This is the final installment in a three-part series unpacking the state of Boston girls basketball. You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
Brighton High School is a gray, gothic-esque stone building that looms over a hill and fits snugly in between Brighton Marine Health Center and St. Elizabeth's Medical Center. It doesn't look much different from its construction in 1930, and it's even more imposing on a cold and windy Thursday evening in January.
The gym, where the school’s basketball teams play, is at the bottom of the far left stairwell, and it's a strange one. It has a layer of brick wall lined up tight against the sidelines of the court, beautiful high windows and bright padding for the Bengals that drenches the room in orange. There are small sets of bleachers on each baseline; the quirk is one side also has several rows of empty gray balcony seating above the exit doors.
Four banners celebrate Brighton boys basketball's 2011 (sectional finals) and 2012 teams (state finals). A large team photo of the 2013 boys squad highlights their state championship in 2013, and several more banners honor some of the school's greats. There are none acknowledging the girls teams.
Brighton is one of several Boston City League schools that has struggled to keep its girls basketball program relevant. The City League teams have seen a significant decline in varsity-level skill over the last 10 years. But a core group of passionate players and coaches continue to take pride in their communities.
As the Brighton girls basketball team warmed up for its Jan. 30 home game against New Mission, Jai'Reona Brown-Carter and Adriyana Chandler called out to make sure the Bengals were ready for tip-off.
"Tuck in your shirts!" they exclaimed to their four teammates.
Brown-Carter is the captain and best player on the Bengals. On this day, she was grieving. Her cousin's funeral services were taking place immediately after the game, and coach Molly McDonough told Brown-Carter she could leave anytime.
Brighton trailed 22-9 at the half in a contest they had little chance of winning. Sixteen spectators attended the game. Brown-Carter did not come out for the third quarter; McDonough thought she looked like she was about to cry, and Brown-Carter took a phone call from her aunt in the locker room. But before the fourth quarter, Brown-Carter reappeared on the sidelines and went to McDonough to sub in. McDonough told her she didn't have to — processing her cousin's passing was more important — but Brown-Carter wanted to play.
"I don't want to feel like there's pressure. She does feel pressure sometimes, I feel like, to hold this team together," McDonough said.
Brown-Carter has stuck with four years of varsity basketball under four different head coaches, and is also a proud cheerleader and track athlete. She had never picked up a ball before Brighton. Yet she's developed such a love for the sport that she would rather play the final quarter of a 47-27 loss than sit out and cope with her personal tragedy.
"It actually distracts me from a lot — reality, low-key, from family stuff at home," Brown-Carter said before the game. "It's really fun. It just drives me more to keep going with my life."
Why revitalizing inner-city girls basketball matters
Brown-Carter typifies the Boston public high school student-athlete experience. She attends Brighton High but lives in the South End, which means frequently trekking east and west through Boston on public transit.
Brown-Carter has also lived in Virginia and South Carolina; her family moved to Boston when she was in eighth grade. She joined the Bengals basketball team on a whim as a freshman.
"I wasn't going to take it serious because I've never played sports before," Brown-Carter said.
But something funny happened: Brown-Carter loved it. She was motivated by her first coach, Greg Canzater, and her subsequent coaches. She looked up to senior Jaylynn Conway-Hernandez, whose own story is inspirational. Brown-Carter started playing on smaller AAU teams and clubs like at the Orchard Gardens Boys and Girls Club of Boston in Roxbury. On Instagram she follows the stars of women's basketball today, such as Caitlin Clark, Paige Bueckers, JuJu Watkins and Sabrina Ionescu, as well as teams ranging from South Carolina to Framingham State and Bunker Hill Community College.
Brown-Carter became the first Brighton girl to surpass 1,000 career points on Feb. 10. She wants to play in college. Brown-Carter and McDonough are looking at what options are realistic locally, like Bridgewater State, Framingham State and Salem State, and she's also interested in business. Brown-Carter might not make the WNBA or go Division 1, but basketball is nonetheless her ticket far beyond Brighton, which in 2024 had a graduation rate of 68 percent.
"I like having practice because I like being away from home, so I like going to practice. I like doing those things," she said. "Other people, though, they like being at home. They don't want to go out too late; they miss their bed. But me, I like to work. I'm a hard-working person. I like to acknowledge that because it's going to take me somewhere."
Brown-Carter was reserved during Brighton's game against New Mission, in part because of the personal grief she carried with her. But she commanded her teammates' respect. She put back one offensive rebound for a layup, and as she jogged back on defense, two Bengals went out of their way to give her a high-five. When Brown-Carter missed a pass to an open teammate, she quickly put her hand out and recognized it: "that's on me."
"Basketball is everything to her," McDonough said. "In my first year coaching, her being the captain — I've leaned on her because she just is so amazing."
Those leadership qualities are what Daycia McClam wants to show Boston families. McClam, vice president of community and engagement at Positive Coaching Alliance, is helping unite the leaders in Boston Public Schools who want to reinvigorate the city's youth sports culture. One of her most important messages to parents is that sports can be a launching pad for anyone who plays, not just the elite chasing an athletic scholarship.
McClam is quick to cite a 2015 study that reported a staggering 94 percent of women in C-suite executive positions had played sports at some level. In a Women's Sports Foundation survey released last fall, 71 percent of participants who played sports now hold a significant managerial role in their job title. A Deloitte 2023 survey claims 69 percent of its participants who make at least $100,000 played a sport growing up.
"It's automatic: you are setting your child up for success," McClam said.
Brown-Carter notices the same problems McClam has identified. Teams like hers have small rosters. She believes girls aren't confident enough in their skills or motivated to improve. Brown-Carter plays in the Boston Neighborhood Basketball League (BNBL) and any camp she hears about from a coach, but for most girls, it's hard to find a place to play.
"You have to really search for them. They're not as open as (boys camps) are," Brown-Carter said. "And I feel like it's unfair because you have some girls in the city that actually play. I have friends on the other teams and we go play pickup ball. We play against boys because there's not a lot of girls to play with — there's not a lot of girls who really understand the game or really understand the mentality of it."
Brown-Carter admits it's frustrating to play under four coaches in four years with teammates who largely don't share her commitment. But she understands she was once that same girl.
"At first I would be a little upset, because they weren't taking it as serious as I was. But then I had to realize my audience and who they were as a person," she said. "So that came along with patience as well. So now I'm not hard on them as much, because I know that they don't really take it as serious as I do. I'm just playing with fun now and just enjoying the moments I have before the season is done."
That's another shared sentiment among coaches and players in the Boston City League. One positive takeaway from the Brighton vs. New Mission game: despite the blowout, almost everyone competing on both sides seemed to genuinely enjoy themselves.
The referees bantered with coaches and gave tips to players on post moves. At one point, Brighton guard Tino Windley finished a layup, drew a foul, and screamed, "AND ONE!" while flexing inches from an opponent's face. In many situations, that could have started a shoving match and led to technical fouls – but Windley apologized mere seconds later and both girls laughed it off.
"I think because BPS is how it is, a lot of the kids have interacted in some degree, whether it be at other schools, or they've been at this school and then transferred, and we have the same refs all the time," McDonough said. "So I think because of that, it's a game and it is competitive, but it's a controlled game."
The same interconnectedness took center stage at the Boston City League championships. There, O'Bryant captured its first city championship since 2013, coached by former star Shaleyse Smallwood. A 1,000-point scorer at Northeastern, Smallwood led the Tigers to victory against Snowden and coach Phibe Pham – Smallwood's wife.
Snowden's six players wore scowls and angry tears after the loss — a reaction Pham was proud of, because it showed how much they cared. And when Snowden's Jenalis Mercado won tournament MVP, the O'Bryant players cheered just as loudly as Mercado's teammates.
The girls on both teams knew each other in part because they participated in the same inner-city preseason league, run by community organizer Mitch Hercule.
"Girls from different teams were playing together. So I think building that was amazing, because then that's how they knew who Jenalis was," Pham said. "And everybody clapping — she deserves her flowers, and it was good to know everyone supported her."
Brown-Carter, despite only living in Boston for four years, feels tremendous city pride. She loves that people around the city know her because of her athletic success. What does she think would help girls like her?
"Everyone should just come together (and) have a big camp," she said. "I feel like it should only be the city, because I feel like outside of the city, there's help everywhere — (Division 1) schools, you know? But I feel like the whole city needs to come together and have this camp for the city girls, because the city girls need to make it out. I'm doing this for my city. I'm not doing it for anybody else."
Do the players want better experiences for themselves? Some will say it explicitly. But teams like Brighton and Snowden still put on their jerseys, grab their whiteboards, compete with the numbers they have and look out for each other.
Before Brown-Carter departed postgame for her cousin's funeral services, she grabbed one abandoned warm-up shirt on a chair and brought it to McDonough.
"This is Adri's," she said.
Her captain's work complete, Brown-Carter left for the night.
