Pembroke Academy senior Joe Fitzgerald, a captain on this year’s boys’ 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’s assistant coaches, Fitzgerald learned about more than just basketball — although he noted that his assistant coach helped grow his game tremendously.

Cilley’s 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’t sure he’d coach again for the foreseeable future. The time just wasn’t there.

He ultimately latched on as an assistant at Pembroke, and during that time, he’s imparted lessons beyond the court, whether he’s realized it or not.

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.

“He really just shows that no matter what’s 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,” Fitzgerald said. “That message brought the team’s spirit alive a lot of times, especially with kids that are going through some stuff at home. He was the example that once you’re on the basketball court, all that stuff from your personal life just goes away.”

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

Cilley’s 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.

“They’ve embraced him. That’s obviously warmed my heart,” Cilley said. “They call him ‘Matty Ballgame,’ and they bring him in the locker room with them, they stuff him in lockers and he loves it. He eats it up.”

That family dynamic’s been central to Pembroke’s 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.

Cilley was right at the center of the success.

“Jim works very, very hard for the kids,” Donnell said. “He does tons of video, tons of studying, develops game plans. He’s just a great person to have in our program, and we are doing nothing but benefiting from having him as part of our group.”

Pembroke’s 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’s 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’t realize their goal.

“The emotion that I saw in Jim’s 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,” Donnell said. “He truly was hurting for the kids.”

The players had helped him refocus and re-prioritize what mattered to him. It’s never easy walking away from that.

“They’ve given me additional meaning and purpose and helped me realize what my value proposition is as a human being,” Cilley said. “Being able to support them and to help them understand there’s bigger things, and it’s not necessarily about the scoreboard. Obviously we all want to win as competitors, but it’s more about who we become as people.

“There’s just greater meaning and value to how you treat your players and how you help them shape themselves as human beings.”