Back in June, just before the recruiting live period, Alex Popp – who’s back in New England and fresh to his new role at Winchendon – hopped on a Zoom call for a NEPSAC Class AA coaches’ meeting. He was among the first ones logged on, in a funny twist of fate, alongside two familiar faces.
Popp looked up on his screen and saw two coaches he has a history of competing against. Worcester Academy’s Jamie Sullivan was there, and so was Tilton’s Marcus O’Neil, who like Popp, is also returning to the New England prep coaching ranks this year.
“It was like deja vu all over again,” Popp said. “It was really cool. …
“We were talking about how it’s going to go in June, but it was irresistible to kind of make a couple jokes about the situation.”
For Popp, the moment helped crystallize his belief that there isn’t another league in the country that has a collection of “overqualified, unbelievably experienced” coaches like NEPSAC. He would know.
Popp, who played at Northfield Mount Hermon and with the Middlesex Magic, has deep ties to the grassroots world in New England. He was the head coach at Vermont Academy from 2014-20, helping the Wildcats win their program’s first NEPSAC championship in 2016 behind star Bruce Brown, before he took a job with IMG Academy in Florida, where he was most recently the head coach of the school’s academic postgraduate team.
Now, after making a decision with his family last fall to move back to the region, Popp is the new head coach and director of basketball at Winchendon. Popp said he was willing to reinvent himself a bit in his search for a new job and looked at opportunities at the college and prep school level before connecting with Winchendon head of school Sean Duncan. The school has had great success with their hockey teams with a model that includes a director of hockey, and they wanted to start the concept with basketball. Popp was all in.
“The school was willing to start from scratch and make it my blank canvas,” Popp said. “I’m like, 'I know how to coach and I really want to get back to the region.' … So I was like, 'Let’s go. Let’s do it.'”
Popp will essentially lead all operations of the basketball program, and with a handful of experienced coaches — including former UMass standout Chris Kirkland and former UMass-Dartmouth player Jackson Zancan — alongside him, he’s hit the ground running at Winchendon. But he’s shifted his approach a bit, using the knowledge he’s accumulated from past stops. At Vermont Academy, Popp said, he poured his efforts into recruiting, college placement, winning games and the external relations of the job. While those components are still important, he said focusing on Winchendon’s internal relations has been a priority in his first months on the job.
“(I’m) pouring into getting to know the community and how things work and what makes sense for us moving forward. We don’t want to try to be anyone else but the best version of the Winchendon School, and the best version of Winchendon School basketball. That takes humility, that takes time and patience, and that’s probably the challenging part because I’m kind of the go-getter who wants to make things happen right away, and I just know that what I’m experiencing is getting the time to know everybody. I shouldn’t say it’s challenging. It takes time, period — I think that would be it. The challenging part has been having the patience to understand fundamentally who we are and who we want to be, and try to use basketball or try to use the role (as director) to be a community leader as opposed to being a basketball coach chasing a banner. …
“It’s fun because I’m in a later stage of my life and in my career, and I think everybody wants that in the later stages of their career where they’ve had more experience and everybody wants a little more responsibility. That’s exactly what it is: more responsibility than just trying to chase a banner.”
But make no mistake – Popp hopes to build the program back to where they’re winning banners again. He knows the school’s rich basketball history, which includes a pair of New England championships under former head coach Mike Byrnes more than two decades ago. Duncan, the head of school, was a teacher during those days. But Popp, a champion himself, knows that doesn’t come overnight. And he knows the path to success looks different in the age of NIL and the NCAA transfer portal, which has changed the way prep school players are being recruited.
“(We want to be known) as a program that prioritizes development and college placement in an era of basketball where I believe the college placement has never been more unique, and then the development of young men and women has never had more urgency because there’s no guarantee of how long you’re going to have student-athletes anymore,” Popp said. “The supply and demand has drastically changed. …
“(There’s) more urgency in the development and more urgency on the college placement because these schools don’t have to depend on us as much as they used to. Their timeline is different, and that’s OK. … “(We’re) hoping the byproduct of that results in the upward trajectory of some success.”
That could come soon. After a disappointing 2024-25 season, Popp has helped restore excitement at Winchendon, where a group of high-level transfers are ready to make some noise. They boast a mix of versatile wings, including Elon commit Brady Sehlhorst and Cameron Blankenberg, who will be impactful on both ends of the floor, and an exciting backcourt that includes transfers Tavin Penix and Treddy Faison.
At the least, the Wapiti should be in the playoff mix of a very competitive Class AA this season. Popp said this is the most talented team he’s coached since his Vermont Academy squad in 2018-19, and while he’s certainly not guaranteeing anything, he’s shooting for the stars at Winchendon, where the future looks bright.
“The goal is to win a AA championship, and everybody should have that same goal,” Popp said. “I think it’s realistic to try to chase the AA championship. Why not? What are we doing if that’s not the expectation?”
