The Worcester Academy girls basketball team considers the inflection point of its season to be around its 74-37 loss to Tilton on Nov. 22. At that time, the Hilltoppers chose not to let their early struggles define them, and they persevered to win a Class AA championship.
Senior guard Elyse MacDonough zooms in further to her defining moment as a leader. She could tell the Hilltoppers returned from that loss and Thanksgiving break with low morale. So before practice, she challenged her teammates.
"Nobody really looked like they wanted to be there," McDonough said. "I just kind of had a talk with everyone and was like 'Hey if you don't want to be here, don't be here. But we are early in the season. We have a huge chance, huge opportunity right now to prove everybody wrong, and we need to do that.' And after that talk that I had, I think everybody's mindsets changed."
MacDonough is our first Class AA Player of the Year for her on-court and locker-room impact. The 5-foot-8 guard and St. Bonaventure commit from South Burlington, Vt., averaged 17.8 points, 3.1 rebounds, 2.3 assists and 1.6 steals. As the Hilltoppers found a groove — they won 18 of their last 20 games following a 5-8 start — so did MacDonough. She landed on our All-Tournament team after scoring 31 points in the semifinals and 15 in the championship.
AWARD SEASON:Â See our All-Class AA teams and individual honors
"I think as a leader, I just really focused on getting my teammates better the best that I could, in practice and outside of practice," she said. "I know it could have been hard for everyone this year with a new coach, but we all just stuck with it."
Dan Sullivan became the Hilltoppers' third head coach in three years when he switched from his longtime assistant role on the boys team. The players felt the change immediately; instead of running a basic 5-out offense like the prior season, Sullivan brought a slate of specific plays he wanted to incorporate. But he needed the buy-in from MacDonough, along with co-captains Ella Getz and Saige Youngberg.
"It was definitely a lot to take on, but from the beginning of the season, I just would be in his office every day after school going over plays," MacDonough said. "He would ask me how we work together and who can play off each other best with those situations and those different plays. And I think, just from the start, he was very communicative with all of us, and he gave us the resources we needed to understand what plays we needed to run when. Learning those plays was just such an important part of our game that we just we knew we needed to learn all of them."
MORE PLAYERS OF THE YEAR: Class AAA | Class A | Class B
MacDonough, the winner of last summer's A Shot For Life shooting challenge in Massachusetts, further cemented herself as one of New England's elite perimeter threats by drilling 36 percent of her whopping eight 3-point attempts per game. She got up about 500-600 shots per day before and after school during the preseason. But MacDonough was most proud of her improvements reading ball screens and knowing to when to pass to her roller, when to pass out or when to create her own shot.
"This year, I developed shooting behind the screen, reading the defender (and) where they go to see if I have that opportunity to get it inside or create on my own," she said.
Off the court, MacDonough, Getz and Youngberg helped bring together a Worcester Academy program that had gotten used to coaching and roster turnover in recent years. Sullivan would go to MacDonough at first for her leadership in organizing team bonding activities. That early hard work to unite the squad paid off with a title in March.
"We all just loved hanging out with each other this year," MacDonough said. "There was never a time in season where we weren't together, whether that was in school or outside of school. I think everyone just always wanted to be around each other, which helped a ton with the chemistry."
