When Jelani Williams joined Northfield Mount Hermon three years ago as a boys basketball assistant coach, he and second-year head coach Mike Shelton were tasked with building a new culture and moving the program beyond the legacy of longtime coach John Carroll.
To do so, the staff modeled some aspects after girls coach Grace Rehnquist. Williams eventually became director of player development for both teams, working with NMH stars like Olivia Fleming and Molly Sisson. Rehnquist let Williams pop in on practices to watch how the 11-year head coach built her program.
Now, Williams transitions from observer to opponent. Darrow announced him as the next girls head coach on Monday following the departure of Abby Streeter. Williams takes the reins of the defending NEPSAC Class AA champion Ducks, and they'll be ascending to Class AAA next season.
Changing from boys to girls basketball, defending a title and moving up to NEPSAC's top class might seem daunting for a first-time head coach. But Williams credits both Shelton and Rehnquist for giving him a foundation for future prep success.
"She was somebody that allowed me to witness and watch their greatness, and watch her thesis and her overall structure within her program, and kind of bring that over to our program," he said. "Me being new and Shelton being new, obviously trying to get past the John Carroll era, we needed a way to kind of build a structure and build a culture, and she was very, very helpful in lending some information."
Williams might be new to the girls side as a coach, but he has connections particularly in New York that date back several years. While playing Div. 2 basketball at Queens College, he joined his father Mark, a prominent trainer in New York City, and worked in player development on the side. Williams got to know several of the area AAU programs as well as Joe Fenelon, director of NYG Hoops Report, and the folks at Empire State Takeover. His coaching career started on the men's side, first as a graduate assistant at Cleveland State before the past three years at Northfield Mount Hermon, but Williams kept his ties to the girls basketball connections he first knew.
"The people that I've built relationships with in the prep school scene from a grassroots level, they saw the opportunity at Darrow, remembering my upbringing on the women's side of player development, and so that's kind of how I got in the loop about the Darrow job," Williams said.
With the NEPSAC Girls Scholastic Showcase less than two weeks away, Williams has hit the ground running. He's been reaching out to parents and getting a sense of the returning roster he'll have for the showcase and into next season.
The Ducks, on paper, return much of the core from last year's AA title team. Standout guard Jill Dingler and forward NyAsia McKelvey are off to Central Connecticut, but 6-foot-3 DD Harcourt should be among NEPSAC's top centers next winter. Harcourt is flanked by a trio of quick scoring guards in Taelor Arnold, Dior Dobere and Brooke Lilley, and Gwen Case is cleared for her return from an ACL injury.
"The people that are coming back that played, they're obviously champions for a reason," Williams said. "They know what it takes to win at a high level, and I want to continue to help them develop and help them grow."
After the showcase, Williams plans to get on the road and establish more connections in prep and grassroots basketball beyond his current network. He'll have a tall task in preparing the Ducks to battle NEPSAC's long-established superpowers in Class AAA this season, but Williams hopes to build a culture that lasts for years.
"Being there with them 100 percent of the way is a goal of mine, and that's just who I am to the core. I'm very relationship-driven," he said. "A lot of coaches are very theatrical, from what I witness, and that's not the type of coach that I am. I'm going to hold the kids accountable, when I'm still disciplining them now while they're teenagers, so that by the time they're in college (and) by the time they're husbands and wives, and have a family and (are) parents, they have that same discipline, and then they'll be able to call back on me and look back on the moments that I've had with them."
