Category: NHBCO

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

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.

 

NHBCO Hall of Fame induction

CONCORD, NH – The New Hampshire Basketball Coaches Organization inducted seven new members into its Hall of Fame on Saturday afternoon at the Holiday Inn in Concord.

John Bagonzi (Woodsville), Ed Beattie (Winnacunnet), Ed Cloe (Pembroke) and Joe Giovannangeli (Conant) were part of the 2nd class ever to be inducted, while Don Maynard (Oyster River), Dave Nichols (Oyster River) and Buddy Trask (Colebrook) made up the 3rd class. The induction of the 2nd class had been delayed due to the pandemic, according to NHBCO President Dave Chase.

WATCH THE FULL INDUCTION CEREMONY

Let’s take a further look at each inductee, with their bios that were featured in the Hall of Fame program. Special thanks to Mike Whaley for editorial assistance with these bios…

JOHN BAGONZI, Woodsville

John Bagonzi from Woodsville was a highly successful New Hampshire high school coach. from 1959 to 1977 he led his teams to 13 state championships and seven runner up finishes including a cross country title in 1972. His basketball teams earned 361 victories five state championships a 62 game winning streak and 20 consecutive winning seasons.


ED BEATTIE, Winnacunnet

Ed Beattie served as the head girls basketball coach at Winnacunnet High School for 31 years compiling a remarkable record of 519-173 and winning seven state championships including five consecutive titles from 2006 to 2011. He also started the girls soccer program leading them to an undefeated state championship in their division.


ED CLOE, Pembroke

Ed Cloe served as the head coach of the Pembroke Academy boys basketball team from 1970 to 2004 achieving an impressive 543 career wins. During his tenure he led the team to four state championships in 1972, 1978, 1985 and 1991 and three runner up finishes in 1977, 1979 and 1984. Cloe’s contributions to the sport were recognized with inductions into the New England Basketball Hall of Fame in 2003 and the NHIAA Hall of Fame in 2006.


ARTHUR JOE GIOVANNANGELI JR., Conant

Arthur Joe Giovannangeli Jr. coached at Conant High School for 20 seasons where he led the boys basketball team to six state championships, including three in his final three seasons. Prior to his time with the Orioles, he also guided ConVal to a state title in 1986. Throughout his coaching career Giovannangeli fostered a competitive environment that contributed to the development of his athletes.


DON MAYNARD, Oyster River

Don Maynard coached basketball at Oyster River High for 26 years including 20 as head boys coach and one as head girls coach. He had a varsity record of 310-168 winning Class I state titles in 1992 1995 and 1996. He also coached JV boys for three years and was a varsity assistant for both boys and girls teams.


DAVE NICHOLS, Oyster River

Dave Nichols coached basketball at Oyster River for 23 years leading both the boys and girls teams to state championships. He coached the boys from 1979 to 1988 winning a Class I title in 1988 and guided the girls to three state titles in 2003, 2006 and 2009, two of which were undefeated seasons. Nichols, who also served as an assistant coach for the Hanover High School girls program, was the state’s first coach to win a state title with both genders: boys (1988) and girls (2003, 2006, 2009), all at Oyster River.


BUDDY TRASK, Colebrook

Buddy Trask coached varsity boys basketball for 45 seasons starting at Stratford high in 1976 and ending at Colebrook in 2022. He recorded 606 wins, the third most in New Hampshire boys basketball and won championships in 1997, 2002 and 2008. Trask also served on the NHIAA basketball committee supporting smaller divisions.

 


Check out the photo gallery below by KJ Cardinal. High resolution downloads and prints of this gallery can be purchased on the Ball603 photo site.