Early this season, Loomis Chaffee center Alicia Mitchell was mid-practice when one of her younger teammates came up to ask for help, because she was confused about a play.
The innocuous question became Mitchell's moment of epiphany. Loomis Chaffee had seven seniors on the roster, including the 6-foot-3 center from Springfield, Mass., who was only in her second season on the team. At that moment, Mitchell knew it was her turn to lead the dynasty.
"It still puts a smile on my face thinking about it," she said.
Loomis Chaffee completed another dominant winter with a 51-45 victory over Sacred Heart in the Class A championship game. The Pelicans crowded around each other postgame and cheered, "Not two, not three, not four!" to celebrate their fourth consecutive title. On paper, this one felt predestined. They were the heavy preseason favorites, stayed mostly healthy throughout the season and went 25-3, with their only losses against Class AAA powers Tilton, Nobles and Tabor.
The Pelicans' most impressive attribute might have been their balance. Mitchell, a Columbia commit, averaged just 11 points per game, and Tufts-bound point guard Abby Congdon (West Hartford, Conn.) was close behind at 10.1. With Quinnipiac commit Aniyah Neal (Syracuse, N.Y.), Swarthmore-bound Catherine Chadwell (Longmeadow, Mass.) and William & Mary volleyball commit Liv Westfort (Manchester, Conn.) all seniors, the starting lineup alone was an imposing mix of size, experience and raw talent.
The results and the star power overshadow the sky-high expectations and work that have cultivated such a reign under coach Adrian Stewart.
"Stew's always telling us how we're not New England champs," Congdon said. "We're not defending anything. We have to win the title again."
Mitchell recalls her first summer workouts two years ago, when she arrived at Loomis after winning an MIAA Division 5 championship at Springfield International. She watched the Pelicans, including players taller than her, work through dynamic ball-handling exercises. Mitchell had never been expected to drill her handle that hard as a center.
Then during her first season, she learned Loomis' standard for film study. Odume and then-senior Jess Roy (now at Williams) were watching tape and asked Mitchell if she caught a certain detail. Mitchell wasn't used to watching film except when specifically assigned by her coaches.
"They're telling me, 'Alicia, did you see this thing in the film last night?' And I was like, 'I didn't know we were supposed to watch it. Coach didn't say to,'" Mitchell recalled. "And they were like, 'You just watch it.'"
Stewart gives his team access to the program’s HUDL account. During preseason, he hammers the importance of purposeful film study habits. He prioritizes categories instead of chronology: turnovers, offensive and defensive rebounds, out-of-bounds sets and important possessions, for example.
"What we try to impress upon them early in the season is how to watch," he said. "We don't just put the tape on and run it from start to finish. We look at certain things; we're going to look at the things that are going to help us get better."
That includes the Pelicans' defense, which allowed 40 points per game last season and is revered by opposing coaches.
Loomis won't give away all its secrets, but here's what we know. It's grounded in a 2-3 zone that Stewart pulled from his time coaching boys (he traces its roots back to the Syracuse zone immortalized by Jim Boeheim). It involves tweaks from watching other prep defenses, like coach Alex Gallagher's at Nobles — "if I use it more than three times, it belongs to me," Stewart adds with a laugh. And though it looks like a zone, it leans on man-to-man principles and consistent ball pressure.
"Some people say, 'Well, why are you playing zone?' Well, I don't know what you're talking about, because the ball is always being guarded," Stewart said.
The defense also asks a lot of its players. Mitchell, who might camp in the paint in a traditional zone, is frequently rotating out to the corners and along the back line with Westfort. Everyone plays on a string, including Congdon, who flies around the perimeter. Stewart trusts Congdon's instincts to the point where he has tweaked his defensive scheme because of decisions she made on the court.
Congdon, a four-year champion, gives the Pelicans dynasty its heart. The 5-foot-6 point guard played 92 of 96 minutes as a freshman in the 2022 playoffs, full-court-pressing Thayer guard and Boston University commit Aoibhe Gormley in the championship game. Stewart will stoke Congdon's competitive fire in practice by stacking teams against her.
"I love the fact that she'll always bet on herself," Stewart said.
Practices are grueling; Congdon thinks specifically of the 3-on-3 transition runs that wear players out. Stewart will find a scoring system for any possible drill. But the Pelicans leave the battles in the gym. One of Congdon and Mitchell's favorite team bonding sessions comes in December, when the team gets dinner at a Buffalo Wild Wings in Windsor, Conn., before traveling east to Nobles for the Nickerson Showcase.
"We love to be around each other, as cliché as that sounds," Congdon said. "We really hang out with each other a lot of the time outside of basketball."
Mitchell has been a pillar of Loomis' evolving culture during her two years. Stewart was at first shocked and mildly annoyed when he first noticed Mitchell's habit of helping opponents up during games in addition to her teammates. But he learned to appreciate it as part of Mitchell's nature. He even had trouble convincing Mitchell to be a co-captain because she wasn't sure she was ready for the role.
"She has the ability to connect with every kid on some level, and not even on a basketball level," Stewart said.
Loomis Chaffee was the predetermined host for the NEPSAC championships. It was a fortunate coincidence that Mitchell, Congdon and the rest of the seven seniors would get to end high school at home. Congdon allowed herself brief moments during the championship to bask in the winning atmosphere she had helped build.
"I was definitely trying to live in the moment, in a lot of situations because this is the last time I'm going to experience it," she said. "So that's definitely how I felt, especially in the championship game. I was looking out into the crowd, trying to soak everything in."
