Two Decades of Building a Basketball Legacy

EMILY ROLLER RETIRES FROM COACHING CUSHING’S GIRLS’ TEAM

Emily Roller never planned to follow in her parents’ footsteps. She grew up at a boarding school with two parents who were coaches, but Roller pictured her career at the FBI. Still, in 2002, Roller found herself stepping onto the court as Cushing’s girls’ basketball coach. She anticipated staying for perhaps two years.

Last spring, two full decades later, Roller retired from coaching, capping a terrific 20-year run in which she rebuilt the program. Under her guidance, Cushing progressed to the New England tournament semifinals or finals six times in the last 15 years and captured the New England championship in 2007.

Roller’s path to coaching at Cushing was both well trod and unexpected. Her childhood was spent on the courts and fields at Tabor Academy, where her father coached football and basketball and her mother was the first woman to coach the girls’ varsity basketball team when Tabor went coed in the early ’80s. Being a capable female athlete was long at the core of her identity. “I’ve actually been doing a lot of reflecting, thinking about my journey this year, because it’s the 50th anniversary [of Title IX],” she says. “I was surrounded by athletes my whole life. I loved it. I really took to the gym.”

Af ter graduating from Tabor, Roller attended Columbia University, winning their award for the top scholarathlete. She has also been inducted into Tabor’s Athletic Hall of Fame. She worked for a couple of years in a law firm and dreamed of being an FBI profiler, a path thwarted by a failed vision test. Then she saw a posting for a job at Cushing, her basketball archrival as a student at Tabor.

“I actually came back into boarding school against every single inclination in my body,” she says. “I had been born and bred for this and I said, ‘No way. I am never working in boarding schools and I am never working at Cushing.’ I really fought against it. I thought, I’ve already done that. That’s not my story. Am I really supposed to be going back to boarding school?”

Roller arrived at Cushing and fell in love with the community. “It just sucked me in,” she says. She took a program that was struggling and revived it, making it to the playoffs in her third year as coach. “I loved empowering young women,” she says. “That connection that you can have outside the classroom — it’s just different. What you’re going through is different. What you’re asking of them is different. I really, really loved it.”

Her work changed her players. “She is a true teacher of the game,” says Director of Athletics Jennifer Viana. “She had such a passion for it, and you could feel it every day when she was teaching the girls. She made them better players.”

For the first eight years she was a traditional “triple threat” — teaching math, coaching, and serving as a dorm parent. Then Roller had the chance to slide into college counseling — another inherited tradition. Her brother, mom, and dad all work in the field, making the Rollers a “royal family” of boarding school college counselors. Roller is now in her sixth year as director of college counseling.

Stepping back from coaching will allow Roller to focus on leading her team in that department. The tough decision was when to step back. She decided that the end of last year — when a large group of players were graduating — would be the best option.

That last season was special. An amazing group of five seniors led the team to the second round of the New England playoffs before they lost to Hamden Hall, ending their season. “We just had a phenomenal athlete leading us in Fanta Kone ’22, and we had phenomenal leadership in Lily Stone ’22. We also had two outstanding senior role players,” says Roller. “The singular lesson I would love to give to athletes at Cushing is to look at Jane Harmon ’22 and to look at Zahira Branch ’22, and to look at how powerful your role can be even if you’re not a starter. Finally, I had a great [post- graduate] addition in Grace Ardito ’22.”

“I was incredibly close to most of them,” Roller says. “We lived through COVID together. We played through COVID together. There’s a different bond with that crew.”

Roller will hold close the highs — her first win, that New England title, even watching the team play through the pandemic — but also the lows — helping student-athletes through personal challenges and season-ending injuries.

“It’s hard to step away from something that you really love. That’s what I say to my students. It is supposed to be hard. If it’s not hard,” she says, “what were you doing?”

EMILY C. ROLLER AWARD

Going forward, the Emily C. Roller Award will be given each year to a player who “demonstrates sportsmanship, exemplary effort, and a positive attitude while being a supportive teammate.”