Syracuse, N.Y. — Aidan Carpenter and Brandon Wick wanted a way to stay connected to basketball.
They had been teammates on the hardwood since the fifth grade, then at Jordan-Elbridge High School, before leaving for college. So after they came home from college, they started coaching in the Cayuga County Youth Organization.
That’s where they met Doug Rowe, who had a son on their team. Rowe is the assistant principal at Mater Dei Academy, a small Catholic school located not far from Camillus.
Mater Dei needed a basketball coach, and Rowe thought Carpenter and Brandon Wick would be the perfect fit.
“I was very impressed with not only their knowledge of basketball, but just their generosity and commitment to the kids,” Rowe said. “And they obviously didn’t get paid anything for doing a volunteer rec league, they just went to practice. I think they’d practice one or two nights a week. Snow, rain, sun, dark, whatever, just showed up.”
Carpenter and Wick, both 24 years old, are now trying to build a basketball program at Mater Dei.
Their mission: Coaching Section III’s smallest school with a basketball team, with a tiny practice gym and tiny student body, all while still learning how to be coaches at the high school level.
Mater Dei is a traditional Catholic school located in Warners. It has students in kindergarten through 12th grade and offers a boarding program for high school-aged boys from all over the world.
Mater Dei costs $2,200 for kindergarten, $3,300 for grades 1-8 and $4,500 for grades 9-12. There’s also a $5,775 room and board fee and a $600 activity fee for boarding students.
A traditional Catholic school’s curriculum differs from other Catholic schools. For example, students must take classes such as Latin.
But there are other staunch differences. Students are not permitted to have cell phones or other electronic devices. The school encourages students to “maintain a healthier desire for non-technology based entertainment and recreation and avoids the pernicious media available to adolescents in the world today,” according to the school’s website.
In addition, beginning in seventh grade, boys and girls are put into separate classes to “minimize distraction,” the website states.
Mater Dei is associated with the Society of Saint Pius X, which has eight schools across the country for high school-aged students. Mater Dei is the only one located in the Northeast, which is a reason why students travel to Central New York to attend the school.
The school was founded in 2000 and was previously known as Blessed Virgin Mary Mother of God Academy.
Mater Dei has just 50 high school-aged students. Twenty-two of those students make up the JV and varsity basketball teams.
Of those 22 players, 17 are boarding students, meaning Carpenter and Wick must consider that when trying to schedule practices during school breaks.
The school’s gym is too small for games, so Mater Dei plays its home games at the Tipp Hill Community Center. The team gets practice time at Tipp Hill but still practices at its small school gym and then goes on to play at larger regulation-sized courts.
Carpenter and Wick graduated from Jordan-Elbridge in 2018. Wick continued playing at Cazenovia College, and Carpenter went to the University at Albany and worked at basketball camps and after-school programs.
When they graduated college, Carpenter had the chance to coach basketball in the CCYO and immediately thought of Wick as someone who should help.
Now at Mater Dei, Carpenter is the varsity coach and Wick is the JV coach and assists with the varsity. They took over for a parent who was coaching the team last season.
Wick says they’re making the adjustment from coaching sixth-graders to coaching high school kids. With the sixth-graders, they had to go back to the fundamentals; at Mater Dei, there are more X’s and O’s. But both coaches agree that the players are responding well to what they’re being taught.
“They’ve told me that the way we practice is run this year versus last year is 100% different, and one kid said 100% better, so I’ll take it,” Carpenter said.
The connection the coaches are making goes beyond the court. Earlier this season, Wick’s grandfather died, and on the night of the calling hours, Wick coached his JV team to its first win of the season.
What made the night special, Wick said, was the gesture made by Wick’s players. As a tribute to his grandfather, who died of ALS, Wick wore red shoes on the night of the game. After the JV game was over, players from his team exited the locker room wearing red shirts in honor of Wick’s grandfather.
“It hit my heart right there,” Wick said. “I was not used to anybody supporting me besides my friends and my family. …When I had my team that I just met and been with for two weeks before that game supporting me on that, it was a really cool moment for me to soak in, and I know that I have their backs just like they had mine.”
The varsity team had to wait one more game before it cracked the win column. That win came in a triple-overtime thriller against Altmar-Parish-Williamstown on Dec. 11.
“You could tell in the locker room it was a different atmosphere and attitude after that game,” Wick said.
“I got water dumped on me as soon as I walked in the locker room,” Carpenter said. “They were definitely excited, and I think it proved to them that they’re definitely capable of more than they might expect. Even though they’re the underdogs, they can really actually scrap and fight.”
Mater Dei’s varsity team is currently 1-15, playing tough competition in the Onondaga High School League, but the coaches do not measure the success of this team by wins and losses.
“You can’t be a great basketball team in one year. You can’t be a great basketball team in five years,” Carpenter said. “Most really good programs have had the same coach for 10, 15, 20 years, running the same offense, going over summer leagues, going over AAU, things like that. So that’s the kind of thing I would like to encourage them to get into, especially the younger generation.”
Plus, Mater Dei now has a modified basketball program.
“That’s such a huge step for them,” Carpenter said. “The younger kids, they can get more involved. That will only help them when they get older.”
Like the coaches, the administration is not using wins and losses as the measuring stick of success for its new staff.
“I think they’re laying the foundation well,” Rowe said. “They’re, learning, there’s a positive vibe and it’s been great.”
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