Thirteen years ago, Harry Rafferty sat inside Me and Ollie’s – a popular cafe in Exeter, N.H. – with longtime Phillips Exeter coach Jay Tilton as he processed some heartbreaking news. Rafferty had been rejected admission to Exeter a second time. So had his close friend, Duncan Robinson, and they were frustrated. But Tilton was reassuring.
“He's like, just so you know, I want to coach you,” Rafferty recalled. “If you want to think about it again as a postgrad, I’d love to have you.”
Rest assured, Rafferty was enrolled at Exeter the next year as a postgraduate. He teamed up with Robinson and friend Chris Braley to lead the first of Tilton’s five NEPSAC championships.
Twelve years after that coffee shop meeting with Tilton, it came full circle.
Rafferty – who spent five seasons on the Michigan women’s team’s staff – had returned home last fall to be with his dad, who was dealing with health issues. It was October when Tilton called Rafferty and asked him if he could meet to grab lunch.
The spot? Me and Ollie’s, of course.
Rafferty expected it to be a normal catch-up – the two had remained close over the years – but he sensed there was something unusual about the request. Turns out, Tilton had a big plan in mind: After 23 years with the program, the longtime coach planned to step down at the end of last season. And he wanted Rafferty to replace him.
“Out of nowhere,” Rafferty said. “It was a shock to me and Duncan and my friends who played for him. He caught me totally off guard.”
Tilton had just led Exeter to his fifth NEPSAC championship in 2024, and the program was humming. But as he told New England Basketball Journal, the quickly evolving amateur basketball landscape had affected him, and he wanted to take a step back to spend more time with his family.
Rafferty was humbled by the request. His initial plan was to take a year off from coaching, and then return to the women’s game. But this gave him a chance to spend more time with his dad at home, and it allowed him a unique growth opportunity to be the head coach at his alma mater. He accepted to come on board as Tilton’s assistant coach last season, essentially the head coach in waiting.
It was a sort of pinch-me moment that it came together at Me and Ollie’s, where he was once rejected.
“For that conversation 12 years after that to be, ‘Hey I want you to take over the program. I want you to follow me up and everything he’s done,’ it was kind of a full circle moment,” Rafferty said. “That was a really cool one.”
One of the most important pieces of Rafferty joining Tilton last season was the recruiting element. During their meeting, Tilton was very transparent that the roster for the 2025-26 season would be depleted from a numbers standpoint. Ryder Frost, Tyler Bike and most of the team would be graduated, and Rafferty didn’t have much time to get on the recruiting trail. He essentially had a three-month window until Exeter’s January admissions deadline to find new players.
Rafferty knew he’d have one returner, 2027 wing Jayden Duverne (Woburn, Mass.), and worked quickly to rebuild the roster. He targeted 2027 wing Christian Chartier (Hampton, N.H.), an elite 3-point shooter, and 2028 guard Cole McClure (Exeter, N.H.) to begin his influx of transfers.
“I don’t know the last time New Hampshire had potentially back to back Division 1 kids from the Seacoast,” Rafferty said. “That doesn’t happen here often. Cole and Christian being local and understanding the program and knowing me personally, I hit the ground running.”
Rafferty added another promising prospect, 6-foot-8 2027 forward Alex Hamblet, who’s from San Francisco, and four postgraduate transfers – 6-foot-5 wing Carson Gretz (Newburyport, Mass.), tough 5-foot-10 guard Shawn O’Neil (Manchester, N.H.), guard Josh Belcher and combo guard Hank Ford – to a roster he’s very excited about in his first season. Along the way, he didn’t forget the lessons Tilton taught him as he built his squad.
As an Exeter alum, Rafferty knows firsthand the importance of academics at the school. That wasn’t lost in the recruiting process.
“I think Jay was perfect for Exeter and is perfect still for Exeter because he really understood the balance here between, we’re trying to be the best basketball program we can be but at Exeter, the standard of academics is always going to be first and foremost,” Rafferty said. “It’s an interesting time in prep school basketball right now and high school basketball in general where I hope it isn’t lost, the No. 1 thing at this age and this level should be educating these kids and making sure that outside of basketball, they’re becoming the best, most well-rounded kids they can be and enjoying the experience.
“That worries me sometimes with some directions it’s going. I think Jay had a good grasp of that, of how to make sure that combination of academics and athletics was two-fold even though he wanted to win. … It wasn’t at the dispense of the academics, which is my top priority to have that mindset and hopefully do as well as I can on the court, but also not forget the institution I’m representing either.”
As Rafferty enters his first season as head coach, he has plenty of support. Tilton may have stepped down, but he’s still working at the school in a fundraising role and he’s been there for Rafferty every step of the way in the transition. Rafferty has maintained a relationship with Tilton’s predecessor, Malcolm Wesselink, too. There’s a high standard for Exeter basketball – one that Rafferty helped create – and he’s certainly feels a responsibility to carry the program forward, but he’s not feeling pressure.
“It’s a privilege and an honor,” Rafferty said. “We basically had two coaches here in 50 years. … I look at it as I’m the steward of the program now for however long I do it, but having those two guys in my corner makes me feel pretty sure that I can do things the way that they need to be done and represent the program as Exeter wants it to be represented.”
