'Never felt like I was coaching gender': New Framingham High coach ready to lead boys team
Four years of reaching the sectional finals, including an appearance at TD Garden, are highlights on any resume. But Patrick Ferdinand doesn’t hide from the one-win season that happened two years later.
“I learned my most as a coach during our worst-record season,” said Ferdinand, who was hired Friday as Framingham High’s boys’ basketball coach.
The Framingham resident and native Midwesterner has coached the girls’ varsity team at Watertown High since 2010, which included three successive 20-win seasons. He has coached boys at clinics, camps and during the Bay State Games.
“I never felt like I was coaching gender,” he said. “I felt like, ‘basketball players are basketball players.’ I treat everybody with respect and I motivate the same way. I don’t see much difference to it. Maybe it will be a bigger difference when I start coaching.”
Ferdinand replaces Jason Gosselin, who coached the Flyers for six seasons, including last year’s 3-17 team. Ferdinand also coaches at MetroWest Elite, whose director is Framingham girls’ varsity coach Kristen Audet-Fucarile. Ferdinand is familiar with the FHS boys’ program because of his residence in the city for the past six years. He also sees team members working out at MetroWest YMCA and Suburban Athletic Club.
“I started to make a connection,” he said. “There’s an investment in those kids and you want them to succeed.”
“Pat is really connected to the community, really wants to coach Framingham kids and has a history of excellence in his career,” Framingham athletic director Paul Spear said. “He comes here with a passion for success and the players will embrace him as a great role model and teacher of the game of basketball.”
Ferdinand's major move: Illinois to Waltham
Ferdinand grew up in southern Illinois and moved to Massachusetts with his family at age 17, graduating from Waltham High in 1997. He attended UMass Boston and was quickly elevated in his first stab at coaching.
He was named the junior varsity coach at the Cambridge School of Weston, but before his first practice, when the varsity coach quit, Ferdinand was promoted to varsity coach, staying in that position for five seasons and winning 61 games. He is also the sports director at the Waltham YMCA and works in the Watertown School District as an administrative assistant.
After two seasons as an assistant coach at Regis College, Ferdinand was named varsity girls head coach at Watertown. The team won just seven games in his first season, but two years later, the Raiders, after a 10-10 regular season, advanced to D3 North final, falling to No. 1 Pentucket at Tsongas Center.
Over the next three seasons, Watertown lost just four regular-season games and won three consecutive Division 2 North titles. The 2015 team was 21-0 heading into state semifinals, where the Raiders fell to Duxbury at TD Garden. The proceeding season, they advanced to the state finals, dropping a 36-31 decision to Longmeadow at Springfield College.
After a 15-5 season and the loss of several key players to graduation, the 2017-18 team finished 1-16 – the season that Ferdinand says still resonates.
“I learned more about being resilient and the details of what you did, coaching wise, is that you had to be so much better,” he said. “The talent level was different but those kids, I really appreciated, because they stayed strong and competed. The resiliency of a 1-16 year, as a coach, you have to go through some really tough moments; I think it built my character.”
Ferdinand says good-bye to Watertown, hello to Framingham boys
Ferdinand met with his former Watertown team and his new Framingham team on Monday. He called his meeting in Framingham as “very casual. We talked about how we’re going to build a program identity and culture."
Asked about how he will do so, Ferdinand said “the kids are going to work hard and compete every day and I want them to enjoy playing for each other and sacrificing for their teammates. The biggest thing is competing; competing in everything that we do.”
Ferdinand is also excited about the ability to spend more time with his 9-year-old daughter, Clara, who also plays basketball. He said she will miss being part of the sideline at Watertown.
“It was a very hard thing for her to hear that I was moving on.”
But Ferdinand is moving in to a program that could use a jolt after winning just nine games over the past two winters.
“I enjoyed learning about his passion for the sport,” Spear said, “and he will be out to prove himself in one of the best basketball leagues (Bay State Conference) in the state.”
Ferdinand already lives in Framingham and is no stranger to the area. His hopes his transition from the girls’ game will also include a smooth adjustment.
“The opportunity to be on the boys’ side,” he said, “I’m really excited about it.”
Tim Dumas is a multimedia journalist for the Daily News. He can be reached at tdumas@wickedlocal.com. Follow him on Twitter @TimDumas.
This article originally appeared on MetroWest Daily News: A former girls' coach, new Framingham boys basketball hire d
