PREP Athletics Basketball Podcast
PREP Athletics Basketball Podcast
How to Build Complete Student-Athletes ft. Coach Billy Thom of Millbrook School
Join us as we sit down with Billy Thom, Head Boys Basketball Coach at Millbrook School, for an insightful discussion about prep school basketball, college recruitment, and holistic student development. We explore Billy’s journey from being a student manager during Davidson’s historic Elite Eight run with Steph Curry to building a unique basketball program that emphasizes both athletic excellence and personal growth.
📌 Key Topics:
✅ Davidson Experience: Detailed behind-the-scenes look at the 2008 Elite Eight run with Steph Curry
✅ Millbrook Philosophy: Innovative approach combining basketball with holistic education, including their unique campus features like an accredited zoo
✅ College Recruitment: In-depth discussion of how Millbrook helps student-athletes navigate the recruiting process
✅ Mental Health: Integration of social-emotional wellness into coaching practices as a licensed clinical social worker
🗒️ About Billy:
Billy Thom is a multifaceted educator and coach who serves as Millbrook School’s Head Boys Basketball Coach, Director of Affective Education, and Assistant Director of Counseling. After graduating from Davidson College in 2011, he served as Director of Basketball Operations at Davidson from 2011-2013. Since joining Millbrook in 2013, he has developed a comprehensive program that has placed students at prestigious institutions including Dartmouth, Williams College, and Colgate University. A licensed clinical social worker (LCSW), Thom brings a unique perspective to coaching by integrating mental health and wellness into his basketball program. His coaching philosophy emphasizes character development alongside athletic achievement, reflected in Millbrook’s “Be a Blessing” program objective.
🔗 Connect with Billy:
Email | wthom@millbrook.org
X | https://x.com/billy_thom?lang=en
Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/coachthom12/
Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/brookhoops/
🔗 Connect with Cory:
Website | https://www.prepathletics.com
Twitter | https://twitter.com/PREP_Athletics
Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/prep.athletics/
Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/PrepAthletics
Email | coryheitz@gmail.com
Phone | 859-317-1166
🔖 Subscribe to the PREP Athletics Podcast:
iTunes | https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/prep-athletics-podcast/id1546265809?uo=4
Spotify | https://open.spotify.com/show/6CAKbXFiIOhoHinzsReYbJ
Amazon | https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/3c37179d-3371-47f9-9d97-fd569e8802a7/prep-athletics-basketball-podcast #AmazonMusic
Cory Heitz (00:01)
Welcome to this week's episode of the Prep Athletics Podcast. I'm proud to have coach Billy Thom on and Billy is the head coach at Millbrook, which is located in New York and Billy grew up in a basketball family. Dad's a hall of fame high school coach in New York and Billy as a 17 year old went to Davidson to be a student manager. Happened to be the year Davidson went to the elite eight with Steph Curry. So we go behind the scenes of
kind of his time there being director of basketball operations for two years at Davidson and then getting the job at Millbrook. And he shares all about Millbrook and how it's, you know, it's a holistic approach they take to their student athletes. And it's more than just basketball there. They've got a zoo on campus with endangered species. it's a cool place. Went to visit there a couple of years ago and got to see all the animals and, just give some great insight on, on class, on how they actually develop kids as, you know, well-rounded beings.
and how they help get their kids recruited in college and kind of this process there. So really enjoyed this. Last thing, Billy is a social worker, which is a little bit different to among the coaching staff in the prep school world. So we get into that as well. enjoy the podcast and thanks tuning in.
Cory Heitz (01:34)
Billy, welcome to the podcast.
Billy (01:36)
Thanks Cory, happy to be here.
Cory Heitz (01:38)
Yeah. So where did you grow up and what got you into coaching?
Billy (01:42)
Yeah, grew up in Cold Spring, New York, so about an hour and 20s, north of New York City. My dad was a high school basketball coach, so kind of grew up in a gym as well, public school in Westchester County. He's had his own high school college coaching career, New York State Hall of Fame, all that good stuff. So the idea that coaching was an important part, basketball is an important part of my family life has sort of been present.
since birth. My dad and mom met playing college ball at St. Rose, which is no longer open, but they met on a team bus in their first road trip freshman year. it's sort of been ever-present. Grew up coaching some youth basketball, things like that in high school. Was not a great player myself and so...
I tried to figure out how to best to get into the world and found my way to Davidson College as a student manager and then a student assistant, then on staff and kind of took off from there. But definitely a part of life throughout my early life.
Cory Heitz (02:46)
Yeah, and that's something that a lot of, not a lot, but some coaches do is they go the manager route at a D1 program. And tell me a little bit more about that. Like what was the best part of being a manager there? was the worst part?
Billy (02:57)
Yeah, well I kind of stepped in crap right away because my first year was the Elite 8 run. So that was pretty fantastic, know? Being able to sort of enter and have to keep pinching yourself, have your assistant coaches say, hey Billy, this isn't how it always is, right? Undefeated run in the SoCon and win a couple tournament games, go to Detroit, win another tournament game.
Cory Heitz (03:03)
Hmm.
Right.
Billy (03:26)
That was just a lot of fun. So that's sort of the sexy part of the journey. I think the thing I really enjoyed most was being in a place that really sort of pushed me as student, right, and as a human, but also had really high level basketball. And so Coach McKillop was tremendous, pretty much from my sophomore year on, having me be a part of a lot of our program. I'd sit in coaches meetings.
do a lot of the pre-video scout work as a sophomore, a junior in college. I was still a student at Davidson and going out and talking with one of our assistants at the local Rotary Club or a community event. And so I'm forever thankful that Coach gave me lot of those opportunities. I think some of it was also good timing. We didn't have a huge manager group.
Cory Heitz (04:04)
Thanks
Billy (04:16)
when I first got there. so just being able to kind of put my head down and try to make myself indispensable, that opened up a lot of doors as well. But hardest part, I think, is that you're still a college student and I felt a real affinity to college coaching at the same time. So you're trying to manage those two things. And when I graduated, I stayed on staff as director of operations.
But I wasn't hired until July or so when when Tarell Ivory left to go to Colgate. And, you know, so I had been on a graduation booze cruise with some of the guys on the team for four months earlier, three months earlier, two months earlier. So, right. Managing that that change in relationships, which I think helped a lot at boarding school. You wear a lot of hats. And so it helped me a lot professionally that young to understand, OK, I'm a coach, I'm an advisor, I'm a teacher. Now I'm a
Cory Heitz (05:04)
Yeah.
Billy (05:10)
a therapist, I'm a clinician, right? And just that mix of things. I kind of got thrown into that right at Davidson too.
Cory Heitz (05:19)
Yeah. And I want to go back. don't want to gloss over that, that elite eight run, because that's what a lot of people want to talk about too, because you, you saw history, right? You saw Steph Curry at his prime in college. So what did you notice about him that he might've done differently than what you saw before that or what you've seen since?
Billy (05:22)
Yeah.
Yeah, twofold. I think number one on the court, obviously he makes a lot of shots, but his vision, him making plays and seeing it day in day out in practice, making plays that were, it was almost sort of preternatural. He could see something happening four or five, six moments before it happens.
just at a different level than some of our other guys. And, you know, we had Jason Richards on that team and he ended up making the Heat roster and then blew out his knee, but he led the nation in assist that year. And so seeing those two together, it was just like a different level of feel and vision and guard play that I had obviously ever seen before coming from a small public school in Westchester County. then the second piece was
when he wasn't making history, as you said, he was just one of us. He was just a guy that hung out and felt just as comfortable being in his apartment on a Friday night with some of the other guys on the team who we lived with, then sitting watching him while LeBron James in an NCAA tournament came, right? Court sides, like that duality to be able to be one of the best at what he did is...
at what he does and also be a really humble, general human being. I didn't notice that then for sure. I was 17 when I got to campus, right? But looking back on it now, it's pretty remarkable, right? I've been around some other high level people since then and he's still in that upper echelon of success to humanity ratio that I think is hard for some people when they hit that level of success.
Cory Heitz (07:17)
yeah. And then lastly on this, like, could the team, could the coaches, could you, could you tell the buzz growing throughout the season? Like, could you fit, cause Davidson's a small campus, small student body, outside of Charlotte. Like, could you feel the, did the campus know what was going on? Did you know you were in a moment at the time or only in hindsight? Did you, did you realize that?
Billy (07:36)
Going into winter break, think we were two and six, three and seven, something like that. Four point loss to Duke, right? A couple of possession loss to UNC. We were up 16 on UCLA out in Anaheim and ended up not holding on and winning that game. We had a shot to tie it at NC State where we ended up playing our first two NCAA games later that year.
and missed and went home two and something. We were ranked 25th in the nation and we lost at Western Michigan, right? The day after we got that national ranking. And so I think everybody in the program knew that we were close, right? That we had to do some things, clean some things up. I just remember Coach talking a lot about potential versus production as we started the conference season coming back from winter break, right? From holiday break.
And then I don't think the buzz outside of the program, outside of the locker room and coaches offices started until we started to run the table in the SoCon. And then all of a sudden you're five and O, you beat a pretty good UNCG team. You're eight and O, you beat a pretty good Charleston team. All of a sudden, whoa, we're 12 and O with just a few conference games left here. And that's where I think a lot of the buzz picked up.
nationally right cuz we had those close calls on the national stage earlier in the season and all the same you know you're were written up on you know where the front page of the college basketball page n espn dot com right at that point or something like that and then we we we got down at u n c g they had a really good big pal hinds and we played there and we were down maybe eighteen or something in the second half and came back and won that game and i think it in the bus there we were like
Okay, they're sort of the second team in the conference right now and we just figured it out in a really hostile space. That felt like a real click too. But then as we grew, certainly in the NCAA tournament, the buzz was ridiculous. And then coming out of that the next year, I just remember at the Citadel, old brick locker room and these sort of old fold-up windows at the top.
Cory Heitz (09:38)
Yeah.
Billy (09:49)
people throwing things through the window to try to get Steph to sign it. You know, we're 20 minutes after a game and sneaking them from locker room to bus and that sort of stuff. So yeah, it became pretty wild, but I think it was a little bit slower burn, like most things, right? an overnight success, but that person's been working for the last eight years at a standup, right, as an actor or whatever.
Cory Heitz (09:54)
Wow.
Billy (10:15)
it felt overnight but it it it it was a slumber
Cory Heitz (10:17)
Yeah. Now tell me about when you took over for a friend of the program, trail ivory to be the dobo. That's usually the first step for guys that want to get into college coaching. And to me looking at it from the outside, it looks like a logistical nightmare. Tell me what it's like to be a dobo and like once again, what, the biggest challenges were in doing that.
Billy (10:36)
Yeah, it's different now a little bit. My brother was dobo at Vanderbilt for the previous two seasons under Stackhouse before they got let go. Now, a lot of differences there. SEC versus at the time SoCon, right? But also 2022, 2023 versus 2012, 2013. So it's a little bit different now. I think there's a piece of it at the time that for me,
Cory Heitz (10:50)
Mm-hmm.
Billy (11:04)
I was able to do so many things in the program, but I wasn't on the court coaching. I wasn't out on the road recruiting, right? That's how the NCAA rules worked at that point in time. And so I consider myself really lucky when I got hired. I think I was the youngest on staff person in the nation, right, at the Division I level. And felt really blessed by that.
I started college at 17, got hired at 21. That was pretty remarkable. And it is a lot of logistics. It's a ton of logistics. we were really blessed. A woman, Susan Mercer, is the admin assistant for Davidson basketball and still a really good friend. she makes all the wheels run from when I first got there to present day.
And so Susan handled a lot of the dobo things sort of preemptively, the actual scheduling of hotels, working with charters or commercial airlines, all of that. And so I'd be in a lot of those processes, but Susan was the boss there. And then at Davidson, my role was really a lot more of sort of video coordinator and then travel, right, travel manager. And so it was a lot of the logistics of sort of admin assistant work, data entry, making sure recruiting,
Cory Heitz (12:08)
Yes.
Billy (12:14)
databases were up to date, calling for transcripts at Davidson. We weren't going to go see anyone, any high school student, if we didn't have a transcript for him. That was just how we operated, how we had to operate with our admissions process. And so was a lot more of, it wasn't so much, I think a lot of Dobos say, the travel piece is the headache. I was a little bit lucky because it was only a headache when we were actually doing it, because I was the point person, but the prep priests, Susan took care of.
In some ways I was really fortunate that I was watching hours and hours and hours of film. I was really learning the X's and O's, the on the court part, in a way that some DoVos don't get to do, right, depending on how their program is structured. So that was great. I think also that you have the piece where I didn't play in college, and so there is a little bit different layer of how you prove yourself.
Cory Heitz (12:42)
Hmm.
Billy (13:08)
I didn't have a career to sort of step back on and say, know the game X, Y, and Z. And so again, it was, how do you make yourself indispensable? What do you do that can take some pressure off of your assistants, off of your head coach, in whatever way so that I could prove, I could start to build a career that spoke for itself from a coaching standpoint because I didn't have the extra piece of planning. So, yeah.
Cory Heitz (13:09)
Yeah.
Love it. then tell me how you got to Millbrook then. What was the career progression on that?
Billy (13:39)
Yeah, I started to realize that hoops is awesome. College basketball is great. 364 days a year of basketball. And I started to realize that I maybe had some other interests. Mental health, now I'm a licensed clinical social worker, right? So I started to feel that itch. I didn't have the language at that point to know what I was interested in. I just felt maybe there was something else.
And then I think I started to think about at the same time, sort of what I saw my dad do and working with a little bit younger student athlete and thinking about how maybe I was a little bit more geared to work with teenagers than young adults. And then I have a type of arthritis and autoimmune illness and it hit during my second year at Davidson. really when it started to show up for me. And so I was going back and forth.
Cory Heitz (14:25)
Hmm.
Billy (14:30)
up to doctors at NYU a little bit. And so there's a life, there's a life piece of it as well that I just didn't know if college coaching was sustainable. started to just reach out to some people, look at prep schools. And our current head of school at Millbrook at the time, he was a director of admissions. His wife played volleyball at Davidson. And so just through some Davidson connections, Landry Kozmowski now at Swarthmore said, hey, I think this school is looking for someone.
They happen to need a Spanish teacher. was a Spanish major in college. It just sort of all clicked at the same time. So I happened to be up in New York seeing a doctor when I got the call from our now head of school. Hey, why don't you just come visit? We need a basketball coach. We're interested in really trying to build the program. Got up there and it was a little bit serendipitous that just a lot of things clicked within about a month.
And yeah, I've been there since and met my wife there. We started the same year at Millbrook, know, have raising a kid here now, a two year old little girl named Cora. And so I think going in, I was like, Dutchess County, New York, I'll stay for a year or two. I'll get my health stuff figured out and I'll figure out next steps and life, life has other plans. So yeah.
Cory Heitz (15:42)
That's funny. You know, I stopped by Davidson's campus, May of 2010 and I met Landry, met Matt. And, so I think we probably didn't cross paths then, but you know, it's funny is when I was in DC, I was riding a bike and hit an SUV with my face and, was bleeding on, bleeding on the ground, with a broken bike, waiting on an ambulance. And the person that came to help me, that was running at the time was a volleyball player from Davidson and,
Billy (15:47)
Yep. Yep.
Cory Heitz (16:08)
Landry knew her. can't remember her name, but like interesting that David, some volleyball players have both had helped us out there.
Billy (16:13)
Yeah, there you go. There's something to be said.
Something to be said.
Cory Heitz (16:18)
Yep. Yep. fun, small world. So, okay. You get to Millbrook and you do all what you just said. For people out there listening that don't know about your school, your program, why don't you give us kind of an overview just to catch us all up to speed.
Billy (16:30)
Absolutely,
absolutely. Millbrook's school started in 1931, so relatively younger compared to the other prep school coaches you have, right, on the podcast. 330 students, so on the smaller side, a lot of tri-state area draw, Northern New Jersey, Fairfield, Connecticut, New York City, Long Island, Westchester County, but also 19 countries represented in our student body this year, so.
some push some push for international diversity in some really intentional ways as well when i'm out at a boarding school conference or an independent school conference most people know us as the school with the zoo we have a an easy a credited as to on campus and our our director's gonna yell at me i don't know the exact number of endangered species but i i we've got some endangered species there they do a lot of
animal education, sustainability education. And so we're an interesting place because we're pretty mainstream boarding school, right? Academic, athletic approach, artistic approach. But we also have this pretty well built up environmental bent as well. Because of where we are, we're just under 800 acres.
of land with lot of sort of outdoor classroom space, especially in the sciences. And then we have a pretty robust community service program that works within our campus community. So every student in some way works at our zoo while they're there. Every student works with our recycling center while they're there, on our school farm while we're there. And so you might think like, how the heck does this connect with the basketball piece? But
I think it's really important that we've modeled our basketball program after the way that we approach our school community, which is really relational, right? We want to think about holistic humans and not just athletes. And then we want to challenge our guys to use a lot of different opportunities. Whatever that might look like, right? Our best kid this year probably is Jumana Treor.
zoo is from harlem never picked up a camera before he got to millbrook he's gonna go to brown next year be able to take photo classes at RISD I became a nationally award-winning photographer on top of a pretty darn good basketball player so he's sort of a poster boy of you know how we want to push guys to be a little bit more than just a basketball player
Cory Heitz (18:35)
Hmm.
Billy (18:49)
You know, we I'd say the only other thing I'd add is our size of school, right? We want to be really intentional about our size. So we grew in the 12 years I've been at Millbrook from about 280 to 330. And the goal there is to be of a size where we can compete and go beat, you know, some class A schools and class AA schools like we have the last few years. And a lot of things, right? Not just basketball, but also be small enough to really have an individualized approach to how we work with kids.
we've got a phrase known and needed. We want to really know students on campus and I do that on the other side of what I do with our student life and our wellness programming. But then we also want them to have real roles. We want them to have jobs on campus and live in a community where they do have some real skin in the game, if you will.
Cory Heitz (19:38)
Love it. Now they do have to do other things there, like you just mentioned, but you know, do they have to play different sports or different activities like during the fall or in the spring? Explain that to me.
Billy (19:42)
Yeah.
Yep, yep. So something every season.
Yeah, something every season. Our juniors and seniors in the fall. A lot of guys if they don't have a full sport will be in our strength and conditioning program and we've got a guy Henry Zesi who played hoops at Stone Hill who runs that so that it suits our basketball program really well. And then and then you know we understand that yeah, we have this mainstream boarding school model. You do something every season and.
Right? We also understand that part of building a life of meaning and consequence is leveraging your talents. And so, right, you might have to be out playing AAU in the spring. And so what are you going to do to help our community and still be able to do that? It might be, right, working with our athletic administration and doing things as far as running games and game management. might be, you know, being part of our track team and being at things when you can be, because you're a really good athlete. So, yeah, you have to do something every season.
and we find we want to find guys who fit with our kind of community values so embrace that while still understanding that they want to be really high-level basketball players
Cory Heitz (20:51)
Yeah. And you know, you're, you've got competition out there that you can go to prep school and start basketball day one. And that's all you got to do. Right. And I get your model makes a well-rounded kid and it's a lot more. And you've got kids going D one still out of that model. So when families ask you about like open gym time or how much time I can get into the gym or, know, this school is in a gym four hours a day. Like how do you answer that Billy?
Billy (20:56)
Yep. Yep.
Correct.
That's a good question and we get it obviously, right? Just where the market is. I think we talked about three things, right? One is we talk about the pedigree that we've been able to build and where we've sent guys within this model, right? And I think number two is honesty. This model isn't for everyone, right? If you're, not that I'm going to recruit against ourselves, but if you're a lottery pick, right? A Millbrook, a Berkshire, a Salisbury might not make sense for you.
right from a basketball standpoint. And then I think the third is really, and this is something I speak at schools, I speak with coaches, I'm gonna talk at the NEPSAC ADS conference next week, like a holistic approach to education, right? And understanding that you can not live your life by scarcity, you can look at it from an abundance standpoint, which is right, really engaging in all the things that we just talked about.
really engaging in the idea that, know what, yeah, I can be in the gym for four hours, but is that going to get me every goal I have in my life? Or is that simply just me trying to make sure that people know I'm working, right? But not necessarily working effectively and efficiently. And again, not for everyone, right? If my son was, you know, a potential top 25 pick, a potential big time college basketball player.
Cory Heitz (22:17)
Alright.
Billy (22:33)
I might be looking somewhere different, and I'll be really honest with families in that. I think that honesty and that authenticity has been a really good filter for our recruiting to be able to see who was going to come in and thrive in all the ways that we want our students to thrive, not just on the basketball court.
Cory Heitz (22:53)
Yeah. And look, people are going to be tired of hearing me say this, but I'm always a quality over quantity guy, right? You go 30 minutes, gain speed in a window you've got. You can get much better than going half speed for four hours. So, you can find time at institutions like yours that let you become more of a, you know, well rounded human being. And to me as an adult looking at this, like you can only be in the gym so many hours a day, right? If I got a chance to work in a zoo or, you know, learn other things about myself or like your player going to Brown, pick up a new hobby.
Billy (23:15)
X.
Cory Heitz (23:22)
like photography that could change my life as an adult that that holistic approach, this is very appealing, but you know, you got to find the right families, obviously that are open to that.
Billy (23:31)
Absolutely. And we
still have to balance it, right? Within the NEPSEC rules, we're still allowed to do skill workouts with three guys. And so we're doing that in the mornings. We're playing open gym. We have colleges coming through, right? I think if I don't say all of the components of that, can feel a little Pollyanna. But we're still doing all these things that are really valuable in a 2024 world with college basketball and people wanting to play college basketball.
Cory Heitz (23:40)
Yeah.
Billy (23:57)
Our argument is you can have that and still do a lot of other things that enrich your life and enrich your relationships as well.
Cory Heitz (24:05)
All right. One question I get from a lot of families is that, I want to go high academic D3 or go to the Ivies. Right. And you right now have a player getting ready to go to Brown, he's at Brown now. but does it matter though, what prep school you go to, if you want to go high academic, like let's say you're qualified to get in some of these institutions and a coach likes you. Does it matter if you're at a Millbrook or at a basketball academy or more of a, Nepstax school that is more basketball focused and not as high academic? Like what's your opinion on this, especially since you've also been at the college.
Billy (24:34)
Yeah,
it's a really good question. Outcome wise? No, I'll be really honest. Right? I think outcome wise, and I would say I would say the only caveat to that is if you're at a place where you're actually in accredited classes, right? There are some some real fly by night programs that maybe don't prep you the way academically you want, or you should be prepped. You need to be prepped from NCAA rules standpoint.
Cory Heitz (24:41)
Yeah. Yeah.
Billy (25:01)
right. So, so outcome, if I'm just looking at outcome, no, probably not. Right. I think though that to, you want to be successful once you're at that Ivy or at that NASCAR or at that UAA school. And so I, I, I again would, would, support, right. The idea that,
Cory Heitz (25:06)
Yeah. Okay.
Billy (25:22)
Experience matters, right? I probably the word I hear more than anything else from families who are just learning about what boarding school is is exposure, right? We don't get exposure where we are now. We don't get right. And yeah, sure, that might be true. I'm still still a believer that if you can play, you're going to figure out a way to be seen most of the time. 99 % of the time they the word I counter exposure with his experience, right? What do you want this?
full experience to be. And so you know that that that that means a lot of different things and I think you can get the experience you wanted. A lot of the different types of boarding schools, prep schools in the nation, not just in the NEP SAC. But if you're thinking right, OK, let's say that maybe you're not quite an Ivy League player and you're thinking about the Nescak. You're thinking about the UAE. You're thinking about those types of schools.
I think that you want to be able to show an admissions office and a coaching staff that you're going to be able to do more than tread water once you're there. And the best way to do that is to show a timeline of growth and progression, both basketball wise, both on your and on your transcripts, but also just in your community, what else you're doing. And so, you know, that's again, maybe a little Pollyanna, but that's that's
what I believe it's from the share.
Cory Heitz (26:42)
Yeah. We just had a AAA coach on, Nepsec AAA coach, you know, gushing about how they play, you know, college rules, right? And you guys are at the B class, you know, and you play a different system. You know, when families ask, you know, does it matter what class of Nepsec I play in? What's your answer to that?
Billy (27:00)
Yeah, I think we're in the same space as we were for the last couple questions, AAA is its own beast. so you want to make sure, no matter where you're looking, right, you want to make sure that you're actually going to play at that level, that you're actually going to get minutes, that you're going to have a meaningful role in whatever school you're deciding to go to. And the reality is for some kids, that means AAA is not the right fit, right?
Cory Heitz (27:08)
Yeah.
Billy (27:25)
Now I will say the college rule piece. I'm our coaches association president for A, B and C. I've put forth a proposal each of the last three years around shifting the NCAA rules, shifting the longer games, right? I think that is something that needs to be looked at in the NEPSEC and we need to continue to understand how that can help our college bound athletes.
Cory Heitz (27:48)
Sorry to interrupt, but what's the pushback on that, Billy?
Billy (27:51)
Consistency with other sports, right? I think the fear of moving moving too far in a direction that is maybe a little bit less educational, a little bit more, you know, sort of what we see in the NCA right now. You know, I think also you're you have a.
The NEPSAC is, if we think of it as a bucket, it's a bucket full of apples, oranges, wrenches, elephants, right? Every school is really different. And so it is a really hard challenge for the NEPSAC to be able to come up with policies and procedures that fit, right, a small day school outside of Portland, Maine, and a boarding school in Dutchess County, right, and a ski academy in New Hampshire, right, and everything in between.
Cory Heitz (28:16)
yeah. Yes.
Billy (28:37)
And so there are some practical challenges there, I think are real and that we've talked about. And the reality is we have to put a lot of different hats on when we have these conversations, right? The coaches hat, the athletic directors hat, the educators hat, the parents hat, the college coaches hat. And so being able to be dialectical and sort of see all of those different perspectives is a harder task than I think if we were just talking and BSing, right? It would be like, yeah, why aren't we at 40 minutes?
But there are some other components.
Cory Heitz (29:06)
Right.
Okay. you got a 10th grader looking to come to Millbrook and they don't know much about reclassifying. They don't understand it. So what's your theory when talking to families about doing a reclass 10th grade year or doing 11th, 12th and potential post-grad? Like, how do you answer that question for them? Because it comes up so often. It's a foreign concept of families who've never heard of this model before. So explain me how you talk to them.
Billy (29:31)
That's.
Yep, so we use a few different frameworks. I think the first is that 10th 11th 12 reclass 10th 11th 12th or 1112 post grad for us at Millbrook. That's semantics, right? The reality is that you're doing three years is in our community and our post grads here at Millbrook are part of our senior class. So if you want to come do three years at Millbrook.
after you've done two years of high school, you're gonna be in the sophomore class, right? So that we finished the way that our academic structure works, our residential life structure works. We don't have a post-grad only program in any way here at Millbrook, but we do have some post-grads on campus for various sports and some non-athletic reasons year to year. The better, I think the more rich conversation is actually around.
what the extra year does for a child and does for a family. And I use the analogy of a plane and a runway, right? The child is a plane and the runway is how much time you have until graduation, right? And that NCA eligibility clock ticks. And we use this analogy sort of in every domain of a teenager's life, athletically, academically, emotionally, socially.
Right just habit preparation executive function all of these things that make up being a successful human being Right. It's great. The obvious basketball ones are you look pretty different as an 18 year old than a 17 year old physically You have another year of playing at a high level Right. You're probably playing against other college-bound players far more in a prep school setting than you do in whatever your home setting is right barring a few really specific areas of the country
right. But I think all the other pieces are also really important. So for instance, if you just took algebra two as a sophomore at your old school, you're not going to take algebra to your 10th grade year, right. What we would call a fourth form year at Millbrook. you're going to bump into a pre-cal class, which means you're probably going to get one level deeper in your high school studies and be that much more prepared if you want to study math in college. Right. And we could.
We could apply that to any of the, any humanity class, any science class, any language class, any subject. And then I think the other pieces and our head of school doesn't love when I use this phrase, but diet college, right? There's a component that you are gonna be able to prep a little bit more, right? In a real way for living away from home, for being in a college atmosphere, for living in a dormitory.
Cory Heitz (32:03)
next
Billy (32:06)
for understanding, right? We're scaffolded in a lot of ways. Kids have study hall every evening, but they're still making choices day in and day out of what they want to prioritize and what they want to be doing at given times during the day. I went to college at 17. I had none of those skills, right? I just didn't, right? And that's no knock on my parents or the school I went to. Just wasn't part of what I was thinking and what we were thinking in that point of time.
Cory Heitz (32:18)
Yeah.
Billy (32:36)
You know, we do alumni studies every four years or so. And the three skills that come back that alumni say they were super well prepared for, writing, that's part of just what our curriculum is in all of our humanities classes. Time management, they feel like they're getting things done more effectively, more efficiently than their classmates, maybe who weren't at boarding school, especially early on.
Cory Heitz (32:52)
them.
Billy (32:59)
And then the third one's a really interesting one. It really has to do with understanding how to engage with other people in the community. I think for a lot of kids who maybe go right from their day school or their public school to college, there's an adjustment of just, what are these six hours ahead of me where I don't have anything scheduled? Whoa, what does it mean to be in a dorm?
and like to be a good community member in that space, right? And so that learning curve is a little bit steeper. That might be what you're doing while you're trying to figure out what your Psych 101 lecture is about. For our kids, I think they come in with some of those skills already, so now they can dive a little bit more deeply.
Cory Heitz (33:37)
Yeah. The phrase I usually hit the ground running both on the court and in the classroom. Yeah. Okay. Let's talk about post-grad. So say I come to Millbrook for one year as a post-grad, where are the academic options or what, does their schedule look like?
Billy (33:40)
Totally. Totally.
Yep, so their their academic options are the same as any other student who is a senior, right? So socially residential life, they're going to live in a dorm with sophomores, juniors, seniors, post grads. They're going to be in senior classes and all of our senior humanities classes are elective seminar based anyway, right? So they're getting to pick what they want to take from a humanities standpoint.
math, science, language, art, they're continuing on that runway, right? So the runway is just a little bit longer. They can go a little bit deeper. A little bit of this depends on what the college prospect looks like, right? If you're a surefire scholarship level kid, it might be a little bit less important to show a well-rounded academic schedule, right? You might say, I think I want to go into journalism, so I'm going to triple up. I'm going to do two Englishes and a history seminar.
Or you might say, think I'm gonna be pre-med, so I wanna take an extra science, right? So there's a little bit more wiggle room that way. We had a kid way back, Danny Mitchell, five on his AP Latin, five on an AB calc, right? So he took a couple classes, learned how to play guitar, picked up Spanish, right? So he looked at it a little bit differently because he really had a good set up already on his transcripts. And he knew he was gonna be an academic D3 basketball player, right? So he wanted to show
admissions offices, where else he could grow, what else he could do. Athletically, it's your one year with us. And so I think the biggest piece, right, a lot of folks come in and say, when we get a prep school, then we'll get exposure, then we'll get XYZ. But actually, the most important part is the spring and summer before you step on campus to be a post-grad with us. We want to have you already connected through our relationships with the colleges.
who you want to go play for. And we want that, we want you to be stepping onto campus in September with, you know, your three to eight schools who we're really targeting in September and October. Right? If you step on campus at any prep school in the fall of your post-grad year and haven't done some of that work, haven't really used the spring and summer before your post-grad year, I think you're doing yourself a disservice. And so...
that's a big piece from the basketball side of what post-grad gets you. It gets you that extra time in the AAU season, right, on the circuit, and also that extra Rolodex of contacts that you're gonna work through with us at Millbrook or wherever you're going as a post-grad.
Cory Heitz (36:16)
I love this. This is what I want to get into next, Billy. Let's say a kid commits to you in March, right? After he gets his acceptance letter. What is that next conversation you have with the family about recruiting, about elite camps, AAU? Walk me through that conversation.
Billy (36:32)
Yep. Well, first we're going to say that we're incredibly excited because we probably built a pretty deep relationship with that family already, right? Part of big part of our recruiting process is getting to know each other and building a collaborative relationship. So they say they're coming. Early summer, late spring, they'll start to do some work with our academic office with their counseling, college counseling office, right? Those spaces.
But from a basketball component, we were educators, so we're thinking backward design. What level do you want to get to? We've already talked about whether we think that's the accurate level or not based on our appraisal as coaches, right? So we front loaded all of that conversation. So typically for us in April, March, April, the conversation is, right.
We think you're an Ivy League player, you think you're an Ivy League player. Here's what AAU, right? Do you have an AAU program? If so, is that hitting with the goals? Does that mesh with what your goals are? Are they playing at the events that make sense for what your level is? Right? And I'll use the kids, Zumana, who's a senior this year going to Brown, right? And Chase Garcia, who committed to NYU earlier this fall.
right both neither post-grads both have been with us but if they were post-grads coming in right their paths would fear very quickly right chases in the exact right place play with riverside hawks playing with that cool book playing right at those types of events that were going to draw a lot of academic t three play players coaches right and then we picked the three to five elite camps that we thought he needed to be at two that's a schedule for the spring summer
boom, we had our list of 20 schools or so that I was blasting out information, video, making calls on. Zumana, very different. You're a scholarship level guy. We know you're scholarship level guy. We want to leverage that for academics. So of course we're going to target the Davidsons of the world, the Patriot League schools, the Ivy League schools, Rice, those types of schools. And you play with PSA. And so that's a great space. You're actually going to play a different role with them on the EYBL circuit.
which is going to be a little bit more similar to your first year or two, wherever you end up in college, than his time with us here at Millbrook is, right? For us, he's our guy. We're running stuff through him, right? We're really making sure that he's getting the touches he needs. In PSA, he's the second forward off the bench, and he has to play little bit different role. And that, being able to hit both of those, all of those components, is really important.
you know i think that's a big piece and and then the last piece i think is you know individually we have to have a little bit of a conversation with the boy and the family on just the reality of the market in twenty twenty four and we think you're this but we need to build a structure that gives you a couple of levels of opportunity here so if you think i read a book last year isaac freeman he i thought he was in s kak you a player
he's not a tough so we end up being right but we were having the conversation of sort of what's the level right below that and what schools are we targeting and where we reach it right where we can reach out to and make sure that you're playing in front of a few of those ivy league type coaches patriot league type coaches maybe a couple any ten coaches too and so it's if we're doing it right we're doing it pretty pretty individualized but we're we're being really warm in our honesty
warm in our bluntness of where the world is and where we think that kid's fixing.
Cory Heitz (39:59)
I love this. That's so detailed. know, you have one team, you've probably got to do this for what? Three to five players a year. So it's manageable and, you can really spend a lot of bandwidth doing this because this is your ultimate thing you got to do Billy. Obviously all the benefits you give them going to Millbrook, but people are coming here and paying money also to get to that next level. And I love how you shared your philosophy on that.
Billy (40:17)
Absolutely.
Absolutely. And I would add that I think, right, if I was coaching a college team, our Xs and Os would be a little bit different, but it's the same way I view what we do on the court, right? Millbrook's not gonna fire me for losing basketball games. Millbrook is gonna be upset with me if we're not placing kids, bringing in the right kids for our community, right? And so we got to backward design what we do Xs and Os wise a little bit too. So we focus a ton on skill development.
Cory Heitz (40:26)
Yes
Billy (40:45)
We focus a ton on learning how to think the game. We have focused a ton on the educational piece of watching film, understanding what that looks like at the college level. We don't run a ton of sets, because that's, don't need to prove how hard I am. We need to create basketball players who can go play in a ball screen motion or a flex or dribble drive and can play a pressing style or a zone style. Because we don't know where they're going to end up, collegiately especially.
you know, today's game. So, yeah, I think it fits a few moments.
Cory Heitz (41:15)
Love it.
What do you think is the future of prep school basketball? How's it looking in your eyes?
Billy (41:20)
I have a feeling we're going to continue to see a little bit of the split we've talked about right from just the idea of sort of that basketball central model and then and then that mainstream sort of boarding school prep school model that has high level basketball and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. think some some.
you know some folks who are are maybe a little bit more historical in their relationship with prep school basketball decry that a little bit but i think that were you know the more that we see our world progress the more that we were trying to balance individual needs and collective needs and the way to do that i think is to offer people different options so that they can be intentional right and so
I go back to what I said a few minutes ago, right? I think it's really good that the kid who's a Power Five Conference kid can go and try to change their life and their family's life by being on the court X amount of time and really jiving into that skill that they can leverage to make their lives better. Just like I think it's really, really good that a Hotchkiss or a Salisbury or a Berkshire or Millbrook exists and you can go learn how to be a part of a community if you're a kid for whom basketball is going to end sooner than later.
Right. And that still might be for tremendous years of college basketball. But then you're 25 and you got to figure out what else you do with your life. And so I think both of those settings are really useful. And I don't worry so much if that split happens because I think, you know, the market exists for both of those types of educational institutions.
Cory Heitz (42:57)
Yeah. Families have options. get different options, different personalities. So yeah, I agree with you on that. how does being a social worker help you in your coaching or in your day job?
Billy (43:05)
you
Yeah, it's it's so I do a couple of different day jobs. I I work in our counseling office at the school, so I work with our students, our families, our teachers or in our faculty. I run all of our social, emotional and wellness programming on campus and I oversee a lot of that along with our Dean of Student Wellness and Engagement.
I'm not on campus today. I'm down at a private practice office that I use. I see some private practice clients day and a half a week and obviously coach. And I would say as I was going through my MSW, I was getting my license. So much of that work is introspective and understanding how you're internally organized and how you're internally working that I think has made me a way better coach. We've, we've, I've.
mellowed quite a bit some people would say i think really what it is is i'm just using my energy in better ways more efficient ways not a big yellow screamer and i'm going to talk to folks and i really try to understand why they're making the decisions they're making it with that i've also become maybe a little bit more maybe a little less dictatorial as a head coach a little bit more you know you're towards a nice democratic republic where
our kids have some say in what we do and obviously the adults have to make decisions on some things but ownership is really important, agency in your life is really important and that's sort of a central part of social work. So we've applied that a little bit more. And I think we use our time a little bit differently. We'll, know, six, eight years ago coming out of Davidson, we would come back from Thanksgiving break and we would just run our kids into the ground in a two and a half day mini camp, right? Three and a half days.
That sort of thing. We'll come back to this Thanksgiving break, just like we had the last five or six. And we'll have a shoot around just to get the rest off that first night. But then the next 15 hours or so is classroom work. We teach each other about our family systems. We teach each other about the values that we've learned from our families. We try to co-create our own values for this team's iteration based on those things that we're teaching each other. And that ability to sort of really have guys come together
Last year we had six different religions on a team. had five different racial identities on the team. We had kids from four countries. This year we've got kids from five countries. That is an important part of educating them. But I also, and this is what I'm gonna present on to NEPSEC ADs next week, is I also think it makes us better as a basketball team. We win more games when we're more cohesive. And so that's really the shifts that have happened from a...
coaching philosophy standpoint because of my work, know, clinically and with social work.
Cory Heitz (45:40)
And post COVID, how are the kids doing these days? Are they doing better than the kids that were in high school during COVID? Like what's the mental state on a whole?
Billy (45:49)
Yeah, our senior class last year that just graduated in May, right? They were freshmen during the lockdown year, and so I think there's there's a there's a gradation of that a little bit, right? From maybe kids who were seniors and lost their graduation because of COVID down to this last year. I think that. We we were really in it a couple years prior to coming out of the lockdown.
counseling space work was intense and frequent and pretty high-scaled. We're in little bit better place now. I think there's a little bit more understanding from parents and from adults of what our teenagers are going through, what our adolescents are going through. And because of that, I think more schools are pivoting towards trying to be prophylactic about that and preventative about that and not...
sort of reactive to that, certainly we are at Melbrook. But, you know, I mostly see adolescents in my private practice. I obviously work with adolescents at school and things are real. know, kids are feeling the uncertainty of the future of the world. Kids are, right, a little bit more educated, a little bit more open to things that maybe I wasn't thinking about when I was a 15, 16 year old.
Right? More access to maladaptive coping skills like vapes and weed and porn and some of those things that are really damaging. And so yeah, there's a lot of work to be done.
Cory Heitz (47:14)
Yeah, interesting stuff. Last question. What's it take to be a guard at the D1 level?
Billy (47:18)
That's a great question. I'll start with where we started with Steph, vision. I think at this, in this day and age, you have to be able to create in a lot of different ways, and I don't just mean with the ball in your hands. And so I know a thing that I certainly look for is how do guys see, how do they see...
Cory Heitz (47:24)
Hmm.
Billy (47:40)
both in the moment, how do they see what their teammates need, how do they see what's about to happen on the court. And so I think vision's number one. Obviously there are those sort of less intangible skills like size and athleticism and all of that. But I think if we're talking about somebody being a D1 guard, they probably have those things already. And so I think you've got to do one thing really, really well.
You better be a kid who can just stroke it, or you better be a kid who really gets you into stuff. And then if you have that one really, really good thing and vision, I think you got a good career ahead of you if you choose the right fit, you know, school-wise, program-wise.
Cory Heitz (48:18)
Love it. Couple of quick hitters for you. Who's the best player you've coached against at the prep school level?
Billy (48:23)
It's a really good one. Yeah, mean, Jermaine Samuels was really darn good. Really, really darn good. And we played them a lot just in tournaments and things. Just as a high schooler, he could do a lot of things that most high schoolers can't.
Cory Heitz (48:24)
some 12 years of players to go through.
Mm.
Yeah, what's your favorite movie?
Billy (48:42)
of one Harry Monsaleg.
Cory Heitz (48:43)
Okay, and what are your hobbies when you got some free time?
Billy (48:46)
I
do a lot of yoga. During COVID, we learned how to play piano a little bit, so I'm not great, but I'll tool around there. Right now, most of my time, free time, is spent playing with our two and a half year old, Cora. That's the big one. Coloring. A lot of coloring,
Cory Heitz (49:04)
Yep. there?
Yeah. yeah. My six and three year old love coloring still. So I get it. Is there anything you want to mention before we go that we didn't touch base on?
Billy (49:14)
no i i really appreciate you have me on Cory i think it's funny because the light of the if you're in this space sit with five college coaches they'll talk about really no one boarding school but one half of one percent of american teenagers end up going to a boarding school for for for their high school experience and so on it's it's still a pretty unique in small environment ecosystem and so
you having some of us not talking about this, think is a way to continue to grow that, is fantastic. So appreciate you having me.
Cory Heitz (49:48)
Yeah, thanks so much. And then we will put in the show notes where people can find you. If you've got any interest in Millbrook, I will put your email up there, your social media, and feel free to reach out to Billy. Billy, thanks so much coming on the podcast.
Billy (49:57)
Thanks,
Corey. Be well.
Cory Heitz (50:00)
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