BRADFORD — Shortly before his death from colon cancer in May, Thetford Academy girls basketball coach Eric Ward got a call from Jay Clark, an AAU coach in the area who had funneled several players into Ward’s program.
Clark had been offered the head varsity girls post at Oxbow High, which would have been his first high school job in a lengthy coaching career, and said he was almost looking for Ward to talk him out of it.
“Eric was a good friend of mine, and he didn’t (talk me out of it),” Clark said. “He just said it’s a lot different than AAU. You control everything in AAU; here, the school controls everything. (But) I love teaching basketball. If this is all I could ever do for the rest of my life, I’d be happy.”
Clark played high school basketball in Massachusetts and has lived in the Upper Valley for around 25 years, relocating because his wife grew up in the area. He began coaching his daughter in the Thetford youth program when she was in third grade and continued through the River Valley Blue AAU program, which won the eighth grade state title last year and sends players to Thetford, Rivendell and Oxbow.
After Barry Emerson stepped down after nine years coaching the Olympians, Clark was approached by some of the Oxbow players’ parents about the opening. He was hired by then-athletic director Derek Cipriano, who left over the summer for the same position at Spaulding. Heidi Wright, previously the AD at White River Valley, was named to replace him.
“They’re very young, and sometimes with coaches, they’re coaching for next season. I don’t think that’s what Jay is doing,” Wright said. “As time progresses and they continue to play the game, they’re going to develop and grow, and they really have exponential (potential) because they are so young.”
The Olympians finished 7-14 last year and lost in the first round of the VPA Division III playoffs, the first time they exited the postseason that early since 2013. Five seniors, including leading scorer Emma Parkin, are now gone, and Clark said he may end up starting three freshmen and a sophomore.
That sophomore, Maggi Ellsworth, was second on the team in scoring last year with 8.2 points per game. Knowing she would be a focal point of opponents’ scouting this season, Ellsworth worked hard on her game outside of practice during the offseason.
“I put lights out in my driveway and would shoot 100 foul shots a night, because last season, that wasn’t really my strong suit,” Ellsworth said.
Ellsworth has also advocated for continuing the Saturday morning camps that Oxbow’s varsity players hosted with Emerson in the high school gym, where third- through sixth-graders from Oxbow’s sending towns would come and learn the finer points of the game.
Clark may be new at Oxbow and new to high school coaching, but he had coached some of the Olympians’ players already with River Valley Blue. Natalee Spear, a freshman in line for heavy minutes this winter, first played for Clark in sixth grade. She credits Clark for refining her shooting motion and said explaining the fundamentals is one of his strengths.
“(We had) a lot of open gyms over the summer, and I came to every single one of them,” Spear said. “It was just constantly working on what I knew I needed to work on. Most commonly it was my shot, and Jay especially helped me with that. He helped me with my form and my foot placement, because my hands were not placed correctly and I was shooting from my hip instead of my head. So now it’s something that is completely fixed.”
Oxbow defeated Danville in a scrimmage Friday night, and Clark’s first regular-season game will be Monday at Blue Mountain. The Olympians have won 13 state championships all-time, going back to their first season in 1972, but Clark is looking to lead them to their first since 2012.
“I’m looking for the girls to grow into this,” Clark said. “I want them to be good teammates (first), and then good basketball players. Everybody greets everybody when they come into the gym. It’s really a nice atmosphere.”
Benjamin Rosenberg can be reached at brosenberg@vnews.com or 603-727-3302.