The Newman girls basketball team was thrown together late last summer and immediately placed in NEPSAC Class AA. For a tumultuous first-year test run, the Cardinals were largely successful, making the Class AA playoffs as a No. 4 seed and flirting with our NEPSAC Top 10 rankings.
Now, Newman seeks the next level. The Cardinals are moving up to Class AAA next winter. And in new head coach Katie Kolinski, they've added stability and proven college experience.
"Just from what I've seen, I think it's really impressive how quickly they've built this thing," Kolinski said. "And for me, I think it can become a national powerhouse, and that's my expectation."
Kolinski comes to Boston from Le Moyne, where she spent the last two years as an assistant coach. She was previously an assistant at Lafayette, the director of basketball operations at Buffalo and a graduate assistant on the Syracuse men's team. Kolinski started at Syracuse as a student manager in 2011 and worked her way to the grad assistant role in 2016, becoming the first woman on the bench of the men's team in Syracuse history.
"It really meant something to me to be on the bench of a men's team at such a high level," Kolinski said. "We went to Sweet Sixteens and Final Fours, and I would have people come up to me in the Syracuse area that would just say, 'Your story is inspiring. You're inspiring the next generation.' And that meant something to me."
Under Jim Boeheim, Kolinski learned the importance of consistency in an approach to coaching throughout a long season.
"He kept practices very simple. We ran pretty much the same practice every day," she said. "Sometimes we would go through series where we might go on a five game losing streak in the season, and he never wavered in how he treated the players and how he acted on the day-to-day. Every day he was ready to show up and work."
Kolinski knows NEPSAC well because she recruited in the area as a college assistant. She gives the same sales pitch for Newman that boys basketball "architect" John Carroll and head coach Jackson Johnson offer: high-level basketball and a unique prep school experience in downtown Boston. Kolinski plans to lean on Carroll and Johnson, who just led the Newman boys to a Class AAA championship.
"I see John Carroll as someone that is a mentor that can help me grow in this position," she said. "I think that's super important. And even Jackson being here too as the men's coach — I think we're gonna be collabing a lot, and I'm excited to learn from them, because they win championships and they've been doing it at this level for so long."
The Warners, N.Y., native has been with Newman for less than two weeks and already logged her first meaningful action on the sidelines at the NEPSAC Girls Scholastic Showcase. Kolinski has been floored by how hard the Cardinals practice and how quickly they've learned on the fly.
"I didn't want to throw too much at them in three days because I wanted them to play free, but I also didn't want it to look like chaos either if you don't have anything in," she said. "So I put in about three sets. I put in three secondary plays out of our transition, and I put in one BLOB (play), and then we ran defensive concepts. And they literally picked up on everything in the three days. It was monumental how quickly they picked up on what we were doing in transition (and) what we were doing in the half court."
Newman certainly has talent. Elite 2027 prospect Gabby Middleton and 2026 transfer Morgan Jenkins headline the group. Fellow 2026 forward Ava Egan just committed to Merrimack. The Welburn twins, Shannon and Shea, help lead the guard depth, and Newman boasts several intriguing players in the 2028 class. One opposing NEPSAC star, when asked at the Scholastic Showcase which players and teams could break out next winter, immediately answered Newman.
For Kolinski, leveling up the Cardinals means providing baseline standards of excellence.
"The culture is going to be everything," she said. "Being on time for things, how we practice, how hard we play — as simple as, we're going to get water (and) we're running off the court. We change drills, we're running to the next drill. We're all in it together. ... And then you get to a point where the coach doesn't have to do as much of that, and then it's a player-led team. So I want to get it to where the players are creating the standards every single day for each other."
