By Christopher Tremblay

Last winter, the Norwood boys basketball team put forth an impressive season earning themselves a seven seed in the Division 2 State Tournament. Once in the post-season, the Mustangs took out Fitchburg 68-42, and Salem 78-63, as expected, and then upset Mansfield, the number two seed, 57-51, and Burlington, the three seed, 69-66 in overtime. Unfortunately, Norwood couldn’t complete the trifecta and fell to the number one seed Malden Catholic in the State Championship game.

This incredible season was under the guidance of coach Kristen McDonnell, who has since moved over to coach the Norwood girls team, while Chris Fraioli will be the new leader for the boy Mustangs on the sidelines.

Fraioli is coming to Norwood with 20 years of experience at Dedham High School where he was the freshman coach for a year, the junior varsity for nine years, and followed that up with 10 years as the Marauders varsity coach. Under his varsity tenure, his teams qualified for nine tournaments, won two league titles, had a 1000-point scorer and had a couple of his athletes continue their basketball careers on the collegiate level. Upon leaving Dedham, he is the all-time winningest boys coach.

After deciding it was time for a change Fraioli stepped down from his coaching position at Dedham High School in June and headed over to Norwood. However, two months later Norwood girls basketball Coach Amy Quinn departed allowing McDonnell to move over from coaching the Mustang boys basketball team to the girls squad. With McDonnell’s transition to taking over the girls team she left the boys coaching position open. 

“I had spent the last 24 years, including being a graduate of Dedham High School, there [DHS] and just felt that it was a time for me to move on,” Fraioli said. “The administration and the kids there were great, but I thought that it was time for a new voice. I didn’t plan on coaching right away, but the Norwood job opened up by the luck of the draw and being a Norwood resident it was a no brainer that I throw my hat int the ring.”

Having been in the Bay State Conference and the Tri-Valley League with Norwood, Fraioli was familiar with the Mustangs from the outside so he reached out to see if he would be a good fit for the program and everyone he talked to agreed.

“I love the history of the program, but we will have to take it one game at a time; last year was last year.” Fraioli said. “This year has all new personnel but the goals will still be high and in order to accomplish those goals it will take a collective effort.”

Leading that effort will be senior captain Noah Beaudet, a big piece to last year’s success and junior captain Matt Mahoney, the team’s point guard. In addition to the Mustang captains, the Norwood coach will also be looking to rely on seniors Dylan Hamwey and Casey Sheean. The coach is very confident of his core group and feels that he can play any one of them at any time and still be successful.

In terms of size, Norwood finds themselves somewhat on the smaller size. Manny Llongo and Nick Nemestal will be the team’s two big guys that will contribute a lot but may not always show up on the stat sheet.

Sophomore guard Brian Dearborn will also see time in the rotation for the Mustangs.

Although Norwood may have lost a lot in terms of leadership and physicality on the court, Fraioli believes this year’s team still has what it takes to get back to the tournament and make some noise.

“The goals remain the same: make the state tournament, win the league and take home a state title,” Fraioli said. “Come the end, only five teams (one from each division) walks away as winners. The Division 2 field is one of the toughest in all of Massachusetts and in order to have success we must rely on another. If we go out onto the court and do things as individuals there will be no success.”

Not only will team play be a contributing factor to Norwood having success, but the Mustangs will also need to defend. Fraioli believes that his offense is fine with Beaudet, Mahoney, Hamwey, from the outside and Nemestal, on the inside for the most part, but will need some of the other players step up and add some additional scoring here and there.

“I am more of a defensive guy when it comes to coaching,” the coach said. “I want to create offense coming from our defense. In the past, it was easy for Norwood to fire away and rely on the senior leadership. They were playing games in the 70’s; I want to be able to hold the opposition to 50 or 60 points instead.”

Norwood opened the season with a 6-point loss to Hopkinton after being down by double digits at the half. Fraioli contributes the loss to the fact the squad didn’t play defense as the team was still getting use to his way of coaching. Following the opening day loss, Norwood rattled off three straight home wins over Ashland, Medfield and Walpole – it looks as though things are moving in the right direction. If the Mustangs buy into Fraioli’s philosophy, there is no doubt that the team could once again be back in the Division 2 State Tournament, and hopefully come away with a different result this time around.