It can be easy to take the recent dominance of Loomis Chaffee – and Alicia Mitchell — for granted.
The Pelicans have won four straight Class A championships. Mitchell, from Springfield, Mass., has been part of the last two, transferring after leading Springfield International to an MIAA Division 5 championship.
The 6-foot-3 center was a seamless fit. As a senior, she averaged 11.0 points and 8.3 rebounds, converting 60.1 percent of her 2-pointers as the rock on this winter's title team. Mitchell wins our Class A Player of the Year award, but reaching this level has really been a two-year process in learning how to be a true student of the game.
Mitchell reflected on two areas of growth: film study and consistent workouts. When she arrived at Loomis Chaffee, she was doing both, but inconsistently. Strength training in particular felt more like a necessary chore than an opportunity. But once Mitchell started seriously planning for college — she's headed to Columbia — she started understanding the value of preparing physically for the next level.
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"One day, it kind of just felt like I started to appreciate everything that goes into the process more," she said. "Working out, I really understood why this needs to be such a big thing and why I need to stay consistent to it, and I can appreciate it. And then strength training, now I really see the value, and especially with so many players getting injuries and ACL (injuries) and all this other stuff — learning about it, I really took the time and was grateful that I had so many people dedicated to helping me."
Playing on a roster loaded with talent and size gave Mitchell optimal training partners. Liv Westfort, Mitchell's 6-foot-2 frontcourt partner and a William & Mary volleyball commit, was particularly helpful as a strong, athletic forward who could test her in practice.
"It's really nice to have her there, because certain shots that I take, I have to know that you have to go up stronger or have to go quicker, because that shot is going to get blocked in a real game," Mitchell said. "The girls that you're going up against aren't going to necessarily be 5-7 and only weigh, like, 100 pounds. They're going to be strong just like you; (they) are going to be tall just like you. Liv also has a different game than I do, so it really helps because she's very fast, she's very athletic, she jumps super high and all that. So playing against a player that is similar to myself, but also in many ways different, helps me."
Mitchell has spoken about Loomis Chaffee's implicit expectations of diligent film study. That was another adjustment as she worked to maintain the Pelicans' championship standard.
"I definitely underestimated just how, like, crucial it was to my game and to just a matter of winning games or not," she said. "The way I went about starting to watch film (changed): taking notes, really paying attention to the scout that one of our assistant coaches would give us, and not only just going off that scout, but then going back and seeing especially, the player I knew I was going to be guarding or whichever players rotated most in the post. I was specifically watching them and watching their game — see if they got in foul trouble, or see if it was very easy to frustrate them."
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Mitchell has studied bits of professional and college stars like Angel Reese, Kamilla Cardoso and Sarah Strong. But she'll also point to her prep school peers as great film challenges, namely Hotchkiss center Morgan Jenkins. Mitchell had high praise for Jenkins and how she challenged her during the last two years.
"She was a player I was looking at because honestly, she does have a very expanded game," she said. "She plays on the perimeter a little bit, she dribbles a little bit more than some other posts that I know, so I figured that if I could learn how to guard her or if I paid attention to her game, that could be most beneficial especially to my team when we play her."
Mitchell credited Loomis Chaffee for building a culture that supports this level of basketball development. Seniors like Westfort, Abby Congdon, Aniyah Neal and Catherine Chadwell helped set the standard, but she also gave props to the underclassmen who should a willlingness to buy in. That helped boost the Pelicans as a team and Mitchell's individual stardom.
"They're really great people and super agreeable," Mitchell said. "They're so open to learning new things and always wanting to help. So I think that's a really big part; they make it super easy to do that and help others' success."
