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Shocked isn’t strong enough a word to describe the emotional tsunami that overwhelmed Northfield Mount Hermon in the wake of basketball coach John Carroll’s resignation.

The Recorder’s Thomas Johnston broke the story on March 14 that Carroll wasn’t signing his 2022-23 contract. “I learned that NMH plans to make changes to the boys basketball program [that] are not aligned with my core values as a coach and leader,” Carroll tweeted.

The exit was quick, but the storm had been brewing. Carroll wouldn’t elaborate on those philosophical differences, but a former player who requested anonymity said Head of School Brian Hargrove was pushing for “parity” among sports teams. “It was a direction the school was trying to head in and JC did not agree,” said the player. “(Hargrove) wants to make the program mediocre and JC only knows how to be great.”

The difference between varsity and JV is a varsity letter and swagger, but Carroll took it to another level.

His players got expenses, traveled to the tropics for tournaments, played pick-up when they wanted and had college coaches watching their every move

They also paid full tuition and got into colleges that reflected well on NMH. According to Adam Finklestein of New England Scouting Report, Carroll’s national program has sent 45 players to Ivy League schools the last 15 years and nearly as many to other strong academic institutions like Stanford, UNC and Michigan.

The current crop includes Notre Dame captain Nate Laszewski, Kentucky starting point guard Kellan Grady, and Harvard’s Noah Kirkwood, a first team Ivy Leaguer.

This was Carroll’s 21st year at the helm. He graduated from NMH in 1989, set scoring records at Assumption College in Worcester, and learned the coaching aspect under the legendary Bill Batty. 

When Batty retired NMH handed the reins to Carroll and gave him the autonomy to develop the team into a national powerhouse.

The 30-win seasons, New England prep school titles and yearly soirees at the national prep tournament culminated in winning the 2013 championship. “We use phrases like leaders leading leaders,” Carroll told the Boston Globe. “There are no freshmen, sophomores, juniors. There’s young leaders and old leaders. The expectation is when they go to college, they’re going to be captains, and that’s the emphasis.”

The beginning of the end for Carroll was when Head of School Peter Fayroian left in 2018. Fayroian was popular with the faculty and students, was a UVM and Middlebury grad and was a strong John Carroll ally. A Detroit native and Tigers fan, he had previously been Head of School at Greenhills in Ann Arbor.

According to the Ann Arbor Observer, his successor at Greenhills took a sabbatical after his wife died and never returned. Greenhills reached out to Fayroian who agreed to return to his roots and it’s where he remains today.

Hargrove arrived on the heels of successful fundraising efforts at Mercersburg (Pa.) Academy and the St. Mark’s School in Dallas. The board of directors likes money men, and NMH’s tuition has risen from $63,500 to $71,484 since his arrival according to the school’s website.

To outsiders everything appeared normal when the season started. In mid-January NMH was 17-0 and ranked No. 1 in the National Prep Poll, the fourth time a Carroll-coached team had reached the pinnacle. It turned out to be the season’s apex.

In late January, NMH lost at home to the South Kent (Conn.) School and dropped both ends of a home-and-away series against Brewster Academy of Wolfeboro, N.H. They lost the New England Prep School championship to Brewster, and five days later lost the National Prep School championship to Putnam (Conn.) Science Academy in West Hartford. Neither scores were close.

Carroll fired off his missive 72 hours after the season ended. It could’ve been premeditated or a knee-jerk reaction to bad news, Carroll didn’t call or reply to an email.

“There were no indications this was his last game,” said Putnam Science coach Tom Espinosa.

“Nobody expected John to do this,” an insider said of Carroll’s closing act. “They seem to be caught off guard that he would go this rogue. It was no way to leave. He should’ve acted more professional.”

Where now for Carroll? 

Hearsay has it that Harvard coach Tommy Amaker called, or he might land at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla. Others say UMass, but that’s a stretch. For now he’s going about his administrative duties at NMH and living on campus with his family. His wife Tara is a senior administrator.

Director of marketing and communications Natalie Georges emailed two press releases, “NMH’s Mission-Based Approach to Athletics” and “How NMH Will Move Forward with Men’s Basketball.”

The former was filled with platitudes for Carroll, and the latter was a rosy prospectus that ended “Onward!” signed by Hargrove.

Quite frankly, without John Carroll at the helm nobody cares. NMH is just another basketball team.

“It caught a lot of people by surprise,” said Espinosa. “John’s top notch. It’s a big loss for prep school basketball.”

The Western Mass. Chapter of the Football Hall of Fame will hold its annual dinner at the UMass Campus Center on April 3 at 5 p.m. The event will include remarks by UMass coach Don Brown and the WMass All-Scholastic team will be announced.

Longtime contributors Tim Schmitt, Jacob Jackson and Ethan Webb will be honored, and South Deerfield’s Rich Clark will be recognized as the referee of the year.

Tickets are $30. Call Robert Reardon at 413-627-0061 for details.

Three names had been bandied about to replace deposed UMass hoops coach Matt McCall. One of them, Archie Miller, was out of contention quickly. The former Dayton and Indiana coach was hired this week by URI.

St. Bonaventure coach Mark Schmidt was also rumored to be in the hunt. Schmidt is a North Attleborough native and BC grad by way of Bishop Feehan. In 2007 he left Robert Morris to coach the Bonnies and at this writing his team was in the final four of the NIT, scheduled to tip off against Xavier on Tuesday.

“Mark’s been ‘under consideration’ for a variety of jobs,” writes our man in the stands at the Reilly Center. “He’s made visits but always returned. He’s paid well and has achieved folk-hero status in western New York. It would take one helluva offer to get him to leave – and the UMass job just isn’t it.”

The well-traveled Frank Martin was fired by South Carolina after losing to Mississippi State in the first round of the SEC tournament. The gig was his on Friday, as multiple reports surfaced that he had accepted the UMass job. He took the Gamecocks to the Final Four in 2017 but they have underachieved in the four years since they were beaten by Gonzaga in the semis.

Martin’s married to Anya Forrest who was a track star (hurdles, relays) at UMass. Meanwhile his successor at South Carolina, Lamont Paris, came over from Chattanooga which is where Matt McCall was before his fortuitous jump to UMass. Suppose Matt might be back on the Chattanooga Choo Choo?

SQUIBBERS: UMass women’s coach Tory Verdi deserves a raise for winning the A-10 Championship and taking his 26-7 team to the NCAA tournament. Verdi started at $283,000 in 2018 and was making up to $326,000 this season. … Crumpin-Fox has jacked its membership fees to the price of a small SUV, abandoning its local base in hopes it will draw new blood from Greater Boston. … NMH doesn’t have the numbers to field a baseball team, but the school’s not abandoning the sport and AD Debby Ghezzi promises there’ll be a hardball team on the diamond next spring. …  Ross Tucker says one factor why the Packers traded receiver Davante Adams to Las Vegas for first (22 overall) and second (53 overall) round picks was the Packers’ 7-0 record without Adams in the lineup.… Mark Whipple is making $875,000 as Nebraska’s new offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach according to omaha.com. Whipple is mentoring Casey Thompson, a grad transfer from Texas. … Fanduel is offering gamblers “bracket parlay insurance” in the NCAA tourney. … Bobby Trivigno is playing like a kid who got snubbed in last year’s draft. His tying goal against UConn in the Hockey East final was shades of Guy Lafleur in the ’79 playoffs against Boston. … Baseball starts in two weeks and I’m going to try and make it through the season without cable TV. As Gerald Ford once said, “I watch a lot of baseball on radio.”

Chip Ainsworth is an award-winning columnist who has penned his observations about sports for four decades in the Pioneer Valley. He can be reached at chipjet715@icloud.com

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