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05/03/2018 12:00 AMAnn Anderson made a major impact on high-school girls’ basketball along the Connecticut shoreline as both a player and a coach, in addition to being an accomplished collegiate athlete. As a result of her efforts, Ann recently netted one of the most prestigious distinctions that any basketball player can receive when she was inducted into the Connecticut Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame.
Ann, a Killingworth resident, grew up in Madison and played for Head Coach Jim Bombaci on the Hand girls’ basketball team, helping the Tigers win three straight Shoreline Conference titles, before graduating in 1983. Ann went on to play for Bucknell University, where the forward and two-time captain averaged 12.4 points and 6.5 rebounds a game for the Bison. Ann is still on the school’s all-time leaderboard for free throws made (411, 3rd) and free throws attempted (561, 4th), as well as points (1,343, 9th), rebounds (707, 9th), and blocks (87, 9th).
After graduating from Bucknell in 1987, Ann ventured across the globe to play two seasons with Eintracht Frankfurt, a German First League professional basketball team, after which she coached that program’s high-school squad to an appearance in the German Final Four. Upon returning to Connecticut, Ann played in the Haddam-Killingworth men’s rec basketball league for 17 seasons and continued coaching as an assistant for Bombaci with the girls’ hoops team at H-K.
Last year, Ann received the phone call of a lifetime when she was notified that she was going to be inducted into the Connecticut Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame. She was inducted in a ceremony that took place at the Cascade in Hamden on April 18.
“I found out I was selected last June after a call from the chairperson of the selection committee. It involved a lot of preparation over the past 10 months with meeting deadlines to make a career biography,” Ann says. “It was very exciting, and I can’t speak highly enough about the organization. It was a special honor for me to join so many other great members.”
After piloting the Tigers to a Shoreline Conference three-peat, Ann put together an excellent career at Bucknell that saw her become the first woman in school history to break the 1,000-point barrier on her way to graduating as the program’s all-time leading scorer with 1,343 career points. Ann was later inducted into the Bucknell Hall of Fame.
“When we won Shorelines my junior year, we graduated a huge class prior, and we were thought to be too young, but Jim Bombaci led our group and we shocked everyone,” Ann says. “I was also a part of a turnaround with Bucknell, and we went 18-11 one year. I scored my 1,000th point at The Palestra in Philadelphia. That was quite an exhilarating experience.”
Ann wound up making big-time contributions to the progression of another program when she competed in Germany. After gaining some coaching experience overseas, Ann was thrilled when she found out that one of her mentors was taking the reins as coach of her daughter’s squad at Haddam-Killingworth.
“My first year with the Germany team, we captured our Division II title, so we moved up to Division I, which was the first time that team did that, so that was a big deal. It was also where I got my first taste of coaching with their equivalent of a varsity high-school team,” says Ann, who lives in Killingworth with her husband Eric, with whom she has four daughters, Emily, Kiley, Molly, and Brinley, and a son, Bryce. “When my daughter Emily was in 8th grade, she said she recognized Jim Bombaci as the then-new high school coach at H-K. When coaching with Jim, a great highlight was when we won the Shoreline Conference title in double overtime against Old Lyme and Emily scored the last five points of that game. It was also great being a part of Jim’s 500th career victory in his last season of 2014.”
Kirsten Rappleyea was one of Ann’s teammates for two seasons at Hand. Rappleyea says that Ann was the kind of captain who never felt shy about conveying crucial messages to the team, but also walked the walk by constantly giving her all.
“Ann was a special player that had a true passion for the game. She was a vocal leader who gave 100-percent effort every time she stepped on the court,” Rappleyea says. “She is one of the most competitive and driven people I have met. She was a tenacious defender who often sacrificed her body for a ball going out of bounds. She also had a deadly left-handed jump shot. One of the greatest memories we share is winning the Shoreline Conference title her senior year and my junior.”
Whether coaching or competing, Ann has always appreciated how basketball players need to have a wide range of skills in order to be proficient on the floor. One of the things Ann likes most about sports is the synergy that’s required for a team to thrive, and she believes the process of building that chemistry helps prepare athletes for life after basketball.
“I love how you have to be adept on offense and defense, versus other sports where you have players playing only one or the other. As a coach, I loved developing defensive schemes, but I also like how you have to be so dependent upon your teammates and have strong communication,” says Ann. “You have to work together and communicate to be successful. It’s important not just for sports, but everything you do in life.”