Bowdoin women’s basketball coach Megan Phelps surveys the action during a game last season in Brunswick. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

BRUNSWICK — Right before Megan Phelps began her first season as Bowdoin women’s basketball head coach in fall 2022, former coach Stefanie Pemper was officially inducted into the school’s hall of fame.

Former players came to campus to celebrate Pemper’s accomplishments, as well as meet the current Polar Bears. At a breakfast gathering, one of Phelps’ players asked the alumni how they handled the pressure of playing for the Bowdoin women’s basketball program.

“There was no pressure,” Phelps recalled the answer, “because we hadn’t won anything yet.”

Bowdoin has since become one of the most successful programs in the New England Small College Athletic Conference with 545 wins and 10 conference championships since 2000. After a cancelled season during the pandemic before two early conference tournament exits, the Polar Bears returned to the national conversation last season by finishing 28-3 and winning the NESCAC title. Bowdoin lost to Smith College in the Elite Eight of the NCAA tournament.

If anything, the pressure has only renewed entering Phelps’ third season at the helm and 10th with the program. There has been one constant through it all — team culture.

“I always put pressure on myself to kind of maintain this legacy,” Phelps said last week in a phone interview. “But I also think, as an alum of the program now, (something I) cherish is the teammates that I got to play with and the relationships that I got to build. Obviously, we always want to win games, but the pressure is more like, are these women growing? Am I helping them become the best versions of themselves and to build meaningful relationships that are going to last long after they graduate here?”

Phelps was a 1,000 point scorer and a two-time Big East player of the year while at Mount Desert Island High in Bar Harbor. She was a top 10 finalist for Miss Maine Basketball in 2011. While at Bowdoin, Phelps twice led the team in rebounding and was named a captain her junior and senior seasons.

Bowdoin players celebrate after they beat Baldwin Wallace in the third round of the NCAA Division III tournament last season in Brunswick. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

During her 2014-15 senior season, an ankle injury forced Phelps to the sidelines, where she took on an unofficial role on Adrienne Shibles’ coaching staff. The forward was offered a glimpse into her future coaching career, but Phelps didn’t see how much behind the scenes effort went into building and running a program until she officially returned to Bowdoin’s coaching staff in 2017.

“As a player, you take a lot of things for granted, then all of a sudden you become a coach, and you’re like, ‘Whoa, it’s a lot of work that goes into this stuff,'” Phelps said. “I definitely feel like it was playing here at Bowdoin, and for (Shibles), that made me realize how important culture was. Not everybody had that in their playing experience, but coming back and getting to work with her and seeing how much time and effort it takes from the coaching side to build strong team culture, it’s one of those experiences that I feel has really shaped who I am as a coach.”

Phelps followed Shibles to Dartmouth in 2021 as the lead assistant and recruiting coordinator, but Phelps returned to her alma mater after one season. As the third Bowdoin head coach in four years, Phelps knew she was in a rebuild, so she would speak with her new assistant Abby Kelly, an All-American guard under Shibles and Phelps from 2015-19, about reestablishing the group’s identity.

After many meetings, the two came up with four core values to center the team around: trust (the most important, according to Phelps), competition, growth and connection. With specific goals for practices or workouts and repetition, the intangible values become tangible standards. From there, the standards must be paired with some sort of accountability to create a culture.

For Phelps, accountability comes from everyone, not just the top. Encouraged by her own experiences playing under Shibles, who won a program-record 281 games over 12 seasons, Phelps employs a shared-leadership model where players of all levels are encouraged to voice an opinion. Captains are also voted on by the team after a competitive and professional interview process in front of the group. The captains for this upcoming season — Sydney Jones, Callie Godfrey and Carly Davey — were selected in the spring so that they could feel comfortable as leaders by the time the season would begin in the fall.

Bowdoin players and fans celebrate after a basket in an NCAA Division III women’s basketball Sweet 16 game last season in Brunswick. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

“They do a lot of the teaching of the intangible things before I even work with the first years,” Phelps said. “Obviously, it’s a little bit more complicated than that, like you have to recruit the right people who really are excited about the culture that you’re building, but, yeah, I think it’s honestly not super challenging for me. There are always bumps in the road, but I think having the players so invested in what we’re doing, honestly, makes it a lot easier.”

Jones, last year’s NESCAC player of the year, attributes the guidance and leadership from Phelps and Kelly, the 2023-24 NESCAC coaching staff of the year, to her growth.

“They’ve had so much faith and trust in me that I was able to explore myself and my abilities both on and off the court,” Jones, a senior guard, said. “They’ve let me make the necessary mistakes to learn and grow, and always celebrated me for my efforts to do so. You get to college thinking you are one type of player and one type of leader, they pushed me to be and do so much more, specifically this year starting as predominantly a scorer and vocal leader.”

The Polar Bears open the 2024-25 season at home against Skidmore College on Saturday, Nov. 16.

Phelps will not see the team practice until Oct. 22, but she is confident in her players’ offseason preparation. Jones, the team’s leading scorer and rebounder, and nine other players return to Brunswick, leaving Phelps excited for the promise of a continued balanced attack from the perimeter and the interior. She does acknowledge that defense will have to be a strong focus through the preseason.

For Jones, any mention of last year’s success will not be seen as pressure, but as a confidence booster.

“The work and motivation has not stopped and I am excited to start practices and games to put it into action,” Jones said. “With some great seniors leaving, freshman coming in and people back from injuries, we will need some time to find what defines us as a group and basketball team. Even with that I think our energy and intensity never lacks. You walk into any of our preseason workouts and there is cheering and celebrating of every teammate, and that’s what makes a such a tight knit and motivated group.”