Amateur basketball is constantly evolving. It's a complicated, competitive and imperfect world — and no one knows that better than the athletes themselves.
Our five Players of the Year — Jae Scott (MIAA), Jasmyn Cooper (NEPSAC AAA), Elyse MacDonough (NEPSAC AA), Alicia Mitchell (NEPSAC A) and Camdyn Nelson (NEPSAC B) — are five primary representatives for the New England hoops landscape. Four have completed the youth basketball development process and attained a Division 1 college future, and Scott, a junior, is on the same path.
I interviewed all five to talk about their standout individual seasons. But I had a second mission in mind during our chats: to learn what it's like to be a girls basketball player today. What do they think about high school, prep school, AAU and the culture of amateur hoops? If they had the power, what would they change, and what would they want the community to know?
Our talks started with a rough series of questions, and though some common themes emerged, each player took their critiques in notably different directions. Here are the highlights of our discussions.
Social media's importance to recruiting
It's more than a Gen Z trait. Social media is a cornerstone of high school basketball as players and teams take charge of building their own brands. Highlight tapes, write-up screenshots and offer graphics land on the Instagram and Twitter/X timelines almost daily. Our Players of the Year have mixed feelings.
"I think it was good to begin with," Cooper said. "Posting offers, that's how I felt, and I was like, 'Hey, I'm proud of this. (It's) the start of the journey and I'd love to share this with the world."
But Cooper says she quickly got roped into comparing herself to other players and saw how social media became a weapon for players, parents and coaches. MacDonough agreed that the noise is hard to tune out.
"You go on Twitter or Instagram, and you see all these girls posting their own stuff, promoting their own game, and you want to do the same," MacDonough said. "So I think that was stressful, just kind of competing with other girls in a sense."
Most of our Players of the Year sit on the quieter end of the online presence spectrum. Cooper has scaled back her posts. Nelson and Scott say focusing inward has helped them tune out the noise.
"I don't feel that much pressure putting that much stuff on social media because I feel like, if (college coaches) want to see you, they'll come to your games," Scott said. "I usually just post my schedule."
Players also have to be even more mindful than their classmates about what they post because coaches are watching their feeds. Mitchell, who doesn't have a Twitter/X account and posts sparingly on Instagram, learned that lesson from coaches at camps when she was younger.
"I kind of took that and just thought to myself that, when you're really on social media and things like that ... if someone were to pull it up in front of a group of people, would you be a little embarrassed? Would you be proud to put your name next to that?" she said. "That's kind of just what I try to think of every time I post."
The biggest stressors for today's athletes
Social media was one subtopic in this list, but the Players of the Year had various answers — including college's ramifications on high school.
MacDonough transferred to Worcester Academy from Rice Memorial High in South Burlington, Vt., where the spotlight on girls basketball in particular was much dimmer. Worcester Academy was a game-changer for her, but it also came with the expectation that she'd find recruiting success. MacDonough did — she's headed to St. Bonaventure — but it wasn't immediate. She had to wade through uncomfortable waiting periods as colleges grappled with the chaos of the transfer portal.
"(Coaches) don't know if they're gonna get somebody from the transfer portal, so they have to hold off on offering, or (say) they're still looking in the transfer portal, so it might take some more time to have that spot open," she said. "It was really just that timing part that was stressful and overwhelming. If you're waiting for a kid to commit, but you don't know if they're going to transfer or not, it's just that time period of like waiting and seeing other options. Just not knowing, I think, was the biggest part."
Cooper and Nelson head to the ACC and will team up at Syracuse. At the Power Four level in particular, NIL becomes an important conversation. But Cooper didn't know how much she should prioritize NIL during her recruiting process.
"That's such a big topic to some people and not a big topic for others," Cooper said. "When you try and find commonalities between like your friends and your other players in the basketball world, you're like, 'Oh, they're concerned a lot more about NIL and I'm not.' Then that kind of adds a little bit of stress — wait, do I need to be? Is this really such an important thing that I have to start having these phone calls, and having these email chains and talking about that?"
Scott and Nelson talked about overcoming their own nerves during the recruiting process as two quieter athletes. Scott's first phone call with Providence was "really stressful," but she's more comfortable now.
Nelson was so nervous when she first played at AAU showcases that she wouldn't even look at the baseline to see the college coaches watching. But she grew to put the anxiety behind her. Nelson's biggest advice in all facets of basketball: run your own race and trust your own process.
"It's definitely nerve wracking, but you're playing the sport you love," she said. "It just goes back to trusting the work you put in and playing hard always. You're not always going to have a great shooting day or always make the right decisions or the right pass, but just playing hard."
What would you change about the girls basketball landscape?
These conversations were fascinating and produced the greatest spread of answers.
Cooper's idea was pointed: she wants to move up the date when college coaches can contact prospects for the first time. Currently, they can directly reach out starting June 1 after sophomore year — before that, they have to use a coach or family as a go-between for the athletes. Cooper believes opening the direct communication a year earlier would give players time to find out if the college recruiting them is genuine.
"I think that's just teetering the line of a little too late to start connection-building," she said. "Realistically, you're going to want to make a decision about where you're going in a year or two after that. So yes, you can see the truth behind a player and a program in that time, but I think if that, if you were able to kind of have that direct contact and not through a third party, earlier — say, freshman year — if you're starting your recruitment up that early, it would give you a lot more time to find those genuine relationships and build those connections with coaches and programs."
Nelson, Mitchell and MacDonough vouched for more philosophical shifts. Nelson wanted to reinforce the push to keep independent, non-shoe-circuit AAU programs prominent. Her Empire State Blue Flames program was independent prior to joining the Select Power 24 circuit last year.
"We competed against the top teams, these ranked teams and stuff, and we won or we lost by one or two and it was close games," Nelson said. "So I think just that you can go to an independent program and still be seen and have a good AAU time."
Mitchell looks at the basketball landscape and sees too many yes-people. Coaches would tell a girl she was the best of the best and destined for Division 1 stardom even though it just wasn't realistic. Often, Mitchell said, they had their own motivations, like getting the player to pay to join their AAU program. Sometimes a well-meaning reality check can keep a player from being crushed when they're not one of the less than two percent who earn a scholarship.
"I feel that I've seen a lot of girls growing up have the false hopes that all of them were Division 1 players, and all of them could have scholarships to top schools and things like that," she said. "Watching them and growing up, I always felt that was really unfair and even sad sometimes, when I would see the girls that worked out nonstop in the gym, 24/7, and people promised them if all you do is work hard, you're going to get everything you want. And they wouldn't get what they want, and I felt disappointed for them."
That being said, coaches still need to instill confidence in their young athletes. MacDonough played one year of AAU on the Bay State Jaguars and praised her time in the program. But she said her past club experiences were defined by coaches who relentlessly pushed their players without being supportive.
"It's not always encouragement. It's more of like degrading — like trying to get you to do more, work harder — but I think it just kind of strips young athletes of confidence," she said. "And you can you see that coming in some youth sports nowadays. Some kids are not wanting to play anymore just because of coaches and having bad experiences with them."
What would you want to tell the parent community about what it's like to be a girls basketball player?
Parents are the first people young athletes seek for support. Our Players of the Year collectively said that they would feel that support more — not necessarily referencing their own parents, but the community of families that make up the local basketball ecosystem.
That can be by trusting coaches know what's best, said Nelson. Or, said Mitchell and Scott, support can mean being patient and talking with an athlete through their struggles.
"Sometimes if you feel you're not doing good in your head, then you're just not gonna play good the rest of the game," Scott said. "If you (the parent) think they're having like, a hard time, just talk to them after about it and help them through what they're thinking at that moment."
Cooper responded similarly to Mitchell earlier, cautioning parents to avoid viewing success as merely reaching Division 1 or the highest levels.
"Not everyone's success is going to look the same, whether that's going D1, D2, D3, playing any collegiate level basketball, and as long as your player and your children are happy, that's the most important thing," she said. "It's not about how high they go, not about how much money they'll make, not about the publicity or social media notoriety that they'll get, but about if they're happy."
Has the recent explosion of women's basketball interest affected you?
All of our Players of the Year are excited by the sport's growth at the collegiate and professional levels. Most said they haven't seen it change much in high school. Cooper and Nelson say it's only made them more excited to get to Syracuse and experience that buzz of big-time college hoops. Scott likes seeing more of a women's sports presence on her social media feeds.
Mitchell remembers growing up and doubting her love for the sport. When boys played basketball, they dreamed of the NBA and making millions — but that didn't seem possible for girls. Now the WNBA is taking off and women stars are garnering hype and sponsorship. Mitchell is seeing their talent and work be recognized in viewership and endorsement deals.
"It made me realize that my talents and abilities are just as special as the men's, and it's important that if I value them, I keep it up and I try my best," she said.
MacDonough was honest about her upbringing as a girl in sports. When she played in Vermont, she would watch the stands fill up in the fourth quarters of her games — because the boys were playing after. In her first year at Worcester Academy, MacDonough endured the jabs from guys that often follow women's basketball players: they're not as fast, they can't dunk, they're not as entertaining.
"I don't think they were trying to be mean about it, but it was just like, oh, they think it's funny (and) it's a joke. But it comes to a point where, if you're saying it every day, it's not a joke anymore," she said.
Even this March, when both Worcester Academy teams made the Class AA championships, MacDonough says the boys team had a group of about 40 students travel to see their victory. The girls got none.
At times, the demeaning tone towards women's sports has rattled MacDonough's confidence. But the current momentum towards college and pro stars have validated that her talent matters.
"It feels great to be able to call myself a woman athlete because now everything's moving up, and people are starting to realize how amazing women are in sports," she said.
