Basketball All-Stater Anderson Moving on to Saint Paul’s

About a week after getting the exciting news that Londonderry High School sophomore basketball star Jack Anderson had received New Hampshire Division I all-state recognition from that league’s coaches, the LHS program received word that Anderson had in fact played his final game as a Lancer.

The skilled guard, who stepped into the glaring vacancy created by the serious pre-season injuries suffered by junior standout Ethan Garofalo just prior to the 2017-18 campaign and led his Lancers in scoring in pretty spectacular fashion, has decided that his academic and hoop futures lie at one of the top private institutions in the whole country at Saint Paul’s School in Concord.

The well-mannered, ever-smiling, soft-spoken 10th grader exhibited great leadership abilities during his sophomore season on the LHS varsity hoop squad, and his ability to lead garnered him the pretty rare honor of serving as a young captain on veteran coach Nate Stanton’s Londonderry High hoop squad.

The 2017-18 campaign ended far sooner than Stanton and his sixth-seeded charges would have liked thanks to the upset-minded, 11th-ranked Dover High Green Wave in the first round of the NHIAA tourney.

However, in the tournament’s wake, Anderson and senior point-guard Cole Britting were named D-I All-State Honorable Mention picks and coach Stanton won Division I Coach of the Year for the second time in the five years he has been at the LHS helm.

But it’s pretty safe to say that Stanton would hand back that coaching award in order to have the stellar basketball weapon that is Jack Anderson back in his starting lineup for the 2018-19 campaign later this calendar year.

“This is unfortunately the challenge that high school coaches are faced with more and more lately,” said Stanton after news broke officially of Anderson’s pending departure. “Jack and his family feel that this is a better opportunity for him, and I wish him all the best. As far as the loss goes, we have a solid program and we never base our success around just one guy. We have a lot of doors open with losing eight seniors, and the guys will work hard this off-season to prepare for next winter.”

Londonderry has lost players to private schools in past years, and perhaps the most prominent one who jumps to mind at the present time is another amazing guard – Caleb Green – who moved on from a season in Lancer garb to major success at Proctor Academy (Andover, NH) and then The College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass.

Former LHS star Green enjoyed a superb freshman campaign for the Holy Cross Crusaders during their rather sub-par 2017-18 season, starting all 31 of the 12-19 Crusaders’ contests and averaging a team-high 33.2 minutes of court-time, 8.9 points per game, 90 assists (also tops on the team), and 25 steals.

Green led Holy Cross in scoring in four of its games, throwing down 22 points against Fairleigh-Dickinson and also excelling in the points category against Army (18), Rhode Island (14), and Manhattan College (11).

In making his move from Londonderry to Saint Paul’s, Jack Anderson joins a hoop contingent which will need the kind of scoring and leadership that the skilled guard provided his Lancers this past winter.

First-year coach Max Gordon’s Big Red squad went 2-20 in New England Private School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) Class A during its 2017-18 season, and four of the top players from that struggling squad will graduate this spring.