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Mixed Squad, Unmatched Success

The Prudence Academy Co-Ed Basketball Team

By Gerard Delft for the High School Sporting News

The Numbers Game

Is there a bigger problem for a coach, especially one of young athletes, than to have to bench starters? Is there a greater lift for a coach than knowing your entire bench is made up of starting players? Prudence Academy’s varsity and only basketball coach, Craig Heaton, has been forced to face these questions head-on since his first game in charge this September.

PA is not facing any injury or discipline issues. Neither are they grappling with the moral dilemmas that come with prioritizing sportsmanship over winning in youth sport. Heaton isn’t resting his best for the sake of parity against lesser opponents. He finds himself in no position to give his seniors final bows or provide inexperienced underclassmen with real in-game reps. These are all luxuries the Leatherworkers can ill afford. Down the stretch, his team is privileged to play out its season in competitive, meaningful games. With their Nashaway Valley Conference best 14-3 record, they still have an outside chance of securing the school’s first state tournament berth since the early 1990s.

No, it all comes down to numbers. If they want to comply with minimum league requirements and field a team at all, rookie coach Heaton has to be willing to bench starters and start its bench at any given tip. At Prudence Academy, everyone must play and play well when called upon. All young men, and young women, are on deck at all times. All eight of them. Heaton is quick to remind everyone that it’s not so bad. After all, they only had seven registered players, the absolute minimum required, until mid-October when the NVC approved a roster addition from a student who moved into the district after the school year had started.

“We have a ton [more] flexibility than you’d believe,” said Heaton. “It’s all thanks to the work they put in. I can choose based on matchups. That’s it. Fitness we don’t even worry about. There’s nine of them. Of course, they’re exhausted. Communication, how they gel together as a unit- never has to cross my mind. Any and every combination, they’re on the same wavelength. On paper my job seems difficult, but the guys have made it so simple for me. We play the matchups. If the other team goes small, easy choice. We play the ladies. They are the best shooters I have ever seen at this level. They can sink take after take from well beyond the arc at very high percentages. So, if they go small, we go with the gals. All of us are confident they’ll shoot lights out over the top. No other high school [teams] know how to get that spacing right, because they’re essentially guarding elite college shooters. If they don’t put in the height to contest a couple feet away from the three-point line, that’s our best option every time.”

A Mixed Squad

It’s no accident that Kathryn ‘Kat’ McRae and Regina Francis find themselves in the spotlight on the court. For the obvious, the senior pair are female athletes playing on a competitive boys’ team. As juniors, they received limited game time but had practiced with boys’ varsity since they were freshmen. Prudence, a once thriving industrial town, is rebounding from a demographic crisis. Today, young professionals are moving in and resettling the area, because it has important commuter links to Worcester and Boston. Elementary enrollment is now booming, but the region’s middle and high schools will continue to lag behind for the next five to ten years.

“There was no girls’ team,” Francis said point blank. “If you wanted to ball, you had one option.” Or “if you have money, you could go to a private school,” McRae added. Their participation is more than earned, and if anything overdue. Francis and McRae lead their team in scoring. Francis averages a little over fifteen points per game, and McRae puts nearly nineteen points on the board each time she plays. At six foot two, Francis also chips in between four and five rebounds during each contest. Her performances make even her coach question the facts. “I don’t know,” said Heaton “she stands much taller than any guy at six two.”

This is not the result of some ‘Air Bud Rule’ or an omission of sorts. The gender exemption was written in by the MIAA during their last charter revisions in the 1980s to accommodate for such situations. It was intended more or less for one off occasions if you look at the letter of the law, but it also does not openly discourage exceptions made to yearlong rosters.

Today, the WNBA exists and nearby UCONN has dominated women’s collegiate basketball for almost a decade. These are two compelling reasons for the governing board to turn a blind eye. It makes sense to let the best female players in the state face the best competition available to them, because basketball is now a viable pathway to college scholarships and even a professional career for the most talented women players. Francis has elected to go pro and play in Italy as early as this summer. McRae will be attending St. John’s University in the fall and is expected to play as a true Freshman starter.

In most cases, however, female student athletes still choose to be on their girls’ varsity team. Until coach Heaton arrived, both McRae and Francis were buried on the bench. Due to prejudice, they were basically practice players. If they were provided access to a girls’ team, it is difficult to believe they would not have played much more as underclassmen, and in turn, been much more heavily recruited in their junior and senior years.

As much as the Leatherworkers’ effort on the court deserves plaudits, the MIAA and its hands-off approach should be recognized as well. So far, they have refused to hear all seven appeals filed against Prudence Academy by their opponents alleging failure to meet minimum roster requirements. Every filing cited the use of female players on a permanent basis, including the most recent one sent to the NVC offices by Academy rival Central Tech after they were embarrassed by Prudence 37-64 at home. Along with the many other logistical challenges he faces, Coach Heaton makes sure his team takes it all in stride. He likes to dad joke that ‘sour grapes produce whine’. Of the three teams that have defeated Prudence Academy, none have been signatories to any of the seven official complaints. All of the appellants were losers, and sore ones at that.

Winning

During a midweek practice the focus, and there is an abundance of focus, is on what they can control. Namely, themselves. After some warm-up drills and tough conditioning that has players flying baseline to baseline, the team watches back wobbly video footage from its most recent victories. The emphasis is always on what went right and what the tiny group is capable of producing on the court. Coach Heaton asks his players if they remember what the opponents’ bench, the team in dark blue, said before McRae and Francis checked in for the first time with a little over thirteen minutes left in the first half. Everyone laughs. Not because what was said was funny, but because they know the highlight reel is on its way shortly after. ‘Yeah coach,’ says a voice from the player circle. ‘Wasn’t it something about them belonging at a car wash?’ another teammate chips in.

They fast forward to all the good parts. Bucket after bucket. Drip after drip until it’s a steady flood of scoring. Mid-range step backs and three pointers tickling the bottom of the net, one after another. Interspersed are intelligent passes that open up teammates for easy looks in the paint. McRae and Francis light up the team in dark blue for a combined fifty-four points and who knows how many assists. Everyone is singing ‘at the car wash’ and everyone is more than ready for the next contest, including Coach Heaton. He lets them scrimmage four on four for the remainder of practice and makes me ref. They’ve more than earned the fun.

“I feel like now more than ever,” said Heaton, “watching their games back, I’m learning more about basketball than ever before. I was part of our [state] championship team in the late Eighties, but this is better. I’ve had a front row seat for this the entire time. Close to the police station downtown is an outdoor court and everyday you’d see Reg and Kat battling it out from little girls all the way up to today. Pink ribbons in their hair and everything. And you’d think what’s this all about? I [sic] been a cop for longer than I can remember now and they’re teaching me more about people too. You put limits on people, sooner or later you’re going to feel stupid. That’s why it’s such an honor to coach these eight young people. They refuse to put limits on what they can accomplish. That for me, is the real victory. That’s the win.”