Hartford High’s girls basketball team won three of its final six games last winter to finish 5-16. The Hurricanes have built on that ending to go 9-8 thus far this winter.
“We lose a lot of kids to hockey once they hit eighth grade,” said second-year coach Heidi Bushway, herself a Hurricanes player during the early 1980s. “I don’t know why that happens, but we don’t have a lot of basketball players at the younger levels.”
To help, Bushway is on the board of the third-year Hartford Storm AAU program, which she said has roughly 100 competitors from grades 3 through 11. The hope is that by having girls start basketball early and have them interact with members of the Hurricanes varsity team, more of them will stick with the sport through high school.
Bushway was Hartford’s girls JV coach before taking over the varsity. The Hurricanes won the 2012 Vermont Division II title and fell in the semifinals a year later but have lost six of seven playoff games since.
“We had some great athletes in the program during those years,” Bushway said, invoking standouts such as Sarah Illingsworth and Stephanie Grobe. “When you lose players like that, it’s hard to rebuild, and now, we just need to get the girls to believe that they can get back there.”
Bushway said the proliferation of sports opportunities has meant basketball has to compete not only with winter sports like hockey and skiing, but with soccer and lacrosse when athletes choose to play them outside the high school season. Still, her team is clearly improved.
“We win the games we’re supposed to win — mostly,” she said last Thursday after the Hurricanes were upset by Division III Otter Valley. “I want to get over the hurdle and win the ones people don’t think we’re going to win.”
An example of an area varsity team with a dynamite feeder program is Thetford Academy, where the girls basketball team is aiming for its third VPA Division III state title in four years. Eric Ward said some of his most important championship work takes place away from the school.
Ward has long guided AAU teams at lower levels, indoctrinating youngsters in the Panther way years before they reach ninth grade. The 12th-year coach works with the River Valley club, coaching Thetford players but also others from nearby towns.
“Blue Mountain has four kids who won an AAU championship with us four years ago,” said Ward, who’s working with seventh graders this year. “I don’t care if other teams know our plays because of that. We’re not secretive, and it’s all about execution anyways.
“People think AAU is cutthroat, but for me, it’s a real tool to get back to teaching with not as much pressure.”
Ward recently retired from a career with the U.S. Postal Service so he’ll have even more time to work at the youth level. His current team doesn’t have many players who competed for him before high school, but he remembers that virtually the entire TA senior class from three years ago had risen under his tutelage.
River Valley takes multiple squads to a Southern Maine University team camp in June. By the time its players reach the high school level for schools such as Thetford, Rivendell, Oxbow and Woodstock, they’re well-schooled in the basics. And as Panthers, they have an expectation that their seasons will end in the Barre Auditorium, home of the state semifinals and finals.
“Division III is a little bit tougher this season because some Division II teams dropped down,” Ward said, noting that Thetford hasn’t lost a girls home basketball playoff game in the eight years since it opened its refurbished gym. “But I really like this team, and I think we’re ready to go.”
The Panthers (16-2) are likely to be the division’s No. 3 seed. The two teams that have handed them losses, Windsor and Harwood, seem likely foes in Barre, assuming Thetford doesn’t stumble. The program has reached the final six consecutive years.
Mike Gaudette began his boys high school basketball coaching career with six seasons at Mascoma and followed it with five more campaigns at Hartford, where he played himself during the late 1980s. He resigned from his Hurricanes post in 2011 before resurfacing last season with the newly-formed White River Valley School in South Royalton.
The Wildcats, mostly comprised of South Royalton students and those from Bethel’s former Whitcomb High, finished the regular season 12-8 and seventh in the Vermont Division IV rankings. White River Valley will host a first-round playoff game and Gaudette said he expects a breakout season in 2020-21.
“The first time I ever met the players was the start of last season; I didn’t have them in the summer,” said Gaudette, a Wilder resident who works for a school bus company. “It really took us until mid-February before they understood the spacing and how to push the ball up court. We’re so far ahead of that this year.”
Gaudette said 34 of the school’s 60 boys played basketball last winter and that 29 came out for the current season. However, the Wildcats often only have 10 available for varsity games, and a recent bout of sickness meant most of the bench players were JV call-ups.
“The lack of depth is the biggest adjustment for me,” said Gaudette, who coached AAU and junior high teams during his absence from the varsity ranks. “But in the program overall, we have more kids than some Division II and Division III teams. And we’ve got a big group coming up from eighth grade next year.”
Asked the biggest difference from his coaching approach 15 years ago, Gaudette said he’s no longer obsessed with the score.
“When I was younger, it was all about winning,” he said. “Now, I want well-rounded kids who are good in the community and good on the court.”
The growing process sometimes makes Gaudette recall his summer and high school days playing for the late Robert “Stretch” Gillam. The coach would go out of his way to make sure every kid got home after practice and ferried his troops to summer-league games at Norwich University in a bright blue van.
“We looked like the A Team coming out of that thing,” Gaudette said with a chuckle. “What I took away from him and try to carry on is all that he did for kids.”
Tris Wykes can be reached at twykes@vnews.com.