”

Both brothers remember there was a snowbank outside lined up with windows facing into the gymnasium. “We piled up some more snow and we stood on the snowbank and looked through the windows and scouted the game through the windows,” John Burrill said.

Scott Burrill recalled that Bagonzi would get the usual information on what each team did on offense and defense, something that could be quickly gleaned by the end of the first quarter. What Bagonzi was really looking for was tendencies. He picked up one significant one watching Scott: he always pulled up for a jump shot off his left-hand dribble.

Woodsville was hosting Hinsdale several weeks later. The week before the game, John Burrill recalls intense practices getting ready for Scott and the Pacers’ other big scorer, Mike Fecto. Bagonzi placed masking tape all over the floor where they needed to trap Scott. “In practice, he was drilling into us how good a shooter Larry Scott was. If you don’t get on him, he’s going to shoot. He doesn’t need much time. He doesn’t need much space. You’ve got to crowd him and hopefully try to trap him most of the time.”

The Engineers did a good job of jamming up Scott and shutting down Hinsdale for three quarters. “We relaxed a little bit in the fourth quarter and they kind of came back and the score didn’t quite look as bad as it was,” John Burrill said. “But to be honest, it was a shellacking. It really was.”

Of course, Bagonzi being Bagonzi, he was not happy with that fourth-quarter effort. Again, it was not about running up the score. “He was about you playing your best for the whole game, not just part of it” John Burrill said. “In high school, you can have a 20-point lead and it can go away really quickly. If you don’t keep the pedal to the metal, you can just let the other team (back) in. We never wanted that. We’d get you down and we wanted to keep you down. That’s what it was about.”

What John instilled in his players was a will to win. When the town renamed the community center after John, in his speech he said he asked his players to do the impossible, which was to be in two places at the same time on the court. John Burrill recalled back in the day trapping on one side of the court and the ball was suddenly reversed and passed to the other side. Bagonzi would bellow: “You’ve got to get over there.” In his mind, Burrill was thinking that was impossible. He wasn’t faster than a pass. “He asked the impossible. That’s what got you beyond your skill level, beyond what you normally would be able to do. You were able to do more and even surprise yourself.”

Scott Burrill gave the acceptance speech at the 2024 NHBCO Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony on Nov. 2, 2024 in Concord, N.H. [Photo courtesy: KJ Cardinal]

Scott Burrill remembers getting ready for the tournament on Plymouth State’s larger court and Bagonzi “told you, you literally have to gain a step. For our press to work, you’ve got to gain a step.”

The John Bagonzi the outside world saw and what Woodsville knew were two vastly different men. Some of it likely was not helped by the time he showed his displeasure with the officiating by throwing a chair across the floor during a game in Windsor, Vermont. “I know a lot of people from the outside looking in didn’t really know him,” said John Burrill. “He had a reputation, you know. Some people thought he was harsh, too authoritative, perhaps arrogant. That was not him. Not really. He really cared about you, but in a way that was built on respect. He did demand respect.”

That respect extended to game officials as well – for the players. When you were on the floor or field, you played hard and kept your mouth shut. If there was any arguing with officials to be done, John would do it. “None of us would dare say anything,” recalled Leafe. “If we said anything or (made) some kind of disgusted motion because of a call or foul, you were out of the game. … He took care of that part. You were there to worry about what you’ve got to do on the floor.”

From John Burrill’s perspective, “What John taught was to never give up and to give it your best. His whole focus in basketball, particularly, was the will to win. He wanted to instill that in each and everyone one of us – that will to win. … You may not be as skilled as someone else. If you desire to win, you will do the necessary things within the context of the game to come out on top. We rarely went through a practice without him saying those words – the will to win. It was just constant. It wasn’t just during the time I was there. His whole coaching career was that way.”

Burrill pauses for a second and then adds: “He kind of took a bunch of hillbillies, a bunch of farmers, a bunch of northern hicks and molded them into champions; just because of his demand for excellence. Many of the players would walk through brick walls for him. I’m one of those. I thought his intensity, his tenacity were the most positive things about him.”

John Burrill recalls one example of Bagonzi willing him to do something to help the team win. It was during a game at Gilford. The Engineers weren’t playing well, so Bagonzi sent Burrill into the game. “Before I went in, he’s standing next to me, yelling ‘Make something happen.’” Burrill went in and as one of the guys up front on the press, he stole the in-bounds pass and laid it up for two points. “There was nothing spectacular,” Burrill said. “He asked me to do something, I’m going to do it. That’s kind of what we did. He said to do something. We tried our best to do it.”

That will to win rubbed off on others. MacDonald recalls as a senior in 1976-77 coming back from a Christmas tournament in which the Engineers had lost handily. Bagonzi asked him what he thought. MacDonald responded emphatically “‘John, we’re going to win the state championship.’ There was silence. It was the only time John has been at a loss for words.” But MacDonald was right. That “will to win” propelled the Engineers to the state title for the fifth time since 1969, and the last one under John.

He demanded a lot from his players. But there was a tough-love decency that drew his players to him. They embraced his challenging demeanor and coaching style, understanding that he had their best interests at heart. Years later they can attest to that. The Burrills grew up just north of Woodsville in Monroe. They had several school options in addition to Woodsville. John Burrill was all set to go across the border into Vermont to Saint Johnsbury Academy because they offered football. “I had a brother who went there and played football,” he said. “I was going to Saint Johnsbury because I loved football.” It was pretty much a done deal.

But then Burrill went to his eighth-grade sports banquet in which the guest speaker was John Bagonzi. That speech changed John Burrill’s trajectory. “I can’t tell you any specific thing that he said, but at the end of the speech I went home so worried,” he said. Burrill was clearly troubled with something at home that prompted his mom to ask what was the matter. “‘I’m struggling because I want to play football,” he said. “I’ve got to play for this guy, coach Bagonzi.’ I gave up football to play for coach Bagonzi. It was such an inspiring speech. It moved me. For a young guy in eighth grade, I made probably the best decision in my life.”

Leafe went on to coach and teach physical education at Woodsville High School for 25 years. “He molded me,” said Leafe of Bagonzi. “He had a great influence on what I did the rest of my life getting into coaching and working with kids. A lot of people who saw me coach thought I was pretty much like John.” Leafe is still coaching. For the past three years he has helped out as a volunteer assistant coach with the Woodsville alpine ski and girls basketball squads. As a head coach at Woodsville, he coached boys and girls soccer and girls basketball. He guided the Engineer girls to back-to-back soccer state championships in 1993 and 1994. When he won that initial title, one of the first people to call him up to congratulate him was John Bagonzi. “John molded me and he molded a lot of kids in this community,” Leafe said.

John Bagonzi was a Woodsville institution as an athlete and later as a coach, teacher and community leader. The town saw fit in 2008 to rename its community center after him – the Dr. John Bagonzi Community Building. For all his intensity and tenacity as a coach, John truly cared about his hometown and especially about its youth.

Scott Burrill mentioned that neither John nor Dreamer came from much. Together they assisted John’s mom with the running of Bagonzi’s Restaurant, and then ran it themselves for 27 years. Although, truth be told, it was Dreamer’s baby as John, of course, was tied up with his educational and athletic pursuits. “They were very, very social people,” Scott said. “John would do absolutely anything for the community.”

Burrill told a story that perhaps more than anything reveals how much the Bagonzis cared about their community — something done without a second thought and certainly without any fanfare. “At the closing of the restaurant each night, police officers would drop by and pick up some food and take it to some people in need,” Burrill said. “That was a nightly occurrence. It kind of speaks volumes about the people that they were.”

NOTES: If Bagonzi was a hall of fame basketball coach, then he had to be one for baseball as well. He was a master at developing pitchers. He essentially used pitching and small ball to make the Engineers into a perennial baseball power. Steve Blood had a four-year record of 52-1, pitching Woodsville to three straight state titles. Speaking of small ball, Blood recalls winning the 1969 Class M championship, 3-2, on a double suicide squeeze play. With runners on third and second, the batter got the bunt down to score the runner from third. The second runner never slowed up, scoring the winning run all the way from second base. Blood spent five years in Minnesota’s minor league system with a career mark of 30-23. … In 1964 it was another instance of Woodsville using small ball to win a state title – this one over Charlestown, 3-2. The winning run was scored on a squeeze bunt in extra innings. Hits were hard to come by in that game for the Engineers, who managed just two off Charlestown’s imposing junior ace, a strapping lad whose name still resonates across the state – Carlton Fisk. … Jim MacDonald pitched the Engineers to back-to-back M titles in 1976 and 1977 before embarking on a seven-year pro odyssey with the Houston Astros (68-67 record). … Bagonzi’s most successful pupil was Chad Paronto, the son of Dana Paronto, one of his 1970s’ stars. Chad pitched seven years in the majors with four teams.

Mike Whaley can be reached at whaleym25@gmail.com.

 

Scoring Maestro: Lyric Grumblatt’s game strikes a chord at Rivier

By: Mike Whaley

Lyric Grumblatt has never shied away from shooting. It’s something she has always done well. As she’s gotten older, it’s something she’s become even more proficient at while expanding her all-around game. Now in her fifth year at Rivier University in Nashua, the Manchester’native, a 5-foot-9 guard, is lighting up the NCAA Division III women’s basketball circuit one last time.

Lyric is a two-time player of the year and three-time first-team pick in the Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC). Already this season she has surpassed the 2,000-point total for her career and should shortly eclipse her coach, Deanna Purcell, as the program’s career scoring leader. She has 2,184 points after Thursday’s win at Emmanuel, hot on the heels of Purcell’s 2,192. Lyric has been among the NCAA Division III scoring leaders in three of her four seasons. She is currently ranked third with a 26.5 average. One chapter in her basketball odyssey will close when this season ends and another will open if she decides to play professionally overseas.

Lyric’s path to Rivier was not a straight line. She grew up playing basketball, drawn to the sport by her late grandfather David Grumblatt, who played some at the University of Richmond.  As she followed her dream, she focused initially on playing at a large Division I school far from home. “I hurt myself because I wasn’t really exploring all my options,” she said. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do either. I didn’t know what I wanted to major in. I didn’t have any direction.”

Her Division I tunnel vision caused her to overlook local D-II Saint Anselm College, which had started showing interest during her sophomore season at Manchester Memorial High School. Eventually she realized her Division I dream was a non-starter, so she realistically started looking locally at Division III schools. Emmanuel and Suffolk in Boston were her top two choices with Rivier as her last option. “I really wasn’t thinking about it at all,” Lyric said. “I just knew it was an option.”

A potential new experience in Boston was the motivation behind her first two choices. However, the tide turned when she sat down with her family to make a pros and cons list. A lot of it came down to academics and cost. Rivier had recently opened a science and innovation center, which fit with her interest in a biology major. The other two schools were geared more toward business and law.

Then, of course, there was money. Since Emmanuel and Suffolk were out of state it was going to be more expensive. Rivier was more cost effective. A third consideration was the opportunity to help restart the program, which prior to her arrival had put up an 11-57 three-year record. “I saw the potential to build something really special at Riv,” Lyric said.

Purcell recruited Lyric as an assistant coach in 2019-20. “I told her from the jump I wanted her to come and beat my scoring record,” Purcell said. “That was a goal we made right from the jump.”

Rivier head coach Deanna Purcell is currently the program’s all-time leading scorer.

A goal, maybe, but Lyric initially didn’t see it as a reality. While she had been an all-state player and a 1,000-point scorer in high school, she was skeptical that could happen. “It wasn’t something that I had in mind and even thought would be possible because it was a lot of points,” she said. 

Purcell felt Lyric was a bigger talent than Rivier at the time with the ability to play Division II or higher level D-III. “I asked her to take a chance on me and the former coach at the time,” Purcell said. “We can build something around you here. You can make your mark here.”

There were similarities in Purcell’s and Lyric’s journey to Riv. Both are local women (Purcell played at Alvirne HS in Hudson) who followed an older sister to Riv and initially did not seriously consider the school. “We have a lot of parallels, so it’s just really cool,” Lyric said.

Plus there’s the fact that they both have a scorer’s mentality. “I understand her in a different way than some of her other coaches,” Purcell said. “I was not that far removed from the game when she was a freshman (five years). I felt like I understood her on a personal level because I saw pieces of myself in her. I wanted to be that coach that related to her in a different way.”

The year before Lyric came to Rivier, Purcell was an assistant who became the head coach halfway through the season when Paul Williams stepped aside for personal reasons. She was named the coach for the ‘20-21 season, which was shut down by the Covid-19 pandemic – so no games. It was a blessing for both women.

Lyric said that as a freshman “that Covid year was pivotal in my growth as an athlete. I made so much progress and was able to work on everything to get better.”

For Purcell it was a chance to get her feet wet and figure out who she wanted to be as a coach taking over a struggling program. “It was a chance to kick start that and have a full year with the pressure off. It set the tone for what we wanted to do.”

In 2021-22, the Raiders and Lyric found success. Riv went a very respectable 14-12 after being picked to finish last in the GNAC North preseason poll. The Raiders won a game in the GNAC playoffs. Meanwhile Lyric was named the conference’s Player of the Year and Rookie of the Year, while earning first-team honors. She led NCAA Division III in scoring, averaging 26.2 points per game to go along with 8.1 rebounds per game.

“I did a lot more than I expected,” she said. “It was one of my better years. It was also because nobody knew who I was.”

Lyric followed that up with a solid second year to again earn First Team All-Conference honors, although it did not match her first year’s output. She averaged 17.7 points and 5.6 rebounds per game. Rivier had another very good season, going 14-13, winning a GNAC playoff game before losing in the semis to St. Joseph’s. “We had a new system with a lot of new people who could score the ball,” Lyric said. “I didn’t necessarily need to score 30 points per game, and that’s a good thing because the more weapons you have on the court the harder it is to stop your team.”

It was a very enjoyable season for Lyric. “I could do other stuff,” she said. “Focus on defense. It was a good year for other parts of my game.” 

Last year was a challenge. Another top player, Hannah Muchmore, went down with a posterior cruciate ligament (PCL) injury seven games into the season. “I had to take on more of a scoring load and a defensive load because she’s such a good defender.”

Lyric was averaging 18-19 points a game in the early going, but when things started turning bad, she flipped a switch. “I was right back to where I was in my first year,” she said. “I knew I had to take over a little bit more.” Once again she was among the nation’s leaders in scoring with a 25.2 average (third), earning her second GNAC Player of the Year Award and third first-team all-conference honor.

Although the Raiders’ record (10-17) fell off from the two previous seasons, they once again made the playoffs. They beat Johnson & Wales in a play-in before falling in the playoff quarters to St. Joe’s once again – 74-64. Lyric had a double-double (30 points, 13 boards) as Riv pulled to within two late, before the Monks hit foul shots to win by 10.

As that season ended, Lyric looked ahead. She was planning to come back for her final season, but she also was taking a peek at the future after college – playing pro overseas. She decided to go to a showcase with the intention of using it as a dry run, measuring her chances after this season. It didn’t quite go as planned.

She did well at the showcase. People were impressed. Lyric was approached and asked “What if we offer you something today? What would you do?” She did not see that coming. Suddenly there was talk of flying overseas in August to play in Albania.

As they had when Lyric picked a school, the family got together to weigh her options. “I had one year left (at Rivier),” she said. “I had started something at Riv. It would have been stupid to leave. I decided to come back and I don’t regret it at all.”

That resonated with her coach. “We’re lucky she’s a really loyal kid,” Purcell said. “It wasn’t like we were just a stepping stone for her. She cares about the Rivier community. She cares about me and my vision for the program.”

Once she got to Rivier, Lyric never considered moving on to a bigger school. Had she had a first season and played well, she thinks maybe she might have. But as it was, she did the Covid year and then had a great campaign in Year 2. “At that point I’m already halfway through my academics,” she said. “Transferring felt a little more risky academically because you risk losing credits. That’s something that held me back.”

Looking back at her evolution, Lyric felt her defense improved exponentially since she was in high school. The main reason, she laughed, is that in high school she didn’t have a defensive mindset. “My job was to score as many points as I could,” she said. “I was going to guard their worst player so I could get a break on the defensive end. That’s not what they needed from me. We had a really good defensive anchor that allowed me to rest on defense.”

She used that Covid year to improve her defense. Another facet that she got better at was developing an inside game on offense instead of relying exclusively on her perimeter shooting. “I’m a bigger guard. I’m pretty tall at 5-8, 5-9, especially with my basketball shoes on,” she said. “Those guarding me were 5-4, 5-5. I had a couple of inches on them. I was able to start learning the inside game and taking advantage of those mismatches when I had them. Once I had that, I was able to kind of pick and choose whether to shoot a 3 or try to get inside.”

A third factor that helped her build her game was putting in time in the weight room. “That just changed everything,” she said. “I was feeling way better physically and mentally just because I was able to go longer. I was a lot stronger. That made me even better.”

Since Lyric is the most recognizable name in the GNAC, wherever she plays, she gets plenty of attention – and in a very physical way. “I’m expecting them to try to take me out,” she said of the other teams. “I get a lot of hits. I absorb a lot of contact. I know the whistle I’m getting versus everybody else is completely different because the refs think I can fight through a lot more. It’s definitely not fair, but it’s what I’m expecting.”

This speaks to Lyric’s maturity. Rather than dwell on how unfair it might be, she puts her head down and pushes forward. “I just have to fight that much harder than everyone else,” she said. “I’m getting my defender’s best game every game. Everybody wants to stop me. I just have to know I can’t take possessions off because everybody is wanting to give me their best game.”

Hannah Muchemore (left) celebrates with Lyric Grumblatt following Grumblatt joining the 2,000-point club at Plymouth State earlier this season.

Lyric recalls she did get frustrated during her second season because now everyone knew who she was. “I was getting the defender’s best games and I wasn’t getting the whistles,” she said. Athletic Director Jonathan Harper helped her to see the light. “I had to adjust. He talked to me,” she said. It was pretty simple. Harper told her the more she reacted the less calls she was going to get. “He told me the refs would start going against me.” It was a good lesson.

Now Lyric feels she has a nice middle ground where she is at peace with how she is treated, even if she doesn’t agree with it. “I don’t let it get to me mentally because what’s that going to do?” she said. “It’s something I can’t control.”

The Raiders are 2-0 in the conference and 6-7 overall. After a tough non-conference stretch, they are ready to make some noise in the GNAC, and maybe go deeper in the tournament. “If we can continue on the path that we’re on, we should be able to do some really good things,” Lyric said.

Coach Purcell agrees. Playing a difficult non-conference slate at the beginning was something she learned from other coaches. “Those tough games have helped. I think we’re ready,” the coach said.

Of course, how Rivier does will hinge on Lyric, which is a good thing. Purcell doesn’t see her slowing down. “She’s special,” her coach said. “I don’t think people pay attention to her beyond her scoring ability. I always like to note she is the hardest worker in the room 100 percent of the time. I’m not exaggerating when I say that. She doesn’t take plays off in practice. She’s always in the gym getting shots off. She’s there every day. She’s a role model for young kids in the state of New Hampshire who want to go and play college basketball and want to play at the level that she does. It didn’t come to her because she wanted it to. It came to her because she made it happen. She put herself in this position – breaking records and getting overseas looks.”

Mike Whaley can be reached at whaleym25@gmail.com