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.

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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