As a head coach, Jay Tilton operates in a world of what-ifs on the basketball court. Game situations, potential scenarios and big-picture possibilities flooded his mind constantly. But those what-ifs also extended beyond the gym, specifically when it came to his shelf life roaming the sidelines.
“That’s always in the back of your mind, the alternatives and how long you want to do it,” the longtime Phillips Exeter coach said.
Over the last handful of years, Tilton had more of those thoughts. And this winter, he made the difficult decision to hang up his clipboard. Tilton stepped down as Exeter’s head coach following this past season, concluding one of the most successful coaching runs in New England prep school history after he guided the Big Red to a 210-92 record and five Class A championships over 16 seasons.
“It’s been a really good ride for me,” Tilton said.
Harry Rafferty, who served as an assistant coach for Tilton this season, has taken over as Exeter’s new head coach. Rafferty, a 2013 graduate of Exeter, was a key member of the program’s first Class A title in 2013 before going on to play at Wesleyan and then spending five seasons on the coaching staff for the Michigan women’s basketball team.
Tilton surveyed the quickly changing basketball landscape over the last few years, and at the same time, his personal priorities made a shift. It made this season the right time to step away.
“It’s never an easy decision,” Tilton said. “My wife Darcy and my son Cameron who’s 10, they’ve sacrificed an awful lot for me to be able to do this in terms of just their time and support of me. It’s not just the Saturdays I’m gone, it’s the Sundays when I wear it. I’m at home, I’m still wearing it (emotionally). It’s not just the in-season, it’s the out-of-the-season stuff where I’m spending the amount of time that is required to do it the right way. It’s year-round. … I’ve been doing that for a long time, and they’ve sacrificed a lot. My son’s at a place where he’s engaged in sports now and teams and other activities. I miss those and it’s a bummer for me to miss that kind of stuff. It’s tugging at me, I’m thinking about it. Not because of guilt, but because I want to be there. …
“Professionally, it’s exhausting,” he added. “Like I tell my guys, with success comes increased responsibility and there’s just a lot, the work continues and grows and every coach has it, it’s different in their own ways, but it’s been a lot. I also feel the changes that are happening in the culture of college basketball, that trickle-down effect, is causing even more work. I felt as though I had a pretty good finger on the pulse of how to do it for so long, and there’s been so many changes in the last three years that it’s almost like you have to re-learn everything.”
It helped that Rafferty was waiting in the wings. For Tilton, it was important to leave the program with someone who would keep it progressing forward, and when Rafferty joined his staff this season, he realized he had the ideal individual to hand the keys to.
“If I could pick one, he’d be it,” Tilton said. “Harry’s got such a great presence as a younger coach, he knows the high level of recruitment, how NIL works and all that from coaching at Michigan. He was such a tremendous captain on our first championship team here. He was the glue of that group of some really terrific players with notoriety. I always say he was kind of the adult in the room, he kept everyone stabilized and he’s always had a great read on people. He’s the perfect fit to take this over and he’s also a conduit to our network. …
“Having someone who’s connected to the past but can also now make those connections for the future, that’s the most important thing for me (with) the network of people we’ve been able to build through the program. I really did not want to see that change. Having him fall in my lap, I feel so comfortable knowing it’s going to keep going forward in a really good way.”
Tilton was proud of his journey with Exeter basketball. He joined the program as an assistant coach under longtime head coach Malcolm Wesselink in 2002 after a stint as an assistant coach with Dartmouth College.
NEPSAC looked a bit different back then. Class AAA and AA didn’t exist like they do now, and Class A was made up of powerhouses like Brewster, New Hampton, Worcester Academy, Winchendon and MCI. And as those teams got stronger, the landscape started shifting. Some programs, like Phillips Andover and Choate, dropped down to Class B rather than getting involved in an arms race with better programs. But Tilton – who took over as the head coach in 2009 – was steadfast in staying in Class A. They knew it would be difficult to compete against the best, but Tilton viewed a unique opportunity in front of him.
“I had to battle for it,” Tilton said of staying in Class A. “I saw it as an opportunity. Let’s be different. Let’s stay in A with these cohort of powerhouses and be the one team that’s completely different in terms of who we are academically and what our expectations are. We weren’t going to do the wacky schedule those guys were doing, but we had the right to stay in it. I saw it as a way to help build the program because we’d be the only school like this academically that would fight in that conference. …
“My goal was to make sure that every high-academic kid who really wanted to play high-level basketball would have to look at Exeter. I looked at that as a vehicle for me to try to start attracting those types of players. They let me do it at the risk of getting your brains beat in. We did for a little while, but we were able to compete really hard with those teams, we just couldn’t get the depth and stop them.”
Eventually, those powerhouses branched away from Class A as the landscape continued to change. Tilton and Exeter, of course, stayed in Class A and built a machine within the conference. The Big Red won five championships (2013, 2014, 2017, 2019 and 2024), advanced to the championship game seven times – including this season – and made the playoffs in every year under Tilton. He coached greats from Duncan Robinson to Ryder Frost to help him lead one of the most consistent programs in New England.
“It didn’t happen overnight,” Tilton said. “I think we’re the only team since the reshuffling that’s made the tournament every year. That’s something I think is pretty cool because it’s hard to do and I think sustainability is tough. That’s one thing we’ve always been able to hang our hat on, we’ve been competitive.”
Tilton will still be around the basketball program. He accepted a position in Exeter’s advancement office, which is giving him some long-awaited flexibility in his life. But he will certainly miss roaming the sidelines at Love Gymnasium. He’ll cherish the moments with his coaching staff, which challenged each other on a daily basis to help build the program. He’ll mostly miss the locker rooms and the special moments with his team. But he’s walking away fulfilled.
“To have the opportunity and the good fortune to be in a locker room with a bunch of guys who have put everything into a common goal, whether it’s game to game or the season, to experience that growth with them through success and failure is just something I’m very fortunate to say that I’ve had the opportunity to do that as many times as I’ve had,” Tilton said. “A lot of people never get that chance. It’s an indescribable feeling to be able to do that with a group of young men. …
“You develop close bonds and mental toughness and learn how to navigate life lessons through it. It's been so rewarding to be able to do that so many times.”
