By Christopher Tremblay, Staff Sports Writer

Moira Phillips grew up playing basketball in New Jersey and when she was at Eastern Nazarene College, a division 3 school in Quincy she knew that she wanted to eventually coach basketball. Two years ago, she moved to Bellingham where she was teaching Biology and Anatomy, and it was here that her coaching career started to take off.

Athletic Director Mike Connors knew that Phillips wanted to coach, especially basketball, the sport she played and loved. Connors set her on a track to begin coaching – first the New Jersey native would begin coaching middle school track and eventually moved up to junior varsity field hockey for Bellingham.

“Being that I played basketball and it was my sport, Mike knew that is where I wanted to go towards,” Phillips said. “When a vacancy came about in Holliston, he connected me with (AD) Matt Baker.”

Having never actually coached girls’ basketball, Phillips started watching film on the Panthers’ basketball team from last year and didn’t really know what this Holliston team would look like this year without their top player from the year prior.

“Coming in at this point, I knew that is was going to be a rebuilding year but didn’t realize how much rebuilding it was actually going to be,” the new coach said. “Over the first handful of games, we’ve been able to score 40 points in one game, and the rest have been in the 20’s. We are having a hard time scoring, and you obviously can’t win games with these types of numbers.”

Holliston’s only being able to score in the 20’s left the first-year coach dumbfounded. During practice, things looked good, and the team seemed to know how to box out and play defense, but come game time, practice was not translating on the court and the young team looked to be in panic mode for a good part of the contest.

“I originally thought that we were going to be able to go at least .500 , now I really don’t know what to expect,” Phillips said. “After watching them perform in practice, I was thinking definite playoffs, but unless we can start translating what we do in practice to games,I am unsure of what this team is going to be able to accomplish.”

At the time of this writing, the Panthers were sporting an 0-5 record. Senior Sophia Lynch, who is coming off the bench after an ACL injury incurred last year, is currently the team’s high scorer, averaging 7 points per contest. Phillips is hoping that, by the time the second half of the season gets underway, that Lynch will be back onto the court as a starter, as she was before her injury. 

“I am hoping that she’ll be ready for more playing time and that she provides right off the bat,” Phillips said. “You can tell that she has the skills and the ability as soon as she comes off the bench and enters the game. Her ball handling skills and shooting abilities has opposing coaches worried. I  hope that she can get into a flow and the rest of the team will follow her lead.”

While the team waits for the emergence of Lynch, Campbell Harris has contributed a few games where she has been able to knock down 10-12 points. Phillips will be looking to Harris, one of the team’s big players, to use her height to her advantage and begin scoring even more over the second half of the season.

As a team, Holliston’s shooting percentage is low, and Phillips is looking for her team to start doing the little things, like hitting the open jumpers while making their lay-ups, hoping to bring those shooting percentages up.

In addition to the squad’s low shooting percentage, Phillips has found that the Panther girls are also having difficulty with their half court game. In addition to its being non-existent, it looks as though some of the girls are just there for fun, but it is also fun to win sometimes.

“As coaches, we have really had to push them in practice and threaten them with running if they cant pick it up a notch,” she said. 

Originally, Phillips was hoping to get this team into the post-season, but at this moment that doesn’t look as though that is something in the near future. With that, the Coach has adjusted her goals to looking for game situation improvement. Being that the majority of the starters are seniors, Phillips will eventually look to the underclassmen to take over those roles and get them some experience for next year. 

As the younger girls begin to see more varsity action down the stretch of the season, Phillips will start to wonder who will be taking over the scoring role when Lynch graduates.

“After Sophia leaves, we are going to have to look at everyone to contribute on the scoring end instead of having just that one individual,” she said. “Thus, the reasoning to get the younger girls some action down the stretch, so they can become acclimated for the next year.”

Phillips didn’t think it was going to be such a tough transition to taking over the Holliston girls’ basketball program this winter, but she is hoping that those coming back will be trying to hone their skills over the rest of the season as well as into the off-season so that Holliston can bring their game back to the court and show the other Tri-Valley League team that they are ready and willing to show they belong.