With the NEPSAC season starting in less than two months, teams are already busy conducting open gyms and building chemistry. New Rivers girls coach Kenny Small Jr. has had to expedite his process.
Rivers announced Small's hiring on Sept. 17, and in the days since, he's worked quickly to familiarize himself with players and and staff, and set the tone for his coaching style. One of his first tasks was to gather staff across all levels of the program, as well as some of the captains and returning players, and have everyone introduce each other and describe how they approach their day-to-day basketball lives.
"It was important for me to have them understand that I'm going to be a support system," Small said. "I'm going to be someone that is going to be teaching-first. Obviously, I'm a player development coach, so I'm very involved in the player development world, so you're going to see a lot of that. And then let them know that, it isn't just basketball for me. I'm very big on character-building. I like to see myself as a role model, someone that the girls can look to and talk to, and always lean on for any type of questions that they may have about the game, on and off the court."
Small replaces Chantel Jordan as head coach and spent the last two seasons leading Middlesex. He said that when he saw the job posting, he knew about Rivers' sustained success in girls basketball and as an overall athletic program, and wanted the opportunity of coaching under those high standards.
"Someone coming from another ISL school, seeing the powerhouse Rivers has always been — it was just a very exciting opportunity to try to go for," he said.
Small, a former player at Brandeis and a Stratford, Conn. native, is the co-founder of the Boston Elite Basketball training program. He's been in basketball coaching and training for 14 years, including seven as a high school coach. Small also briefly coached the New England Trailblazers, a semi-professional women's team in the Women's American Basketball Association. There, he coached elite players who are now prep school coaches themselves, including Angelina Marrazzi (St. George's) and Abby Streeter (Darrow).
"These girls are just so connected, and (have) been so connected to the world for some time. That was kind of a way for me to be networked on kind of all different levels too," Small said.
The timing of Small's hiring makes it challenging for him to go out and add new staff members. But he does have a solid core of in-house assistants, including Eliza Altobelli. Small has admired her clear passion for basketball and player development; Altobelli also played rugby at Penn State.
"She played at the highest level. She's a rugby player who played in college, so I think the girls can really learn from (and) just kind of be able to share stories with someone that's been through a high-level sport as well," he said.
Rivers is dealing with some injuries and players who are participating in fall sports, so they've had to cancel some early open gyms, and Small is prioritizing health as he prepares his team for the season. The team is competing in Class B this year but reached the Class AA playoffs as the sixth seed last season. Much of the core is back, including a quartet of star seniors in Natalia Hall-Rosa (Seton Hall commit), Grace O'Sullivan (Princeton), Narissa Smith (Stonehill) and Chase Anderson (Amherst).
Small likes to play teams that can press hard, space the floor well and drive the basketball. He believes the core players' versatility provides a great foundation. Small has also admired their natural leadership and attention to detail in his early interactions, which has helped ease his transition to Rivers.
"You could already tell the type of establishment that they're trying to build and the type of team culture that they're trying to build," he said. "So for me, it makes my job a lot easier implementing my philosophy, because they already mirror a lot of things that I would love for players to have (as) characteristics — their hard work, just their dedication. I'm a very team-oriented person, and you could already tell that they're just so close-knit; they seem like such a close family. And it's exciting that you get, in your first year, to be able to coach that type of talent."
