Caroline Ducharme turned to film when she was forced to miss her sophomore season with a torn shoulder labrum. Alex Gallagher, head coach at Noble & Greenough High School, tasked her with scouting the opposing teams, as a means of keeping her involved. So Ducharme would sit in her family’s Milton, Mass., living room watching games on the TV with an open document in her hand to take pages of notes on each opposing player.
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The incoming UConn freshman became like an assistant coach that season, even as her coach saw on her face how tough it was to not be playing. For big games, Ducharme would work on her scouts all week. Throughout her high school career, Gallagher said there’d be times he’d worry if she was getting enough sleep for all the film she was consuming. He can’t think of a game he’d asked if she’s seen that she hadn’t.
“Even in the areas where for a typical high school kid it could have knocked you off path, she saw those obstacles as part of the path and got better,” Gallagher said. “She’s got a lot of God-given abilities but she is who she is because she outworks almost everyone.”
Ducharme not only missed a season because of the labrum, but she also tore her ACL heading into her freshman year of high school. With that injury, she became a better shooter during the time she sat out. After a high school career that featured two major injuries and a disrupted final two years due to COVID-19, Ducharme arrived in Storrs, Conn., last week. If the past is any indication, the No. 5 prospect in the Class of 2021, according to ESPNW, will take advantage of it.
Gallagher knew the Ducharme family for a long time and coached Caroline for five years. The killer instinct and dynamic skills she had were apparent from an early age. Ducharme is from a basketball family, and her mom, Chrissy, had her own historic playing days at Noble. Her older sister, Ashley, is going to be a senior at Brown and her younger brother, Reid, is going through the college recruiting process himself now. Caroline would tag along to her sister’s games and found a love of basketball. Since Ashley was taller from a young age, she’d block her sister’s shots in their driveway games. Caroline would then pick Reid’s pocket every time. Sometimes games got so fierce that their mom would be forced to open the window reminding the kids that they had neighbors.
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Growing up in New England, Ducharme would watch anything to do with UConn, knowing all the players. One of her favorites became Diana Taurasi because of her confidence and ability to impact the game in different ways.
Her father, Todd Ducharme, remembers watching a few practices during the unofficial visit to UConn.
“I don’t think she blinked the entire time,” Todd said. “She just was so locked in and watching everything they were doing from the minute practice started to the end.”
Despite her attraction to UConn as a lifelong fan, Ducharme wanted to make sure the place she chose would be the correct fit and not just one she loved as a child. Still, UConn was always in the back of her mind.
“I just always kept coming back to it so I think that set it apart,” Ducharme said. “I think the coaches and just being able to be around people who would push me and motivate me and just the types of players and people that come through this program. I think those were the big things that set it apart.”
When the world shut down in March 2020, she had the opportunity to sit down and think the decision over. She committed a month later. Then came the goal of making the most of summer and her senior year. She’d work out in the garage. With everyone home, the siblings brought back the competitive pick-up games of their youth in the family’s narrow driveway.
“It was definitely hard having it be your senior season, but my family and I and my coaches, I think everyone made it a priority to try to make the most out of the time we had,” Ducharme said. “That’s something my mom always says, ‘Find the good in it.’”
Her grassroots coach pushed for games and Ducharme took even more advantage of online school, going to Las Vegas in the fall for a few weeks to train at Impact Basketball. There she had the chance to work out with Las Vegas Aces’ Kelsey Plum. Ducharme watched Plum waste no movements and be precise in her approach. Plum’s shot was the same each time, and if she missed, she adjusted. Just watching Plum work was a learning experience for the young prospect.
Azzi Fudd, left, and Caroline Ducharme are two-thirds of UConn’s celebrated recruiting class. (Brian Spurlock / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)At the start of her senior season, Ducharme met with Gallagher. She was all about her team’s success but wanted to make sure she’d be ready to go at UConn. They put together a plan to target areas of weakness and would meet one-on-one with coaches to improve her game. They discussed playing on and off the ball. Offensively, they discussed how things like dribbling a little high in the lane wouldn’t fly at the collegiate level.
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“(Gallagher) would be more critical of the little things that in the past he would let slide because I could do that at the high school level,” Ducharme said. “He has definitely helped me be more detail-oriented about little things he knew wouldn’t (work) in college.”
While film was already a big part of Ducharme’s game and she continued her opposing scouts, this year it was used even more to demonstrate aspects of her own game. She would rewatch games with her parents and meet with her coaches every week to break down game film. Sometimes they’d only get through a half because it took so long to break down those minutes.
“The team, they wouldn’t know that stuff was even going on,” Gallagher said. “Those were things in the back of Caroline’s mind and in our minds. To the team, this is all about the right-now, right-here mindset. And so what we saw was someone doing everything she could to get ready while also wanting everyone she was leading to know she was fully present.”
Ducharme successfully balanced both and was named the Gatorade Player of the Year for Massachusetts for the second season in a row. She helped Noble to an 11-0 record, averaging 31.0 points, 15.3 rebounds, 5.3 assists, 4.5 steals and 3.3 blocks per game.
The Ducharme family dropped Caroline off at Storrs last week, and she is now starting the next chapter of her basketball journey. She joins incoming freshmen Azzi Fudd and Amari DeBerry.
For her father, the injury difficulties she overcame have shaped her into the player she is and will push her forward.
“She realized how much she loved it when she couldn’t play,” Todd said. “Now that she can, she knows that any given day it can be taken from you and so, she approaches every day with that intensity and is grateful to be able to play.
“That does something to you. It makes you prepare better. It makes you want things more because you know how hard it was to come back. She knows, ‘If I can deal with that, I can deal with anything you throw at me.’”
(Top photo: Brian Spurlock / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
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