Tilton coach Tara Brisson stood near the far right corner of the Loomis Chaffee sidelines, watching the Class AA championship before her team would suit up in the AAA bout.
When asked how she felt about facing Nobles — which had knocked Tilton out in the previous year's championship, and which had beaten the Rams twice this season — Brisson said it was the calmest she had been before a title game.
Hardly anyone expected Tilton to topple two-time reigning champion Nobles. The third-seeded Rams weren't supposed to beat Tabor on the road by 22 points in the semifinals, either. Those rosters had nationally-ranked seniors and star Big Threes, and had won each NEPSAC Class AA title since 2022 — before NEPSAC created the new AAA class. Tilton, owner of six titles in classes A through C between 2011 and 2020, had never finished atop prep's highest class.
Then Brooke Golden's high-off-glass hook shot fell with one second remaining, giving the Rams a stunning, 68-66 championship victory. Tilton's relentless confidence and commitment to its "We Got Us" team mantra was suddenly validated.
"The entire season, that's what we were told: no one wanted to see us win," Golden said postgame. "No one thought we could win. No one thought we could beat Tabor yesterday, no one thought we could beat Nobles today (as) the 3-seed. We just said we'll take what we're given and we'll show everyone that they're wrong."
Tilton, for all of its talent and depth, does not (yet) have a high-major commit on the roster. Last year the Rams were led by Ahnay Adams, an explosive, nationally-ranked point guard who now plays at Miami. With Adams gone and Tilton recovering from its 66-57 defeat in last year's final, the hype departed for other teams.
When NEPSAC was adding Class AAA, someone told Brisson to stay in AA. Why? So Tilton could win a championship. She felt slighted by it all.
"I take it personally, because I think I'm the X-factor," she said. "I think I'm a pretty good coach who has great human beings on their team, and really gets the most out of each player to understand their role, accept their role, and perform in their role. And I am so sick of that being overlooked every single year — not me specifically, but just the team."
The Rams brought five seniors back, including Colgate-bound wing Colleen Phiri. Phiri (Haverhill, Mass.), unlike the tirelessly tough Adams, is soft-spoken. Brisson needed her to lead with her voice. Phiri ran for Tilton student body president last year, and though she didn't win, her experience speaking in front of the entire school helped her grow more comfortable leading her squad.
Phiri averaged 17.2 points, 9.4 rebounds and 4.2 assists this season while shooting 42 percent behind the 3-point arc. She frequently produces against some of New England's highly-touted talent, but her name doesn't carry the same weight. Does she feel underrated?
"Definitely. Honestly, it's been the same thing in AAU as well," Phiri said. "You play a lot of good girls that have these big names and stuff. People will always underestimate you, but that doesn't really bother me, because I feel like I have the same kind of mindset as Brisson. At the end of the day these are girls my age and I've played against these people before."
Tilton added 2026 transfer guard Bela Cucuta (Newington, Conn.) to help fill Adams' void in the backcourt. Cucuta says her early learning curve was steep. She jumped right into 6 a.m. speed training sessions twice a week in the fall, and practices came soon after. Cucuta was balancing life in a different state and school, a new role on a Class AAA team and the expectation of replacing Adams as starting point guard.
Cucuta would be one of NEPSAC's lethal 3-point shooters the moment she stepped on the court. But the first weeks of the season, Brisson watched Cucuta play hesitantly and pass up shots she could make.
"She was thinking, 'At Newington (High), I could take 40 shots and no one was going to say anything to me. But here I have really good players, so I don't want to be the kid who's taking bad shots, and then my teammates call me selfish and all of these things.' And you could actually see that in her mind, in the beginning," Brisson said.
Cucuta scored 30 points in Tilton's first matchup against Tabor, a 62-50 defeat. It was the first time she felt she had truly arrived on the prep scene. Cucuta, who says she puts up about 500 shots per day during school-year workouts, would go on to average 18.1 points, 5.7 rebounds and 3.1 assists, canning 38 percent of her 3s.
"Definitely at first, it was a little harder for me — just the different level of competition," she said. "There was more expected from me too as a teammate (and) as an individual player. Just finding my role (and) knowing what I had to do at the beginning of the season was something I had to figure out."
Tilton boasted plenty of talent, including two-way wings Hannah Lynch (Nashua, N.H.) and Lindsey Lemay (Barrington, R.I.) and Golden (Chester, N.H.), an athletic 6-foot-3 center. The Rams may have lacked the upper-tier star power of Nobles and Tabor, but they were a consensus top-5 team with an elite defense. They were rolling through the winter, aside from two early losses to the aforementioned AAA rivals, when a nasty bout of illness struck in late January.
According to Brisson, six Rams tested positive for the flu, and more got sick but did not test. Golden had to return home and miss a game. Phiri was drinking Mucinex and taking cough drops during halftime; she had symptoms for three weeks. Cucuta recalls DayQuil becoming a locker-room necessity.
Brisson refused to reschedule games, but it meant Tilton would take hits. The Rams lost at home twice to Hoosac on Jan. 24 and again to Nobles on Jan. 31.
"It's tough in January, because we've already had our break, and I can't say take some time off or do this, because we're playing three games a week, and this stuff is happening, so they just don't have enough time to recover," Brisson said. "So yeah, we got our (expletive) kicked with sickness, for sure."
That stretch also contributed to Tilton earning a No. 3 seed in the Class AAA tournament, even after they beat Tabor and Class A powerhouse Loomis Chaffee in February. Then Lemay, a Northeastern commit, rolled her ankle Feb. 21 against Winchendon and suffered a Jones fracture that would sideline her for the rest of the season. Bench guard Maddie McCaffery (Merrimack, N.H.) stepped into the point guard role with Cucuta sliding to shooting guard.
But Tilton would not lose again. The Rams faced a scare in the quarterfinals against Dexter Southfield but powered through behind Phiri's 24 points and 11 rebounds. Three days later, they drove down from New Hampshire to the south coast of Massachusetts and blew out second-seeded Tabor, 65-43. That night, the Rams drove to Loomis Chaffee and spent 24 hours locking in mentally for Nobles.
"I remember last year I was extremely nervous," Phiri said. "(This year) I felt really confident in our team and just ready to go."
Tilton led most of the contest but fended off several Nobles comeback attempts, including a 14-4 run that tied the game at 66-all before Golden's winning shot. That momentous play was drawn up for Cucuta. She wound up with the ball in the right corner, drove baseline and saw multiple defenders swarm her. While nearly falling to the ground, the score-first guard made the right pass.
"I was a little bit nervous if they were gonna call it a travel — I was really close to the ground," Cucuta said. "And then I just see Brooke, flicked it up to her, and I'm on the ground looking up to see if it goes in. I'll say I'm proud of myself (for making the pass) and proud of Brooke for stepping up in that moment and making the shot."
The AAA tournament MVP honor, surprisingly but fittingly, went to Lynch. Brisson went to bat for the Division 2 St. Anselm commit all season because of her defense and connectivity in the starting lineup. Lynch only averaged 9.2 points on the season (and scored nine in the championship), but her 8.4 rebounds, 4.4 assists and 3.2 steals per game routinely made the difference.
"That made me really emotional when she got the MVP, because finally, she's being recognized for what she gave to this program," Brisson said. "Sixty-one wins in her two years here... That's incredible, and she played almost every single minute of every single game, unless it was a blowout."
Tilton’s season wasn’t over. The Rams celebrated briefly, eating a late dinner at a hotel restaurant in Windsor, Conn., that happened to be open at midnight on a Sunday. Cucuta said she went to bed at 2 a.m. that night. Then the team woke up and went to Hartford to play in the National Prep Championships, which it won running on fumes to cap a 5-0 stretch in four days. Cucuta earned tournament MVP.
“(Brisson) continued to say to us, ‘I know you have no gas left in your tanks,’” Cucuta said. "We're all buying energy drinks, drinking them right before the game. But she was just like, ‘You don't want to go out having a loss. You would rather go out being tired and being a champion again.’”
Brisson has been at the helm of Tilton for 16 years, through its winning in smaller classes in the 2010s up to this historic season. The program still only has one full-time assistant coach, Keelan McKenzie, when most elite programs have several.
She uses even the smallest slights as motivation, and admits that her persona won't always be well-liked. But now Brisson and her players have the trophy that proves they've earned center stage.
"Don't let anybody shake your confidence, and be confident in yourself because you deserve it," Brisson said. "When you're someone who works as hard as I do, and puts as much time and energy and love into this program so that it is successful and these kids achieve their dreams, I have every right to be confident. And that's basically what I'm trying to teach the kids that I coach."
