MARION, Mass. — Tabor seniors Ava Black, Kaelyn Carroll and Liv Rodrigues have grown to be inseparable.
The three have known each other since middle school. They eat together and sing karaoke together. But their favorite group activity is obviously basketball, and the longtime teammates are as stellar a Big Three as there is in New England.
“You can almost throw the ball without looking,” coach Will Becker said. “The way they cut backdoor off each other, the way they feed the ball to each other, the way they move off the ball when one of the others has the ball — it's really fun to watch. It's just really beautiful basketball.”
Injuries have deprived us of seeing that on-court synergy for more than a calendar year. It’s finally back this winter.
MORE: Preseason All-New England team | NEPSAC Power Rankings
The Seawolves will tell you they’re proud of last season, which included a 23-6 record and a run to the NEPSAC Class AA semifinals. They’ll also tell you that at times, they couldn’t catch a break.
A string of bad luck took root in summer 2023, when Black (Auburn, N.H.) dislocated her elbow and tore her PCL in one crash to the floor during an AAU game. It sidelined the Vanderbilt commit for the entire season. On the first day of practice at Tabor, Carroll (Dedham, Mass.), the top-ranked prospect in New England and a Kentucky commit, suffered a bad ankle sprain, and the injuries only mounted.
Black recalls two players picking up an ankle injury and concussion in the same practice. Lauren Fitzgerald blocked a shot that led to a hairline wrist fracture. Others dealt with sickness. Tabor was down to 5-on-4 scrimmages at one point, and Becker had to skip drills and hold people out just so he could make sure they fielded a game-day rotation. Occasionally, Rodrigues’ practice matchup became assistant coach Lydia Caputi.
The Seawolves enter this season healthy, and the senior trio wants to jog everyone’s memory of how good this team can be.
“I definitely have a lot of motivation to prove that we're here — especially me personally, being out for a whole year. My revenge tour is what I'm calling it,” Black said. “People have been saying a lot of things about me (and) don't have faith in my recovery. I really want to show them that I'm back, I'm better, and we're here to win it all this time.”
When Black injured her knee on that ill-fated jump, she initially thought she’d just hyperextended it, and her elbow was her biggest concern. Then doctors suggested an MRI on her knee and revealed the PCL tear. It came at a critical time; Black was preparing to commit to college.
She told Vanderbilt coach Shea Ralph about the injury and was nervous that Vanderbilt would change its mind. But Ralph, who suffered multiple knee injuries as a player, assured her that they had full faith. It helped give Black more confidence she was choosing the right program.
“They trust me and they still want me just as much. That’s when I knew that was the place,” she said.
Black was on crutches for eight weeks after surgery and had to rebuild her quad strength and her range of motion while making sure her knee stayed properly aligned. She was also challenged by being glued to the bench. Among the three stars, Black is known for her quiet intensity, but watching and being vocal was the only way she could impact the game while injured.
Caputi, a Tabor alum who joined the staff last season, saw Black’s high basketball I.Q. first-hand on the sideline, and over time, saw her grow into a more effective communicator.
“To be out for your entire junior season when you are in a rhythm is heartbreaking, and Ava was a really, really amazing teammate, and took some of our young players under their wing, and was kind of giving them permission to be confident,” she said.
Carroll saw Black’s emerging voice from a different perspective.
“She was helpful. She had some words to say, let me say that. The refs could not handle her,” Carroll said with a laugh.
Carroll joined Black on the sidelines frequently due to her own injuries. Her initial ankle sprain left her out for about three weeks, but then in February against Tilton, Carroll suffered a bad concussion that briefly knocked her unconscious and forced her to sit for another three weeks.
STAR STATUS: How Carroll rose to become the top prospect in New England
Tabor takes its concussion protocols seriously. Becker explained that every student gets impact tested in the fall so they have a baseline to compare against concussion-like symptoms, and teachers and coaches are made well aware of every athlete’s current restrictions. When an athlete stops experiencing symptoms, they’re tested again. Then they slowly return to play in stages, be it a 15-minute warmup or 30-minute bike ride, with regular testing in between.
“It's very careful, very rigorous,” Becker said. “They do a nice job so that when the kids do come back, I think they feel pretty confident they're good to go.”
Carroll dealt with headaches in her first days back at school following her concussion, but said that wasn’t nearly as challenging as being barred from practices due to the noise. Her baseline tests involved simply standing still with her eyes closed, then progressing to memorizing patterns of flashing lights, names or numbers.
“It felt so weird,” she said. “It was very frustrating. I didn't know why I couldn't do it. It would hurt my head to try and figure out numbers that I just remembered, and I think that once I would remember some, my head hurt really bad, and then I'd forget it. Or I just wouldn't remember. So it was definitely really frustrating.”
The injury bug had caught Carroll repeatedly. She had surgery for a meniscus injury as a sophomore, then tore her quad during the following AAU season. After four different setbacks in two years, Carroll entered her final AAU season with the Bay State Jaguars with something to prove, both to outside spectators and herself.
Massive might be an understated way to describe Carroll’s spring and summer. She soared up ESPN’s national rankings to No. 15 in the 2025 class and drew glowing reviews from most of her major competitions. She was invited to the U.S. U-18 national team tryouts in May and the Under Armour Next all-star game in August, among other invitational showcases, and added to her more than 40 Division 1 offers before ultimately choosing Kentucky on Nov. 13.
THE DECISION: Carroll explains why she committed to Kentucky
“Just remembering how much I loved (basketball) kind of brought out my competitive side and my confidence,” Carroll said. “The amount of work I had to put in after getting injured, and even just remaining with that same work ethic — I think that (I was) reminding myself I deserve to be here, and it's been taken from me, and I'm not going to let it be taken again. So I think that, yes, I definitely did very well and reminded people how great I am, but I think I also kind of reminded myself that I deserve it.”
While Carroll and Black faced injuries, they watched Rodrigues (Dennis, Mass.) emerge as a cornerstone. The 6-foot-1 Providence commit joined Carroll as a Class AA All-NEPSAC member and averaged 10 points, 4.6 rebounds and 3.1 assists per game. Rodrigues dodged the injury misfortune, but she also had to switch between different roles throughout the season based on the healthy talent around her.
“She’s pretty unflappable,” Becker said. “She'll adjust her game to whatever the team needs. ... We ran a lot of the offense through her because she's such a good decision-maker. If we needed her to score, she'd be attacking. If we needed her to distribute, she'd be creating. And when you have a player of that caliber with that mental acuity and understanding of the game, let her make decisions, and she's gonna make good ones.
The Seawolves widely regard Rodrigues as practically a player-coach. Becker says in his 33 years of coaching, he’s had maybe two or three players who can process the game at her level. He leaned on Rodrigues’ insights even more last season.
“Mine and Becker's relationship is kind of interesting because it’s more so coach-to-coach, in a way,” Rodrigues said. “Our conversations are really straightforward. He'll tell me anything I need to hear, and then if I see something, I'll go and do the same to him.”
WHY PROVIDENCE: Rodrigues discusses choosing the Friars
Rodrigues says the Seawolves have jelled quickly during the fall. That’s helped by the tone the three seniors set. Rodrigues is known as the vocal leader given her coach-like persona, Carroll is the primary hype beast and Black is the stern competitor.
“You get everything you want with us three, because we'll be goofy, but then we'll be serious and lock in,” Rodrigues said. “You have your dogs, and then you have your hype — still goofy, but still hype.”
Tabor enters the season atop our preseason rankings because their talent extends far beyond the Big Three. Junior Molly Corcoran (Medford, Mass.), who committed to Colgate in late October, got an extended run as the team’s point guard last season. Corcoran leads a deep group of guards and wings that includes classmates Tess Adams (Mattapoisett, Mass.) and Callie Cosgrove (West Hartford, Conn.) as well as sophomore Lauren Fitzgerald (North Attleboro, Mass.).
Sophomore power forward Corinne Lomax (Watertown, Conn.) is one of the top NEPSAC transfers, as is high-upside freshman guard Lily Davis (New London, Conn.). But the journey to a championship will be led by the senior trio.
Black, Carroll and Rodrigues were once bitter rivals when they opposed each other on the AAU circuit. Then they teamed up on both the Bay State Jaguars and at Tabor, and were key freshmen contributors when the Seawolves won the Class AA title in 2021-22. Bookending their playing careers together with another championship would mark a fitting send-off.
“We went into it winning,” Carroll said, “so to go out of it winning would be really cool.”
