Last New Year's Eve, Rodney Hill was in Starkville, Miss., preparing his gameplan for Mississippi State as an assistant coach at Auburn. Hill got a call from Raegan Pebley, his former head coach at TCU and the current general manager of the Los Angeles Sparks.
Pebley had heard from a friend who had been a consultant with the two of them at TCU in 2022-23. That friend was looking to assemble a basketball program as part of the ambitious, new, "IMG Academy of the North" Masters Academy International (MAI) in Stow, Mass. His name is well-known in New England: John Carroll.
"When John called me, John asked, 'Hey, what have you heard about the opportunity?'" Hill recalled. "I literally told John not much. I just trusted Raegan and I trusted him, and I was open to hearing more about it. John flew me out to Boston to see it, and the rest is history."
The "history" is still to be written. MAI creeps toward its first day of the 2026-27 school year, and Hill is tasked with putting the girls basketball program in spaces no New England school has gone before.
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Much of the team is still to be determined. MAI has announced one girls basketball player as of Wednesday: 2031 guard Tori Cooper. Its basketball facility won't be ready until the 2027-28 season. But Hill's vision is bold: a true national schedule that pits MAI against the best high school teams in the country as well as NEPSAC stalwarts, and a roster that ranges from Power Four stars to high-academic Div. 3 talents.
"What I've told recruits — and I had this vision before I got to Masters — was that this is an opportunity for me to coach senators as well as young women who want to be the first pick overall. So I think Masters puts us in position to coach the highest of the high in terms of academics," Hill said. "I should have kids that want to go to MIT and Emerson, and I'll have kids that want to go play for Geno (Auriemma) and Dawn Staley."
Hill is a Dallas, Tx., native; he's come up four times so far this year to get a sense of New England. But he unwittingly made several connections growing up. His ninth grade geography teacher, Alan Varney, got his class on the Red Sox bandwagon when they won the 2004 World Series; Hill still keeps a letter of recommendation from Varney. Hill worked an internship with the National Life Group insurance company in Burlington, Vt. And he credits new Boston College head coach Kate Popovec-Goss with walking him over to his first coaching job at Div. 2 Urbana University.
Hill can point to several of his career highlights as preparation for MAI. He learned how to teach and emphasize details as a student assistant under Gary Blair when Texas A&M won the 2011 national championship. Pebley taught Hill how to build a winning culture during his two stints at TCU. Hill returned to Texas A&M in 2023, now led by Joni Taylor, the "boss of all bosses" who showed him how to manage a basketball program beyond just coaching. And last season, Hill joined a largely-brand-new Auburn staff under first-year head coach Larry Vickers — a circumstance similar to what he now enters with MAI.
When Hill was on the first flight to Boston, he wondered what he was thinking. Why would he eschew the upcoming scout for Florida at his SEC coaching job to check out a school that didn't exist yet? But Hill had an itch to get back to the elite youth level — he helped SA Finest win an Adidas 3SSB championship in 2021 — and MAI sold him on their plan.
"The beautiful part about grassroots is it's the most important piece when it comes to any sport in general," Hill said. "If the grassroots aren't good, the professionals won't be good. So (I was) trying to get back to that level, because I think that's just where the magic happens."
Hill describes MAI's hypothetical schedule as roughly 30-40 games and about a 50-50 split between national and New England opponents. He plans to leverage his connections with event directors from his time recruiting at the college level to build out that part of the schedule. Hill couldn't say much because so much is unofficial, but between invitational tournaments and potential further partnerships, he hopes MAI can schedule a platform on par with national powers like a Montverde or IMG Academy.
Locally, MAI could play some games against NEPSAC programs and surrounding prep schools. Hill suggested teams like Dexter Southfield, Newman and Putnam Science, though nothing is finalized yet.
Hill also made a notable distinction between MAI's program structure and a school like IMG. Whereas IMG has three distinct levels of basketball teams, MAI plans to be smaller, with one top girls team of about 16 players. Though it's one roster, it'll operate with a varsity and JV-like split, with the top (approximately) eight players prioritizing the national schedule and the back half of the roster getting a mix of national and regional minutes.
The goal, from a scheduling standpoint, is that MAI can put its players in front of prominent athletic and high-academic colleges from the region, and also nationwide. Hill mentioned reaching schools like Stanford or Cal, who rarely recruit from across the country.
"All of those institutions that are high-academic, they'll get to see us play, and they don't necessarily have to travel to Boston to do it," he said. "They can travel to Texas or they can travel to Phoenix to the Nike event, because hopefully we're playing in those events as well."
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So who will make up MAI's roster?
Hill acknowledged he's walking a tightrope. He wants New England area talent to be a primary focus. But he also doesn't want to "make enemies" in NEPSAC or violate recruiting rules for possible leagues. Hill expects the roster to include some notable regional talent, some national prospects and a couple of international student-athletes. Cooper, the lone public recruit so far, is from Providence, R.I.
"MAI was built for New England, and I don't want New England to feel like MAI is not built for New England," Hill said. "We will take care of New England first, and then in saying that, we'll expand nationally from there — internationally, to be honest with you."
On staff, Hill expects to add two coaches with ties to the region and one more who he's trusted from his career journey.
Hill knows his experience and MAI's vision are all he can currently pitch to recruits. But a year from now, he expects a proof of concept that will dramatically increase buzz around the program.
"I think we'll be able to compete in Year 1 on a national scale with some of the names that we've been recruiting and some of the traction that we've got with some of these families," he said. "If you're winning and you're taking care of business on and off the floor, this thing will recruit itself.
"IMG has, I don't know how many teams. We don't want to get to that level. Montverde has a couple different teams as well. And so I think that what we're doing is actually probably a little bit more powerful than what they're doing, just because of the academic piece and because of the intentionality, because we don't have so many teams, and so our matriculation will be a little bit more intentional. I think we'll be right there with them, and I think people across the country will be wanting to come to MAI in the next year or two."
