Dan Whitham has coached the Southeast girls’ basketball squad at the Bay State Summer Games the past three years. But this summer, his experience will be a bit different for the annual showcase, scheduled for Friday though Sunday, at the Reggie Lewis Center.
His daughter, Ericha, a rising senior forward at West Bridgewater High, will suit up for the Southeast team for the final time. And with it, a father/daughter, coach/player relationship that dates back to her first picking up a ball as a second grader, will come to an end.
“He taught me everything,’’ said the younger Whitham, a 5-foot-10 forward. “I wouldn’t be as good as I am if he wasn’t my dad.’’
Said the elder Whitham, “Some kids don’t play hard, they just go by natural ability. Ericha plays as hard as her ability allows her and that as a coach is kind of all you can ask of your players.’’
Whitham, a physical education teacher at Sharon High, was coaching before Ericha was born. He started out as an assistant coach at Weymouth South, his alma mater, where he had been a point guard.
Even then, he had an interest in coaching.
“I was fortunate because when I was in high school there was a local guy who was an assistant coach at Bentley College,’’ recalled Whitham. “And he was taking me around as a scout. As a 17-year-old, I was writing up scouting reports for a Division 2 Bentley College team with Brian Hammel, then an All-American.
As a 21-year-old assistant at South, he was sent on a scouting trip to see Brockton High and a upcoming opponent, a Cambridge Rindge & Latin squad featuring future Hall of Famer Patrick Ewing.
“I walked into the gym and (Ewing) wasn’t even jumping center,’’ he recalled as he looked out onto the empty floor at West Bridgewater last week.
“They had a tap play where the 6-foot-6 power forward tapped it to Patrick Ewing and he threw it to a 6-4 kid, and that 6-4 kid lobbed it to another 6-4 kid for a dunk.’’
His daughter is creating her own memories at West Bridgewater. A 1,000-point career scorer entering her senior year, she has been part of a program that has racked up a staggering 101-11 record since she joined the varsity as a seventh grader.
However, a play from one of those 11 losses remains a sore subject.
“I remember the play still, I remember the exact play,’’ Ericha said, referring to a costly turnover against Greater New Bedford Voke with nine seconds left in the Division 4 South final.
The turnover led to free throws, and an eventual one-point loss. Three years ago.
“We were 1 point away from playing in the Garden,’’ she said.
And those losses, as well as the upcoming Bay State Games, will continue to serve as a motivating factor for the younger Whitham as she prepares for her final varsity season.
“I need to get stronger, said Whitham, who plans to play college basketball, likely at the Division 3 level. “I need to get better at shooting, dribbling, defense . . . and I’ve been playing my brother (Jonathan, a sophomore) so that helps a lot.
Her coach at West Bridgewater, Steve Barrett, said Whitham can do “anything necessary to win a basketball game.’’
The Cleaves connection
The Cleaves family was well represented at the track & field competition of the Bay State Games. Dylan and Connor, a rising sophomore and a rising junior at Rockland High, respectively, qualified for Saturday’s finals at Tufts University, as well as their father, Michael, and his 80-year-old father, Stanley.
Last summer, Connor was fifth in the 400 meters, sixth in the javelin, and seventh in the discus. Dylan, then just 14, was fifth in the discus.
This past spring, the pair were Rockland’s top finishers at the South Shore League meet.
“It’s fun to watch them go head-to-head,’’ said their father, 49-year-old Michael, who, competing in the Masters I Division, placed fourth in the discus last year. (He still holds the school record, 167 feet, at Rockland High).
His father, Stanley, did not realize his own potential as a thrower until his mid-40s.
“My dad would be out in the field shagging the discs and throwing them back to us,’’ said Cleaves, recalling how he and his brother, Todd, would train during high school. “Eventually he started throwing them as far as we were.’’
Stanley competed in his first Games this summer at the suggestion of Connor.
Para swimming added
Last year, the Bay State Games partnered with Adaptive Sports New England to include para-track events. This summer, para-swim events have been added to the competition.
Adaptive Sports, a non-profit, was founded two and a half years ago by Braintree native Joe Walsh with the goal of increasing the athletic participation for youth and adults that have visual or mobility impairments.
A Dartmouth College grad and two-time US Paralympian in nordic skiing, Walsh served as managing director of the US Olympic Committee’s Paralympics division in Colorado Springs from 2005-2012.
In the future, Walsh and Kevin Cummings, executive director of the Bay State Games, would like to add more sports, including wheelchair basketball.
Catherine Faherty, an 11-year-old swimmer from Norwell, has been training with Michael Prout, a gold medalist at the 2004 Paralympic Games (Athens) every Sunday since last September to prepare for the Bay State Games. On the horizon, she has the Adaptive Sports USA Junior Championships in Wisconsin later this month.
Sam Boyles can be reached at samuel.boyles@globe.com.
