December 15, 2025 – Story and photos by Joshua Ross
For the first time since the 2021-22 season, the Hingham girls basketball team won their season opener.
The 43-19 win on Friday night over Middleborough was a defensive clinic, starting with junior Eileen Lowther in the middle of the defense. The Patriot League All-Star has picked up right where she left off last season as an absolute nightmare for opponents in the paint.
“It’s always amazing when you have such a gifted shot-blocker protecting (our end),” says head coach Roland Millien. “But our defense on the perimeter, it’s been really good. We cut down on the reaching, we started be beating girls to the spot, forcing them to dribble more and give them a little bit of resistance, and I thought that led to us to get easy buckets, which got our momentum going.”
While Lowther finished with 13 points, 10 rebounds, and 7 blocked shots, she wasn’t the only one causing the Sachems problems like coach said. 11 of the 12 players had either a tipped passed or steal and nine of them had more than one.
Millien was very pleased with his team’s mentality and focus on defense, even when the shots weren’t falling early in the game.
“The things that I liked was that we executed plays when we called them,” Millien explained. “We were able to get open shots. We just didn’t we just didn’t make some in the first half, but then in the second half we started to make them and I think the best thing is the fact that even when we weren’t making shots, we still continue to play defense. And that’s gonna be a key to a lot of victories. If we don’t make shots, it’s gonna be ugly at times, but you gotta still be able to play defense.”
Nerves might have also played into, especially the first half.
“Every single one of these girls was nervous coming out tonight,” he added. “Because I asked them at halftime, I said, “how many of you guys were nervous?’ They all raised their hands. I said ‘good, it’s because you care and you should be nervous.’”
The Harborwomen come into the season as a relatively young but very experienced team. With only two seniors – captain Anna Post and Sarah Nauyokas, most of them have at least two years of varsity experience and almost half of them have three years. The eight juniors on the team all contribute and as seasoned veterans this year, have moved on from their development stage to their production stage. Junior Kate McBride will continue to shine as the team’s leading offensive weapon. She had a game high 17 points in Friday’s win. Junior captain Tatum Lane will run the offense as point guard and be as disruptive defensively on the perimeter as Lowther is in the paint. If the preseason and first game is any indication, Elizabeth Murray and Sienna Powers will make enormous impacts on games throughout the season.
“Part of the last two years was more of a development process to get them to understand the process.” Millien went on to say. “Because we ended up with eight sophomores in last year’s tournament, so part of that was just for them to understand how I’m gonna coach, how aggressive I’m gonna be, and now it’s hey, you figured it out, now it’s time to go play. They’re an intelligent group. They have great basketball IQ, and I think that showed today, some of the things that they were doing, even though they didn’t get there, it was just a step ahead. And once we connect on that basis, I think it’ll be good, but it’s very important to start strong because I think this team could be a team that can be reckoned with no matter what.”
Millien rounds out his team with two new faces – sophomore Paige Hutchinson and freshman Charlotte Paul, both seeing action on Friday night.
“Charlotte’s aggressive. I think she was a little nervous in the beginning, but I think that that comes with everything, but she played well, defensively, she was there. Paige did a good job defensively. She was in great help position, and I think that’s what we really emphasized the entire time during practices was to be in good help position.”
The Harborwomen’s next two games are on the road vs Pembroke and Marshfield this week. These should be good early tests for the girls to see if they can keep the momentum going.