When Julie Schloat was elevated to the head coaching position for the Deerfield Academy girls basketball team prior to this season, athletic director Bob Howe asked who her ideal assistant might be. Her dream assistant, so to speak.
“Right away, after talking with (Howe), I told him that the first person I thought of was this woman named Ashani Petrizzi,” Schloat said.
Admittedly, Petrizzi had little basketball coaching experience.
Five years ago, when she worked in the Office of Advancement at DA, Petrizzi spent parts of a season helping out the Big Green. The former Greenfield High School basketball standout, who went on to play at Smith College, was able to fit a few practices into her schedule, make it to a handful of games. And that was it.
Turns out, Petrizzi made a lasting impression in her short stint helping out behind the scenes.
Petrizzi has since moved on to Amherst College, where she works as a senior development officer. She was heading off on a work trip when Schloat got in touch.
“Julie reached out and said, ‘Would you ever consider coaching with us?’” Petrizzi said. “The more I thought about it, the more I thought that the one thing that’s been missing from my life since graduating from Smith was being more involved in the game of basketball.”
When she returned home, Petrizzi said she was on board for the 2019-2020 season. It wasn’t going to be easy with her work schedule, and a family life that included four children and a husband at home, but the 2005 Greenfield alum was ready to make things work in order to join the staff at DA.
“I remember thinking this doesn’t work with my schedule or anything in my life, but what a great chance to get back involved with the game,” she said with a laugh. “Being able to impact girls basketball players felt like such a unique opportunity.”
The seeds were planted for what turned into one of the best seasons in Deerfield Academy history.
“Right away, Ashani said she would make it work,” Schloat said. “She moved mountains to come to practice every day, make it to all of our games. Her motto was that if she was going to commit to this, she was going to make it to everything that she could. Right then, I just thought, ‘This is going to be really special.’
“We get along so well and I wanted someone I could trust,” Schloat added. “Most importantly, I had this vision for the season really built around positive coaching, inspirational coaching. I presented that idea to her and she was on board with it. Us embracing that idea, we were able to focus our coaching around that positive reinforcement from the very beginning.”
This past season marked the 12th year at Deerfield for Schloat, and the 11th for her on the coaching staff.
Originally from upstate New York, Schloat played basketball at Middlebury then went on to coach the girls basketball team at Blair Academy in New Jersey before coming to DA.
The 2019-20 season began with a few unknowns. A pair of postgraduate pickups were destined for big things, but that wasn’t exactly evident during preseason camp.
When Greenfield standout Raegan Hickey decided to do a postgrad year at Deerfield, her focus athletically was on field hockey — her primary sport. The Big Green enjoyed success on the field hockey pitch and Hickey committed to play at Stonehill.
Another postgrad mystery came in guard Katy Gilbert. The Oregon native came to town with lacrosse as her focus, a sport she committed to playing at Division I Stanford next year. But Gilbert’s fit onto the basketball team, like Hickey, was unknown when preseason got underway in November.
“Those two coming in as sort of unknown, PG-quantities … we weren’t sure what to expect,” Schloat said. “Raegan, the local star coming here, I love having that local connection. We knew she was a big deal in Greenfield, but how well would she be able to make that leap to the prep level?
“The huge surprise was Katy Gilbert,” she continued. “She was a complete unknown and didn’t even tell Deerfield she was planning to play basketball originally. So we had no idea how good she was.”
Schloat teaches senior English and both Hickey and Gilbert were in her class for the fall semester. With some familiarity established in the classroom, the DA coach hoped it would carry over onto the court.
“Katy showed up for practice the first day and very quickly I thought, ‘This is the best point guard we’ve ever had,’” Schloat said. “And Raegan missed the first week of practice because of field hockey playoffs. But once she was here, by the end of the first two weeks of practice, Ashani and I said, ‘We could have a really good team here.’”
Petrizzi said she quickly bonded with Hickey.
“The icing on the cake for me was having Raegan on the team,” Petrizzi said. “We connected in so many ways. I did my PG year at Suffield Academy so I felt like I had gone down a similar path, coming from Greenfield.”
Add in another western Massachusetts product in West Springfield’s Angie Czeremcha, as well as reliable interior presence Claire Cummings from California, and the Big Green had the talent to make some noise when camp broke before the team’s opener on Dec. 14 against St. Paul’s School.
The results came quickly for Deerfield.
In the opener against St. Paul’s, three players scored in double figures — Cummings and Czeremcha with 18 points apiece, Hickey with 14 — and Gilbert dished out a team-high 12 assists to lift Deerfield to a 65-56 victory.
The bandwagon really got rolling from there. The Big Green won all three of their games in their annual Eight Schools Tournament right before winter beak, scoring wins over Lawrenceville, Choate and Buckingham Browne & Nichols to capture the title. Czeremcha scored 19 points in a 47-46 win over BB&N in the championship game, and the squad left campus for two weeks riding high with a perfect 4-0 record.
“Winning our holiday tournament for the first time ever … that really instilled some confidence in everyone,” Schloat said. “We beat three (fellow) Class A teams to do it so I think we thought that we could do really well in Class A after that performance.”
The return game after break would be an even bigger test.
Immediately upon returning to campus, Deerfield welcomed Class AA power Northfield Mount Hermon on Jan. 8. The Big Green hadn’t beaten the Hoggers in over a decade, but momentum was on their side in front of a loud crowd at the Class of 1953 Gymnasium. Cummings (13 points), Gilbert (12) and Hickey (10) all scored in double figures, and DA rolled to an impressive 56-42 victory.
Deerfield stayed hot throughout, posting a 16-4 regular season record that earned the team a spot in the NEPSAC Class A Tournament.
The Big Green picked up win No. 17 thanks to a 81-57 dismantling of Thayer Academy in the quarterfinal round, but ultimately saw its season come to an end with a 74-46 defeat at the hands of top-seeded Marianapolis Prep, the defending champions.
“It was the best season we’ve had by far since I’ve been here,” Schloat said. “Something we stuck by as a motto this year was ‘All in, All out.’ That helped rally us around something, and the team unity and bonding we had this year was the best I’ve been a part of.”
Petrizzi certainly didn’t have the look of an inexperienced coach on the sidelines. She acclimated quickly to the coaching life, and her commitment to the program never wavered.
“I was always impressed with her ability to balance it all,” Schloat said of Petrizzi.
Petrizzi said the support she received from Schloat helped make for a smooth transition.
“Julie was my biggest fan,” she said. “She was always, ‘Whatever you need, however you can make it work, I’m willing to adjust.’ I think I only missed one game the entire season. And it was probably the best experience I’ve had in basketball. The team did well on the court, but it was so much more than just that from a coaching perspective.
“The nerve-wracking part about it for me was that yes, I can play basketball, but I don’t know if I can teach basketball because I’ve never really done it,” she continued. “It’s a whole other dynamic. So I relied on Julie a lot. It was a huge learning curve, but I’m really happy with how everything went.”
As for the future, there’s a chance the duo could be reunited for another season on the hardwood in 2020-21. Former DA head coach Caroline Steadman is currently on sabbatical working toward an advanced degree from Harvard, and there could be another open spot on the staff for at least one more season.
“I would 100-percent coach again with Julie,” Petrizzi said. “This opportunity allowed me to see that coaching is something I’m really interested in doing long term. I love Deerfield, I love what this school embodies. Whatever happens, it was a season I’ll never forget.”