Bates women's basketball's historic last season was the culmination of several years head coach Alison Montgomery has spent building momentum.
The Bobcats won a team-record 26 games, triumphed in the NESCAC championship and tied their furthest run ever in the Division 3 NCAA Tournament, reaching the Sweet 16. Elsa Daulerio, from Harpswell, Maine, captured NESCAC Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year honors.
Montgomery just wrapped her 11th season with the program, and it took her five years to post a winning record. Daulerio, though 6-foot-3, was completely off college radars even at the Div. 3 level as a Mt. Ararat high school athlete. Both team and individual accolades represent long developmental journeys that have now entrenched Bates with the Div. 3 strongholds in New England.
In the latest edition of Recruiting Insider, Montgomery discussed how she's found hidden gems on the recruiting trail who helped Bates on its current rise. She also explained how she's grown the school's geographic footprint in recruiting and more.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
MORE RECRUITING INSIDER:Â Babson men's coach Stephen Brennan | Bowdoin women's coach Megan Phelps
When you think back to Elsa Daulerio as a high school recruit and developing her, what does she exemplify about what's possible for athletes in Div. 3?
"Elsa definitely falls in this category — something that really excites me in recruiting, which, this might be something you don't hear often, is she was really under-recruited. She wasn't offered a spot anywhere else. Now, there's a unique caveat there, obviously, of COVID, and so she had less opportunity to be seen, but also, she did not play for a big AAU program that traveled. She was a student-athlete who did three sports. She had such a high ceiling, I felt, when I recruited her, but she wasn't an overly impressive high school player. ... My two All-Americans since I've been here who have broken records, Elsa Delario and Meghan Graff, who graduated in 2023 — neither one of them were recruited by anybody else. Both of them played multiple sports, and they had a lot of like hunger, and their ceiling was just high, and I think it's just an interesting thing to think about in recruiting, because kids play so freakin' much now.
Especially in recruiting, coaches can get really caught up in the sexiness of the program they play for, the circuits they're on, and there's absolutely something appealing about recruiting players who've played at a really competitive level, whether that's high school or club, who've played against really good players, and all that. I'm not saying this is my rule of thumb, but I will say I do get excited about recruiting players, and Elsa's one of them, who just had no signs of burnout. She just had so much in front of her to still develop, and was so hungry for that and was really physically ready for that. I think you see so many kids, even coming into college, who, their bodies are already kind of where my body was at when I was graduating from college, in terms of starting to break down and having injuries. It's such a great time for development for young people. That's what college is about, not just talking about basketball, but just maturity-wise, and just coming into their confidence."
When you're competing with other Div. 3 programs who are also leaning on New England in recruiting, how do you find advantages and hidden gems?
"A lot of coaches would tell you the same thing, but I felt like as we started to try to build here at Bates — and it's continued to be our philosophy — is we really are trying to look in different pockets. I get really excited when I can have a conversation with a student athlete who's like, 'The NESCAC? What is that, I'm not familiar," which is really exciting, because I just think it's a pretty well-known conference. The recruiting battles are real, so especially like for student-athletes in New England, I've been in plenty of those battles. But I really try to aim for introducing students and their families to the NESCAC, and kind of getting them excited about it through the lens of Bates, versus — we affectionately call them 'NESCAC shoppers' who are just kind of like, 'I don't care where I go, I just know I want to go to a NESCAC school.' That's less appealing for me to recruit those kids.
"But I feel like consistently, what ends up being the separator is just the relationship that we can build with them. You hear a lot of students and their families say, like, 'Oh, I want to pick a school that I love, and I would love it without basketball.' I actually hate that. Yes, I've been a part of the Div. 3 model my whole life. I completely believe in a balanced education, I'm all-in on the NESCAC education, and so of course, you want to be somewhere where you're developing in a lot of ways, and academics is definitely driving the process. But I'm not ashamed to say, I'm recruiting players who, a huge part of why they want to come to Bates is because they want to play basketball for this program, with this program with these coaches. "You spend so much of your time with these people, with your coaches, with your teammates, so if you're saying, 'Oh, I just want to be happy there without my team,' I'm like, well, that's kind of stupid. So I think we really want to feel like we can set ourselves apart with that: with building relationships with families and with players, and them feeling like, 'I specifically want to be a part of what's happening with that culture and those coaches and those players,' because the education at these schools are really, really great, no matter how you slice it."
You had 10 different states, plus Hungary, represented on your roster this year. Is that a conscious effort, and what's helped you expand your footprint in recruiting?
"Absolutely, very conscious effort in that, and I think it's literally what we just talked about — just feeling like if we're going to just keep pounding our head against the wall, especially when I first got the job here and Bates was not competitive, and the rest of the conference (was). I'm not going to just go to the NEPSAC showcase, and compete with all these schools who are trying to compete with the really established programs. And some of them are still the same, but at that time it was Bowdoin, Tufts (and) Amherst, which are all still really good. So I just was like, we have to be creative and think outside the box, and we have to expand this, and not have this cookie-cutter (approach), like, 'OK, we're staying New England, or going to the NEPSAC showcase' — just the obvious path to the NESCAC. So that has been really, really intentional, and I do think that's that's helped us build a lot, and we are really interested in maybe looking and playing a little different than some other schools in the conference. Just trying to play a little bit of a different brand of basketball, and that's been incredibly intentional.
"Once you kind of get that ball rolling, it becomes a little easier. I have a rising junior who's from Dallas, and then we found another kid from Dallas, and we're like, 'Come up to our elite camp, meet this kid, we've got another kid from Dallas.' I just feel like then it can kind of roll if kids can feel like they can find that community. There's just so much diversity for being a really small school in Maine. There is a lot of diversity here on our campus where kids are from everywhere, so it's not like you're coming to a different makeup of a state school or something where 90 percent of the kids there are from Maine and Massachusetts. Kids here are from everywhere."
Maine often feels set apart from the rest of New England's basketball structure. Is it different to recruit in the state?
"Oh my gosh — so different. We have a current freshman on our team, Claire Gaetani, from Maine, kind of north of here, and she also similar to Elsa. She's so tough, she's so good, she's kind of a physical specimen. ... but she didn't play for a big AAU program either. She played three sports, was really good at all of them, and she did a lot of like training with a club, and she did like a couple tournaments in like southern Maine. Just didn't have the same visibility and wasn't traveling in the same way, but because she's more local and just (with) some of my connections to Maine — going to Maine summer leagues, getting up to the Maine high school basketball tournament, which is still possible to do when we're in season in terms of travel — there's other ways to see these kids.
"It's really important to me too. We just had a conversation about going out of region, and that's really important to me, but it's really important to me also to balance having Maine kids on my team. I think that's really personal for me. In my college search, I was like, 'I'm getting out of Maine. I do not want to stay in Maine.' And then I ended up at Bowdoin because I connected with the coach and loved the program and stayed in Maine. It's really important to me to keep some of the best players in Maine, and as a Maine student — I was a good student, and I didn't really think about Bowdoin, Bates or Colby, because I just was like, 'Oh, whatever, they're in Maine,' and didn't really recognize like how great of schools they were, because they're in your backyard. I think (I'm) just wanting to educate Mainers and their families about that, and the quality of the education, and also just what that brings for community.
"Having those Mainers in our program, the way that expands our community and the pride that brings for so many of our Maine basketball fans, it's just really, really great for our school, for our program, and for Mainers. ... It's not always this way. I'm recruiting some kids from Maine right now who are playing on the big circuits and whatnot, but I have found that some of our best players are hidden gems, which is honestly something I love. They're just really good three-sport athletes. They do it all, they have summer jobs, so they're not like flying all over the place to play basketball. So I really like that as well and can find some sort of some kids who are just not as recruited."
What are your biggest green flags and red flags you see in prospective recruits?
"I get super excited about kids who just have the maturity to drive their own process and are able to really guide the conversation, communicate well, and just articulate what they're looking for in the process, and then are mature enough to manage that process. (They) have this really good balance of (being) engaging (and) respectful, and can manage that process on their own. Sometimes I have to temper my expectations and remind myself that they're 16 and 17 when I get frustrated, but just the ability to communicate to me is a huge indicator that they're going to be able to have success in our program, and that they're going to be able to manage what's next. I think that's really, really important. And then watching them, I just want to see a kid with a motor who feels like every possession matters. I think again — sometimes not to the fault of the kids, because they're just in this environment where they play all the time — it's kind of like, yeah, we lost this one, but we're gonna have seven more games this weekend, it's fine. Just really not valuing every possession That's what really gets me excited: if I'm like, 'This kid is competing every possession. It matters to them, and they have a high motor.' Those are kind of the green flags.
"Red flags for me are just: I really get kind of turned off by NESCAC shoppers who are just looking for the brand versus genuinely looking for the right fit for themselves, and who really want to be part of the program in that way. And then — I could get into a very, very long conversation about (this), and I can say this because I'm a parent — but how parents are just thinking they're supporting their kids, but really challenging them in terms of just managing everything for them. When I sort of get involved with a player or family where I feel like that is really prevalent, that is a red flag for me, and sort of steer away from that. Coaches really manage this differently in terms of recruiting families or not, but very recruiting families is very important to me. I want relationships with the parents; I want them engaged. I just think it's really important. So I steer clear at those kind of red flags if I just feel like a student doesn't have autonomy and independence and they're not driving it themselves."
