{"id":12675,"date":"2024-04-01T12:33:25","date_gmt":"2024-04-01T12:33:25","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","slug":"Jim-Cilley-Hometown-Hero-54457355\/","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/?p=12675","title":{"rendered":"Hometown Hero: Basketball provides Jim Cilley with a sense of peace"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Pembroke
Pembroke boys\u2019 basketball assistant coach Jim Cilley talks to the team during a timeout at the 2024 Division II boys\u2019 basketball semifinals against Hanover at Oyster River High School on March 5.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\"Jim
Jim Cilley stands behind Pembroke head coach Mike Donnell during a team huddle at Bishop Brady High School.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/figure>

Pembroke Academy senior Joe Fitzgerald, a captain on this year\u2019s boys\u2019 varsity basketball team, finished his high school career with over 1,000 points scored, a milestone only 17 other Spartans have reached.<\/p>\n

But from Jim Cilley, one of Pembroke\u2019s assistant coaches, Fitzgerald learned about more than just basketball \u2014 although he noted that his assistant coach helped grow his game tremendously.<\/p>\n

Cilley\u2019s a single dad with two young kids who stepped down from his role as the varsity head coach at Belmont High School two years ago. He wasn\u2019t sure he\u2019d coach again for the foreseeable future. The time just wasn\u2019t there.<\/p>\n

He ultimately latched on as an assistant at Pembroke, and during that time, he\u2019s imparted lessons beyond the court, whether he\u2019s realized it or not.<\/p>\n

Fitzgerald grew to understand that basketball can be a space to find peace, to block out anything negative happening and focus solely on being a good teammate and working hard to improve your game. Anyone can walk into the gym off of a bad day, but that few hours of practice or games provides a reprieve, even if only temporarily.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe really just shows that no matter what\u2019s going on in your personal life, you can always come to the basketball court and that all goes away and you could just do what you really love,\u201d Fitzgerald said. \u201cThat message brought the team\u2019s spirit alive a lot of times, especially with kids that are going through some stuff at home. He was the example that once you\u2019re on the basketball court, all that stuff from your personal life just goes away.\u201d <\/p>\n

With off-the-court obstacles as a single dad, basketball\u2019s been Cilley\u2019s place to reset. He\u2019s brought a keen basketball mind to Pembroke, but he\u2019s also enmeshed himself in a program that\u2019s woven tightly together. They describe themselves as a family. It\u2019s not a cliche.<\/p>\n

Cilley\u2019s 9-year-old son Matthew and 12-year-old daughter Hannah often joined him at practices and games. Matthew sometimes sat on the bench and followed the team into the locker room.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve embraced him. That\u2019s obviously warmed my heart,\u201d Cilley said. \u201cThey call him \u2018Matty Ballgame,\u2019 and they bring him in the locker room with them, they stuff him in lockers and he loves it. He eats it up.\u201d <\/p>\n

That family dynamic\u2019s been central to Pembroke\u2019s success over the last two seasons, since Mike Donnell took over full-time as the head coach before the 2022-23 campaign. The Spartans finished 18-3 that season, a win shy of claiming the Division II state championship, and they followed that up with another 18-3 season this year and a trip to the D-II semifinals.<\/p>\n

Cilley was right at the center of the success.<\/p>\n

\u201cJim works very, very hard for the kids,\u201d Donnell said. \u201cHe does tons of video, tons of studying, develops game plans. He\u2019s just a great person to have in our program, and we are doing nothing but benefiting from having him as part of our group.\u201d <\/p>\n

Pembroke\u2019s 2023-24 season ended on March 5 after a loss against Hanover, and it was that postgame meeting in the locker room, Donnell recalled, that captured Cilley\u2019s connection to the group. The Spartans had hoped to reach the mountaintop by winning a championship this year after coming just short last postseason. They wouldn\u2019t realize their goal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe emotion that I saw in Jim\u2019s face and his watery eyes in the locker room after our loss in the semifinals, to me, shows the character of a person, and it just shows what kind of a person he is,\u201d Donnell said. \u201cHe truly was hurting for the kids.\u201d <\/p>\n

The players had helped him refocus and re-prioritize what mattered to him. It\u2019s never easy walking away from that.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve given me additional meaning and purpose and helped me realize what my value proposition is as a human being,\u201d Cilley said. \u201cBeing able to support them and to help them understand there\u2019s bigger things, and it\u2019s not necessarily about the scoreboard. Obviously we all want to win as competitors, but it\u2019s more about who we become as people.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s just greater meaning and value to how you treat your players and how you help them shape themselves as human beings.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pembroke Academy senior Joe Fitzgerald, a captain on this year\u2019s boys\u2019 varsity basketball team, finished his high school career with over 1,000 points scored, a milestone only 17 other Spartans have reached.But from Jim Cilley, one of Pembroke\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":188,"featured_media":12676,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":false,"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","_newspack_byline_active":true,"_newspack_byline":"by [Author id=188]Eric Rynston-Lobel[\/Author] Monitor staff","newspack_content_restriction_is_exempt":false,"newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[504,12],"tags":[50,24,505,274],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[533],"class_list":["post-12675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home-centerpiece-2-cm","category-town-city-government","tag-belmont-nh","tag-facebook","tag-paywall","tag-pembroke-academy","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/43281689-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/188"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12675"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12677,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12675\/revisions\/12677"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12675"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fnewspack_spnsrs_tax&post=12675"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=12675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}