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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.”

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 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.