Batastini eager to take girls’ hoop coaching reins at MSC
• Beneath the relentless challenge of achieving success that drives a coach regardless of the sport, the importance of family was one of the propelling forces behind Christina Batastini’s decision to become the new girls’ basketball head coach at Mount St. Charles.
“I want to be in position where I’m at a great school which she could attend and I could hopefully coach her. Most of my decisions these days revolve around her,” said Batastini, speaking about daughter Ryanne, presently a fourth grader who has already been bitten
by the basketball bug. “I couldn’t pass this up. I think the potential at Mount is unreal.”
It’s expected that young Ryanne will enroll at MSC once she reaches sixth grade. By the time the nine-yearold officially becomes part of the high school’s graduating Class of 2027, the expectation is that the girls’ varsity hoop program transforms into a yearin, year-out contender.
When Batastini, on the shortlist of the most highly decorated basketball players to hail from Rhode Island, took over the Lincoln School program a decade ago, she inherited a Lynx operation that hadn’t won a game in four years. Three years later, Lincoln School began a run of four straight Southeastern New England championships.
The Mount program that Batastini is taking over isn’t close to the dire straits she faced at Lincoln School. The Mounties participated in the 16team open state tournament as recently as 2016 and qualified for the Division II playoffs in each of the past two seasons after ruling the D-III ranks prior to moving up.
“They’ve already built something special. I just want to add to it,” said Batastini, a former hoop standout at Classical whose talent carried her to great heights in college (she was instrumental in Stanford reaching the 1997 Women’s Final Four) and overseas with stops in Italy, Switzerland, Norway, and Sweden.
When Batastini sat down with Mount president Alan Tenreiro and athletic director Ray Leveille, who stepped down as the girls’ basketball boss in compliance with his expanded duties, she expressed her vision of cultivating the northern part of the state with the reach expanding into Massachusetts.
“The people at Mount are amazing. They have a vision,” said Batastini. “Sometimes I scare people with my ideas, but they were right there with me. In fact, some of their ideas were even more than what I thought.
“I think it’s going to be a tremendous option for a lot of young women who want to play basketball. I’m pumped,” she added.
Batastini officially accepted the Mount position with roughly three weeks to go before the first day of tryouts. She does plan to meet with the scheduled returnees but will reserve judgment until she sees them on the court.
“I don’t know anything about them and I don’t want to. That may sound weird, but I want to give them all a chance,” said Batastini.
In a way that could be described as unearthing the next diamond in the rough, aka the next Christina Batastini, the Providence native a few years ago started the Batastini School of Basketball. Instruction is offered at the individual and group level with Batastini planning to run some of her camps out of Mount in addition to several of the current locations at Hope High School and East Greenwich.
• Wearing an ALCS championship hat, PawSox hitting coach Rich Gedman last Wednesday morning looked the part of a deserved champion as he waited to board a duck boat that would take him through the streets of Boston. Gedman was with the Red Sox throughout the team’s October march to an eventual World Series.
The TV cameras caught Gedman on the field after Boston’s title-clinching win in Los Angeles. He said he was making sure the appropriate people received their World Series locker room hats before he got the chance to put one on.
“When you go through the playoffs like they did, it’s incredible. A lot of homegrown guys helped to achieve this … a lot of wonderful pieces,” said Gedman, a nod to his days when he worked with Mookie Betts and Xander Bogaerts in the minors. “I was merely a passenger on this great ride.”
Asked if finally being a part of a champagne celebration worthy of a title winner helped to somewhat ease the sting of being part of the oh-soclose Red Sox of 1986, Gedman said, “I’m just very grateful to still have an opportunity to be around the game.”
• “I feel like I’ve been here for three days. It’s been so fast,” said Ryan Brasier, the Red Sox reliever who made Red Sox president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski look good when it came to Boston not trading for a reliever.
Brasier was referencing his own situation that saw him sitting at home when spring training began before posting All-Star numbers as Pawtucket’s closer that elevated his chance to get back to the majors.
“I think that’s one of the big reasons why we won,” said Brasier about being accepted with open arms the moment he walked into the Red Sox clubhouse. “There were never people distancing themselves from everyone else. It was a collective group.”
• No question about a piece of this Red Sox World Series championship belonging to former PawSox manager Kevin Boles, whose guiding hand when it came to player development should be recognized. Of the 25 players on Boston’s World Series roster, an eye-popping 18 played for him in Pawtucket.
“Kevin Boles deserves a lot of credit for the outstanding job he did,” said PawSox vice chairman Mike Tamburro.
• With college basketball season afoot, Bryant and Boston College are welcoming new voices to the radio fold.
Joining the Bulldogs’ broadcasts on WOON will be former Bryant player and assistant coach Chris Burns, who’ll serve as the color analyst. At BC, current PawSox TV/radio broadcaster Josh Maurer is taking over the play-by-play duties for the Eagles after holding a similar position at UMass.
• With Halloween come and gone, just wondering how many youngsters went with a Scary Terry Rozier costume.