Long before any of their names appeared on the Globe All-Scholastic basketball teams, the more than 2,000 players ultimately honored as the elite high school players of their era already had taken millions of steps — small and large — in their basketball journeys.
There was no way for any of them to know just how limitless the paths ahead would be.
Nearly a decade ago, Veronica Burton made her second All-Scholastic team after winning four straight Dual County League MVP awards, averaging 21.8 points and 7.5 rebounds as a senior at Newton South. Basketball took her from Newton South to Northwestern to the WNBA to Europe, where she sharpened her game before returning to the W as one of its best players.
With each passing year, Burton finds herself part surprised and part amazed at all the gyms, arenas, cities, and countries the game has taken her.
“I definitely didn’t anticipate all the places that it has taken me,” she said. “I knew eventually that at some point in high school it was going to take me to college and pay for my college, and it ended up being Northwestern. All I really saw in my foreseeable future was Northwestern and what that would look like. I didn’t really see a future in basketball after that.”
Dana Barros, a two-time All-Scholastic who set the state tournament and the Boston Shootout on fire as a star at Xaverian, once saw himself destined more for a life in football than basketball.
He didn’t see the path the game ultimately had for him — four years at Boston College, where he became the Eagles’ all-time leading scorer, a 14-year NBA career, an All-Star Game appearance, and six seasons playing for his hometown Celtics.
“I just wanted to get to college for free, man,” Barros said. “My biggest goal was to make it to the Big East. I thought that was the craziest thing ever. I went to the games and watched Pat Ewing and Pearl Washington, and I just wanted to be part of that. I figured that would be my goal — and if I could make it past that, it would be incredible.”
Since 1962 for boys and 1976 for girls, the Globe has curated the achievements of the best basketball players throughout Eastern Massachusetts. In that six-decade span, each of those players has taken their own journey. From NCAA Tournaments and titles to WNBA and NBA drafts and championships, to Olympic gold medals to Hall of Fame jackets, the all-time All-Scholastic list recognizes the players who took the most steps along the way.
How the teams were selected
This exercise was meant to answer a straightforward question: Which All-Scholastic players accomplished the most after their high school careers? While their high school moments and memories still echo today, those achievements were not a part of the criteria for this list.
Instead, the approach was to create a dataset that combined the Globe’s archive of All-Scholastics with pertinent information from Sports Reference’s college and pro databases and ask a series of simple questions: Was this player a star in high school? Did they play in college? How did they perform at that level? Did they reach the NCAA Tournament and, if so, how far did they get? Were they drafted? Did they play professionally, (taking into consideration that professional options in America were scarce for women prior to the WNBA’s debut in 1997)? Did they play in the Olympics? Did they reach the Hall of Fame?
From there, a series of conversations between Globe editors and writers helped shape the list’s final form, and a handful of area experts offered additional review and context.
Boys’ First Team
From the moment Patrick Ewing stepped foot in Cambridge Rindge and Latin, his path seemed destined. When Ewing was a sophomore, Buddy O’Neil, a rival coach at Melrose, said, “By the time he gets through, he will be the best player this area has ever seen. By a mile.”
It was as easy to see then as it is now.
Ewing led Rindge and Latin to three straight state titles, then went on to Georgetown and took the Hoyas to three national championship games, winning the title in 1983 while being draped in accolades over his four-year college career (two-time Big East player of the year, three-time consensus All-American, national player of the year, and Final Four most outstanding player).
Ewing is the only Globe All-Scholastic to be taken with the No. 1 overall pick in the NBA Draft, and he was the Rookie of the Year, an 11-time All-Star, one of the league’s 75 greatest players of all time, and a Hall of Fame inductee. He cemented himself as one of the greatest Knicks of all time, leading them to the NBA Finals twice. He was also an Olympian two times over — first as a collegian in 1984, then with the original Dream Team in 1992, winning gold each time.
Where Ewing’s path was certain, Dana Barros wasn’t sure where basketball would take him until he landed at Boston College — and even then he went to The Heights expecting to play football.
He was a highly recruited wide receiver and took a visit to Chestnut Hill, spending the entire weekend with Doug Flutie. All they did was play basketball. At the last minute, then-coach Gary Williams snagged Barros from football coach Jack Bicknell. Being 5 feet 11 inches brought doubters — and Barros acknowledged he didn’t envision reaching the NBA — but after scoring 2,342 points at BC, the SuperSonics drafted him with the 16th overall pick in the 1989 NBA Draft. His 14-year NBA career stamped him as one of the most accomplished players Boston has ever produced.
For Pat Connaughton, the path had options. He starred in basketball and baseball at St. John’s Prep, and did the same at Notre Dame. Even with murmurs that his future was in baseball — the Baltimore Orioles drafted him in the fourth round in 2014 — Connaughton chose basketball, returning for his senior season to lead the Fighting Irish to the Elite Eight in 2015. A second-round pick in 2015, Connaughton is now in his 11th NBA season. The height came five years ago, when he won an NBA championship with the Bucks, averaging 9.2 points and 5.8 rebounds in the Finals.
An overshadowed All-Scholastic as a senior at Xaverian in 1975, James Bailey went to Rutgers and became a force, scoring 2,034 points in four seasons. At a time when the dunk was reintroduced to college basketball, it became Bailey’s weapon of choice. He used it to help the Scarlet Knights reach the Final Four as a freshman in 1976. The SuperSonics drafted him sixth overall in 1979, and he played nine seasons in the NBA. He’s still Rutgers’s all-time leading shot-blocker, its second-leading scorer, and third-leading rebounder.
On athleticism alone, Ron Lee had options. A three-time All-Scholastic at Lexington, Lee went to Oregon, where he earned the nickname “The Kamikaze Man,” for his willingness to sacrifice his body. That vigor fueled a four-year college career in which he scored 2,085 points and earned All-Pac-8 honors each season. He was drafted 10th overall by the Suns in 1976, and played for four teams over six NBA seasons. That hard-nosed reputation stuck with him. Former Pistons coach Scotty Robertson told the Detroit Free Press in 1982, “He’s stayed in this league with his enthusiasm, his heart, his defensive ability, and his character.”
Boys’ Second Team
When Rick Brunson moved from Syracuse, N.Y., to Salem, where he became a three-time All-Scholastic and won a state title in 1989, a subtle skill he learned was how to create opportunities for himself and others.
Starring at Salem led to a four-year college career at Temple. He went undrafted, but when the Portland Trail Blazers invited him to training camp in 1997, he took advantage, making the roster and turning it into a nine-year career. He played for eight NBA teams, and at each stop he stored valuable information he would ultimately share with his son, Jalen, now a star point guard for the Knicks, for whom Rick is an assistant coach.
“To me, it was just a good opportunity to say, ‘Hey, listen, this is a life experience. Let me share it with my son,’ ” Brunson said in 2018, when Jalen was still at Villanova.
Rumeal Robinson was as close to a ready-made NBA talent as it gets coming out of Cambridge Rindge and Latin. He committed to Michigan before his senior season, then averaged 18.5 points, 10.4 rebounds, and 11 assists to lead Rindge and Latin to a state title. Robinson was a starter essentially as soon as he stepped foot in Ann Arbor, and delivered the Wolverines a national championship in 1989 with the winning free throws against Seton Hall. The 10th overall pick by the Hawks in 1990, he went on to play six NBA seasons.
Jake Layman’s six-year NBA career may have come as a surprise when he was at King Philip. But the achievement he looks back on with fondness is turning around a King Philip program that had lost 40 straight games before he arrived. He got the school to the state tournament twice and left as its all-time leading scorer before moving on to Maryland, where he reached the NCAA Tournament twice, then being drafted in 2016 by the Trail Blazers (via Orlando). He’s currently playing in Japan.
Despite winning two Eastern Mass. titles at Brookline and reaching the Final Four at Connecticut, where he was a three-year captain and remains one of just five players in school history to score at least 1,000 points and grab at least 1,000 rebounds, Jeff Adrien seemed to fly under the radar. He tweeted before the 2009 NBA Draft, “Just give me a chance and good things will happen.” Adrien went undrafted, but the Warriors eventually took that chance on him, after going overseas for a spell, he turned it into five years in the NBA.
Bill Curley’s career at Duxbury, where he was a three-time All-Scholastic who won a state title as a junior 1989, and averaged 30.9 points and 14.5 rebounds as a senior, made him a highly coveted recruit. Boston College landed him, and he propelled the Eagles to the NCAA Tournament as a senior. Injuries shortened an NBA career that lasted five years, and he’s now coaching at Emerson.
Girls’ First Team
One of the most decorated players in women’s basketball history, Kara Wolters was born into a basketball family and carved out her own legacy in the sport.
She considered basketball a refuge from the teasing that came with being tall at a young age. But between guidance from her father, Will, who played three seasons at Boston College and left as the Eagles’ all-time leading rebounder; evolution at Holliston High, where she was a three-time All-Scholastic and scored 1,994 points; and refinement under coach Geno Auriemma at Connecticut, where she was part of four NCAA Tournament teams, winning a national title in 1995, she emerged as one of women’s basketball’s all-time prominent figures.
Wolters is one of just 12 players in women’s basketball history to win a gold medal (2000, in Sydney), an NCAA championship, and a WNBA championship (1999, with Houston), and she was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 2017.
The aura around Cambridge Rindge and Latin in the late 1970s and early ’80s was just as much because of Medina Dixon as it was Ewing.
Dixon was a rare talent, the kind that former Rindge and Latin boys’ coach Mike Jarvis said in 2021 “probably would’ve been playing and starting on my team. That’s how good she was.”
Dixon led the school to a state title in 1979, then went on to Old Dominion, where she led the Monarchs to a national title in 1985, posting an 18-point, 15-rebound double-double in the championship game. At the 1992 Olympics, alongside Teresa Weatherspoon and Cynthia Cooper, Dixon was the driving force for Team USA’s bronze medal performance, averaging a team-high 15.8 points.
Before Caitlin Clark, Michelle Edwards (Boston/Cathedral) was the gold standard at Iowa. A two-time All-Scholastic who was a part of three tournament teams for the Hawkeyes, being named WCBA player of the year and Big Ten player of the year in 1998, Edwards tells a story that crystalizes her place in her era.
As a freshman, she found herself being guarded by USC legend Cheryl Miller. Edwards was so awestruck that when she went to start her drive, the ball went flying out of bounds. The next possession, Miller was there again, Edwards drove for a layup and tapped glass on the finish. By the time Edwards was done at Iowa, she had the Hawkeyes ranked No. 1 in the nation, and took them to the Elite Eight twice. Iowa retired her number two years after she finished her college career. Edwards was taken in the 1997 WNBA Draft by the Cleveland Rockers, and went on to play five seasons in the league, amassing 758 points, 231 rebounds, and 280 assists.
One of the faces of the WNBA today started as a force for Newton South nearly a decade ago. Veronica Burton, was a two-time All-Scholastic and a four-time Dual County League MVP. She went on to star at Northwestern as a three-time Big Ten defensive player of the year and a two-time first-team all-conference selection.
Now she’s the WNBA’s reigning most improved player after leading the Golden State Valkyries to the playoffs in her first season with the team, and the franchise’s first season in existence.
The epitome of perseverance, Shey Peddy, a three-time All-Scholastic at Melrose, finished her seventh season in the WNBA last year fighting years to find a spot.
“I call her the professional,” said Will Dickerson, a longtime friend who works with Klutch Sports Group.
Peddy was willing to take a job as a video coordinator with the Washington Mystics, and that ultimately led to playing 15 games, as a rookie at age 30, for a team that won a title in 2019. Since then, she’s built a career that’s taken her from Washington to Phoenix to Los Angeles to Indiana.
Girls’ Second Team
When Boston College retired Carolyn Swords’s number three years ago, she emphasized that the moment was special because of where the journey started.
“It’s really special, because I came here and am from here originally,” she said. “I get to share this with so much of my hometown and everyone who supported me growing up.”
Swords, a two-time All-Scholastic at Lincoln-Sudbury, finished her career second on BC’s all-time scoring list, then went on to be taken by the Chicago Sky with the 15th overall pick in the 2011 WNBA draft. She played eight seasons, building a reputation not just for her scoring and rebounding, but for her selflessness.
Tonya Cardoza caught Auriemma’s eye long before he laid the groundwork for what became the Connecticut dynasty. When Cardoza was a two-time All-Scholastic at Boston English, Auriemma recruited her to join him at Virginia, where he was an assistant. Auriemma left for UConn before Cardoza arrived at Virginia, but Cardoza ended up being a core member of the Cavaliers’ teams that made four of the school’s 20 straight NCAA Tournament appearances from 1983-2003, reaching the national title game in 1991. Now Cardoza is next to Auriemma on UConn’s bench as an assistant coach.
Sarah Behn, a four-time All-Scholastic, left Foxborough High as the state’s all-time leading scorer 2,562 points, then did the same in college, finishing as the all-time leading scorer at BC and in the Big East (2,523 points). She was the first woman in Eagles history to eclipse 2,000 points.
While Jamie Cassidy’s Maine teams were processing the whirlwind of reaching the tournament all four years she was there, from 1996-2000, she tried looking ahead.
“I couldn’t see my life not related to basketball,” she told the Globe in 2000.
Cassidy was a three-time All-Scholastic at Methuen who went on to rank third on Maine’s all-time scoring list. She reached the WNBA in 2000, playing 22 games for the Miami Sol, and went on to coach at Salem High in New Hampshire.
A two-time All-Scholastic at Newton North, Sherry Levin became a pioneer in three seasons at Holy Cross as the program was transitioning to Division 1 in the early 1980s. Her Crusaders teams won 38 straight home games from 1979-83. She scored 1,742 points in three seasons and the school inducted her into its Hall of Fame in 1989.
In some instances, great players from Massachusetts were not eligible for Globe All-Scholastic honors. Hall of Famer Rebecca Lobo, for instance, starred at Southwick-Tolland in Western Mass. Meanwhile, 10-year pro Travis Best starred at Springfield Central.
Much of the NBA talent from Massachusetts in the past 15 years is unrepresented because of the evolution in high school basketball that incentivized players to move to prep schools for development and exposure, and therefore they were not All-Scholastic selections. Those include:
• Nerlens Noel, the sixth overall pick in the 2013 NBA Draft who played eight years in the league, left Everett after two years to play at Tilton School.
• Michael Carter-Williams, the 11th overall pick in 2013 and Rookie of the Year the ensuing season, left Hamilton-Wenham for St. Andrew’s.
• Shabazz Napier, the 24th pick in 2014, hand-picked by LeBron James and the Heat, left Charlestown for Lawrence Academy.
• Terrence Clarke, who died in a car crash in 2021, was selected posthumously in the first round of that year’s draft. He started at Rivers School, then transferred to Brewster Academy, then Rectory School in Connecticut.
Plenty of players have worthy résumés and were included in discussions regarding the all-time team. Among them:
• Russell Lee, brother of Ron Lee, was a three-time All-Scholastic at Hyde Park who played college ball at Marshall, was taken by the Bucks with the sixth overall pick in the 1972 draft, and played three NBA seasons.
• Bob Carrington was a two-time All-Scholastic at Archbishop Williams who left BC in 1976 as the school’s all-time leading scorer and went on to play two NBA seasons with the Nets, Pacers, and Clippers.
• Bob Bigelow was a two-time All-Scholastic at Winchester who was part of three NCAA Tournament teams at Pennsylvania. He played four seasons in the NBA.
• Terry Driscoll was an All-Scholastic at BC High, then went on to take BC to the 1969 NIT final, earning tournament MVP honors. He played five NBA seasons and one in the ABA, before playing and coaching in Italy, where he won two league championships as a player and two as a coach.
• Bill Hewitt was an All-Scholastic at Rindge Tech in 1963, then starred at Southern Cal, earning All-Pac-10 honors twice. The Lakers drafted him in 1968, and he played six NBA seasons.
• Wayne Turner was a McDonald’s All-American and a three-time All-Scholastic at Beaver Country Day High School who led Kentucky to three national championship game appearances and two titles, in 1996 and 1998. He went undrafted but played three games for the Celtics in 1999.
• Averrill Roberts was a three-time All-Scholastic at Boston Latin. She went on to play at Ohio State, where she led the Buckeyes to the national title game as a senior in 1993, and left as the school’s second-leading scorer (she’s currently 10th). She played one season in the American Basketball League with the Portland Power.
• Marché Strickland was a three-time All-Scholastic and the first woman to score 1,000 points at Boston Latin. She chose Maryland over BC, took the Terrapins to the NCAA Tournament in 2001, and finished second on the school’s all-time list for 3-pointers. She was drafted by the Cleveland Rockers in 2002.
• Katie Benzan was a two-time All-Scholastic at Noble & Greenough who played three seasons at Harvard before transferring to Maryland, reaching two NCAA Tournaments with the Terrapins and finishing one spot ahead of Strickland on the all-time threes list.
• Blake Dietrick was a Bay State MVP and Wellesley’s all-time leading scorer who went on to lead Princeton to three NCAA Tournament bids, winning Ivy League Player of the Year in 2015, while also pushing the Tigers to a first-round upset over Green Bay. She went undrafted but played five WNBA seasons.
• Brianne Stepherson, a varsity player as a seventh-grader, was a four-time All-Scholastic at Masconomet. She made the adjustment in college just as quickly, starting as a freshman point guard for BC and leading the Eagles to their first NCAA Tournament appearance in 1999, a run to the Sweet 16.
Some players, no matter how far their paths took them, become inextricable with their era. Ron Perry Jr. is one of them. His name is synonymous with Catholic Memorial basketball. His father, the late Ron Perry Sr., was baseball and basketball coach at CM from 1959-72, before serving as athletic director at Holy Cross, and that was after he starred Holy Cross and was drafted by the Celtics in 1954. In every way, Perry Jr. followed in his footsteps as a four time All-Scholastic who scored a state-record 2,481 points at CM, set the scoring record at Holy Cross (2,524 points), and was drafted by the Celtics in 1980. The last man cut by the Celtics that year, Perry chose baseball instead, playing two Double A seasons.
“I grew up around it,” Perry said. “I was at the games, I was at the tournament, I was at the Garden, so when my turn came, I didn’t know where it would take me, but I knew how much I wanted to be part of it, how much I wanted to help CM compete at a really high level and have a chance to win.”
In ways that don’t crystallize until years later, many of these All-Scholastics— and their journeys — are linked. Dixon, for instance, was once in a Newton gym years ago shooting around with three girls. There was no way she could have known that one of them was Burton.
“I remember the magnitude of being in a gym with her,” Burton said. “Just meeting her for the first time.”
Like the Lees and the Perrys, branches of family trees stretch across decades of All-Scholastic lists — including Carter-Williams’s brother, Marcus Zegarowswki, both honored years apart. Eras are bound together, from the present day to the sepia-toned 1960s and ’70s.
“It was the golden age,” said Leo Papile, who founded the Boston Amateur Basketball Club in 1977. “The games and the matchups at the Garden — it was more than basketball. Especially in Boston, it had social significance. The whole thing was really special.”
As much as this is a list, decades of All-Scholastic selections form a collection of basketball lifetimes — something that isn’t lost on Barros. A year from now, AJ Dybantsa (St. Sebastian’s) could already have a case as one of the most accomplished All-Scholastics.
“It’s a lifestyle,” Barros said. “Listen, Terrence Clarke — may he rest in peace— played in my gym every day. And AJ Dybantsa works out in my gym every day when he’s home. I watched these kids go from sixth, seventh, eighth grade to college, and I still can’t believe it. But he’s in the gym every day. Every day. People want to take the elevator and miss steps. You can’t do that. You’ve got to live this life.”
Julian Benbow can be reached at julian.benbow@globe.com.
