TILTON, N.H. — Bella Owumi’s big prep transfer decision was three years in the making. She spent most of the spring holding New England girls basketball in suspense as she pondered leaving MIAA powerhouse St. Mary’s in Lynn, Mass., for NEPSAC.
Tilton coach Tara Brisson missed Owumi’s initial phone call. Then came the texts: a screenshot of her social media profile with a bio change to “Tilton School ‘27.” And the messages, filled with emojis, paraphrased as: “I have good news… I’m gonna be a Ram!!!”
“It was hard, because I took it almost up till the deadline to come here,” Owumi said. “I just decided that it's gonna be best for my journey.”
In the span of three months, Tilton has emphatically claimed its place atop the New England prep girls hierarchy. First the Rams downed Nobles in an instant-classic Class AAA championship game, and then won their second consecutive national prep championship that same week. Then they landed Owumi, perhaps the biggest NEPSAC transfer in several years.
Brisson fueled herself and the Rams to its titles by staking their claim as underdogs. Now, with Tilton opening the season as our No. 1 team, that label has expired.
“It’s terrible, isn’t it? Can’t you make us the underdogs?” Brisson quipped.
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Instead, the storyline for our preseason No. 1 team is: Can the Rams repeat with all eyes on them?
It’s a question of handling pressure — a lesson that leading stars Owumi, Brooke Golden and Bela Cucuta learn regularly.
“We work with a generation now where you sometimes have to teach them to be competitive,” Brisson said. “So if you can have kids who have a really strong will to win and a really strong desire to be successful, and they have that ambition and that drive in everything that they do, — because they have that dog mentality, because they're a competitor — that's really important to me.”
Owumi has felt the spotlight her entire teenage life. She started on the St. Mary’s 2021-22 championship team in seventh grade. Her first Division 1 offer came the following summer from Rhode Island. Fast-forward to this past March, and a sophomore Owumi had stacked her MIAA résumé with three state championships, more than 1,000 points and recognition as the best college prospect in the state.
Those achievements came under St. Mary’s coach Jeff Newhall — Owumi’s neighbor and a close family friend who had watched her grow up long before she enrolled at the school.
NEPSAC quickly came calling. Brisson first took note of Owumi in eighth grade. Owumi visited Tilton two years ago, but wasn’t ready to leave St. Mary’s at the time. Brisson kept up contact and was increasingly floored by both Owumi’s athletic potential and her ability to step up in big moments. She attended an important St. Mary’s game last January when, after Owumi had struggled most of the contest, took over in the fourth quarter and hit the winning pull-up 3-pointer against Catholic Central League rival Cathedral.
“She probably knew in her head, as players often do, like, ‘Oh, this is not my best day. But still, my team believes in me. I'm going to take this shot; I'm going to win the game.’ So that, to me, I was like, OK, for a kid to be mentally that locked in, that's a wow moment for me,” Brisson said.
Nobles, Dexter Southfield and St. Mary’s all had meaningful claims in the Owumi sweepstakes. Why did she ultimately choose Tilton?
“(Brisson) texted me and was like, ‘Whatever decision you make, I'm gonna be here.’ And I think that really means a lot coming from someone where, yeah, you want me to be in your program, but even if that's not the case, you're still gonna be there,” Owumi said. “You're not gonna drop off the radar or whatever that may be.”
But how would telling Newhall go? Owumi considers him almost like a second dad. She broke the news to him in his office during school.
“And he was the same way. He was like, ‘Yeah, whatever's gonna benefit you. I could see this was coming a little bit.’ I think he was ultimately just happy for me,” she said.
Owumi still visits Newhall all the time. She often goes home to Lynn on weekends, and she coached St. Mary’s during summer and fall tournaments this offseason.
“We're still very close, and I didn't think anyone was gonna be there for me like that,” she said.
With the pressure of her decision gone, Owumi exploded during her AAU season with MCW Starz. She’s flown up to No. 30 on ESPN’s national 2027 rankings and collected more than 30 Division 1 offers, largely from high-major schools around the country.
Overtime invited Owumi to participate in the organization’s upstart Select summer league, filled with some of the best high school players in the country. She scored 17 points in her first game and proved she belonged with the best.
“I didn't know if I was gonna play good, just because I didn't feel like I was good enough,” Owumi said. “A lot of those players are ranked 1 or 2 in their class, and going against them, you kind of compare yourself … but just going out there, performing, and knowing I can play against good players too (meant a lot).”
Owumi’s physical training has reached a new level since joining Tilton. She says she’s never pushed her body as hard as she has this fall as part of the Rams’ preseason workouts with lifts, skills training and speed training.
“You don't want to wake up at 6 a.m. to run. But that's what's going to get you better, and I think that everybody here wants to get better,” she said.
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Owumi is pushed to get better by her Tilton teammates — including Northwestern commit Brooke Golden, one of NEPSAC’s top post players, who hit the hook shot that won the Class AAA championship last March.
Golden (Chester, N.H.), stands out on any court for her size and athleticism at 6-foot-3, and for her fiery competitive nature. Her mom frequently had to tell her to stop walking up to strangers as a child. Golden (who also goes by the last name Muller) labels herself naturally extroverted and a perfectionist, and says that defined large parts of her childhood and basketball career.
“I used to be the most mental kid ever — like, if the ball didn't go in the basket for me, I was shutting down completely,” Golden said. “It was actually really, really hard for me to overcome that, just because I am so emotional in every way. I am energetic and stuff, but when things start going wrong, it was really hard for me to be like, it’s OK.”
Brisson recalls moments early in Golden’s time as a Ram when she would spiral and cry after fouling out. They had difficult conversations about dealing with failure and pressure, and the coaching staff helped Golden start journaling, which helped her through the anxieties of her recruiting process. At the same time, Brisson felt empathy towards Golden. They see similar competitive fire in each other.
“Me being here for three years, I've definitely turned into kind of a mini-Briss in a lot of ways, just in the way I carry myself now,” Golden said. “I do look up to Briss so much. I have so much respect for her. She's gotten so many great things out of people; why would I not want to be like that?”
“She has grown up so much,” Brisson said. “One of the other things I said to her is, ‘Don't ever lose your fire. I want you to care about it. I want you to believe in it. I want you to be passionate about it, just like I am. … I don't want you to lose that at all. I want you to be fiery, I want you to be competitive. I want all of those things, but that can't come out in the form of: you're frustrated because you miss a layup, so you hack somebody on the opposite end, because that just means you're gonna be on the bench and not helping us.'”
Brisson uses a phrase often that Golden now has tattooed in small script on her arm: amor fati, Latin for “love one’s fate.”
“You may forget to do your homework and get yelled at by the teacher — amor fati. You may have to go to school one year in a pandemic — amor fati,” Brisson said. “You have to love every situation you're in. Figure out a way to make the most — good, bad, hard, easy — make the most of every situation.”
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Combo guard Bela Cucuta also sports multiple tattoos, including a more ornate one on her left forearm. Within the design is a scripted “Love Yours,” a nod to the popular 2014 song from J. Cole.
“It's basically that you're never going to be happy — you're never gonna find joy in your life — until you're happy with what you have,” the George Washington commit said. “Like, with the people you have in your life, where you are in your life, and just not comparing you to anybody else.”
Cucuta (Newington, Conn.) starred at Newington and created a local following as one of the top guards in Connecticut before she transferred to Tilton last year. Being the centerpiece of her hometown team was a tremendous confidence boost — which challenged Cucuta when she joined the loaded Rams.
Was she living up to the hype? Was she being a good teammate but still showcasing herself as she entered the final stages of college recruiting? Cucuta could see her own progress, but also felt the outside noise push her to compare herself to her peers.
“Love Yours” brought Cucuta back to appreciating those who have stuck by her, like her supportive family, or iBelieve Elite AAU coach Kahari Beaufort, who Cucuta says is like a sibling to her. She found similar value in Tilton’s season-defining phrase from last winter: “We Got Us.”
“If you're thinking (about) me vs. me, in a way, you're kind of focused on yourself,” she said. “I feel like some people compare themselves (within) a team. I feel like here, we don't do that at all. We're very happy for everyone else's success, whereas I feel like some people kind of get a little jealous. But I feel like that goes into the ‘We Got Us’ — just being happy for each other. It's us from the start, and us versus everybody else.”
At times last season, Brisson had to tell Cucuta, the 5-foot-10, limitless-range shooter, to keep firing and maintain a short memory when she struggled through early slumps. During the Class AAA quarterfinals against Dexter Southfield, Cucuta started ice cold, and the already-quiet guard grew noticeably more tense as the game stayed close.
But when she hit a huge 3-pointer to put the Rams up five points late, it unlocked the confidence that had helped her lead the team in scoring (18.6 points). Cucuta then torched Tabor and Nobles during the remainder of Tilton’s title run.
“That wasn’t pressure that we put on her or her teammates had put on her,” Brisson said. “That was probably pressure she put on herself, going, ‘OK, this is the playoffs, I want to win a championship. What have I got to do to be the best, to help my team win a championship?’ Because then, after she hit that shot, she couldn't miss at Tabor, and then at the championship, she was even better.”
Brisson says Cucuta now looks the most confident she’s ever seen. In February, when senior Lindsey Lemay suffered a season-ending ankle injury, Cucuta found new synergy with classmate Maddie McCaffery (Merrimack, N.H.) in the backcourt. They’ll feature in the starting lineup again with Owumi and Golden.
Though Tilton graduated a handful of key players — most notably Colleen Phiri, now a freshman at George Washington — they also loaded up beyond adding Owumi. Kamryn Derba (Easton, Mass.) is another sharpshooting 2-guard who transfers in from Dexter Southfield. Lily Norton (Marblehead, Mass.) came with Owumi from the St. Mary’s dynasty as a tough-nosed point guard who reclassified to 2028.
It’s hard not to hear the buzz around Giuliana Shepard (Easton, Mass.), who could be an immediate-impact freshman. Ava Collins joins from the basketball factory that is Bedford, N.H. Flying far under the radar (for now) is 2027 6-foot-4 transfer Ava Bryant (Rye, N.Y.), who boasts offers from Texas A&M, Georgetown, Yale and more. And that’s not even touching on most of the returning talent.
Golden and Brisson don’t want the expectations to invite complacency.
“I don't want last year to define us. I want what we do this year to define us,” Golden said. “I don't want the new girls to be like, ‘Oh, they're really good, so we're just gonna show up and be really good.’ There's so many things we have to do still (and) work on to get better. We haven't even started practice.”
Brisson publicly talked about how she fueled her team, and herself, on the perception that Tilton got left out of the conversation around true NEPSAC powerhouses. She can’t say Tilton’s not being talked about enough anymore. So how does Brisson’s motivation change being on top?
“Despite us being very talented and not being under the radar anymore, there are always people who, when Tilton School is constantly in the conversation — do they have the potential to win a championship? Can Tilton School repeat as champions? – that makes people not like you,” she said. “I don't know how to say that in a nicer way, but that makes people feel like, ‘Oh, I'm sick of hearing about Tilton School.’ And that really motivates me to continue to keep Tilton School as part of the conversation.”
