By Christopher Tremblay

Coaches are a product of their team and Norwood High School boys’ basketball Coach Kristen McDonnell has benefited from her team’s success this past season. McDonnell was named Four Deep Sports Talk boys basketball Coach of the Year for the 2021-22 campaign.

Four Deep Sports Talk is a weekly talk show program airing on WARA AM in Attleboro, on line on You Tube, and tape delayed on 35 community access channels covering the area previously know as the MIAA’s South Section.

“This is a huge honor and like Coach (Mike) Costa (girls Coach of the Year) said, ‘Any honor you get at the coaching ranks is usually because your team did pretty damn good during the year,’” the Norwood Coach said. “So, this is really about our team, what they were able to accomplish, and the guys that I’m lucky to coach every day.”

Deep Sports Talk has been around for 15 years producing a weekly high school talk program. The 10-member committee is made up of FDST contributors, high school sports reporters from the Quincy Sun, the Whitman-Hanson Express, the Boston Herald, and a news photographer which consist of 50% of the voting. The other 50% is based on a twitter poll, in which McDonnell won in a landslide with 77% of the vote.

Prior to the season beginning, McDonnell knew that she possessed a team with talent but never expected one that would make a run all the way to the Division 2 State Finals. The Mustangs found themselves with the seven seed and were able to knock off Fitchburg (68-42), Salem (78-63), the number two seed Mansfield (57-51), and the number three seed Burlington (69-66 in overtime) to reach the Championship game. Unfortunately, Norwood was unable to completer the run as Catholic Memorial, the top seed, put a beating on the Mustangs 95-40 in the Finals.

“We had to upset a few teams along the way and the stars seemed to align in our favor,” McDonnell said. “But overall, you’ve got to give a ton of credit to the guys and the way that they played.”

While the Norwood Coach continues to give full credit to her team, McDonnell is very familiar with coaching awards having coached the Braintree girls’ basketball team for 13 years winning 4 State Championships along the way.

“It really is about the team and the contributions that they made during the year,” McDonnell said. “I may have been the one that picked up the plaque, but it was the team that made it possible. What is really cool about this award is that it’s a grass roots organization that has a labor of love in covering high school sports and they are passionate at what they do. They do it because they truly love what they are doing.”