Julia Duggan led OCHS to state basketball title, played in college, overseas
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
UPPER TOWNSHIP – Julia Duggan has rarely been far from a basketball, but she has been far from home in a career that has taken her to Europe and back to the United States, where she is using her talents to coach college athletes.
Duggan, 25, daughter of Jay and Mary Ellen Duggan of Upper Township, is well known among Red Raider girls basketball fans. She helped lead Ocean City High School to its first Group III state championship in school history in 2013 when she was a senior. Her sister, Emily, a year older, also played for the Red Raiders and then for Gettysburg College.
The 6’1” Red Raider star, now living in Salem, Mass., scored more than 1,000 points in her high school career. She went on to play college ball at Division I Rider University, graduating in 2017 with a bachelor’s degree in communications.
When she finished her collegiate basketball career, she landed in Neuss, Germany, playing for a women’s professional team in a community right outside Dusseldorf. After the season was up, she moved back to the states and was coaching AAU for Books and Basketball, an academy in southern New Jersey.
Europe beckoned again. This time she went overseas to Geispolshem, near Strasbourg, France. She was on the roster as the center for the team during the 2018-19 season.
Duggan enjoyed both seasons in Europe, but said the style of basketball she played was very different in Germany and France.
“Basketball is universal,” she said, but she found out the styles varied.
“When I was in Germany, it was definitely more of a rough and tough battle the entire game, whereas when I was in France, it was more of a finesse type game,” she said. “They weren’t trying to bully you the whole time, they were trying to make moves and go by and lay it in or they’re out shooting threes.”
Just seeing those differences and being able to play those different styles – combined with different coaching styles – was interesting, she said.
“I lifted (weights) a lot more in Germany because you needed to be stronger. We did conditioning but it was not as much,” she explained. “It was more lifting and getting your conditioning through that, whereas in France they just wanted to run the whole time which was not my favorite,” she laughed.
She also notes that being on the teams in Germany and France was far different than playing in college.
She talked about “the grind it is every single day. It’s different. When you’re on a college team you have people who hold you accountable. But over there you’re an adult. You have to hold yourself accountable. No one is going to do it for you. You have to do it for yourself.”
Watching different coaching styles from when she was a player is helping her now as the assistant coach at Endicott College in Beverly, Mass.
“I try to take that and bring that over here too because that knowledge is going to help set my players apart from the players we play against,” Duggan said.
She also uses what she learned from her high school coach, Paul Baruffi (who just retired after this past winter season), her coach at Rider and now working under Endicott head coach Brittany Hutchinson.
Duggan said she has always felt empowered by her coaches.
“I still have a very good relationship with him (Baruffi). We talk all the time. He keeps me up to date on everything that’s going on in Ocean City and I keep him up to date on everything I’m doing up here,” she said.
Her range of experience, she said, has helped provide respect for her as a coach and she appreciates being able to be an assistant coach.
“The opportunity presented to me by coach Hutchinson at Endicott has been amazing. After I was done playing in Germany I did try getting a coaching job and nothing stuck, so getting to finally be on a coaching staff with someone who has faith in me, even as young as I was, just getting out of playing, it has really been a blessing,” she said. “She has instilled a lot of knowledge and understanding of the game and being a coach. I really appreciate that.”
Duggan was proud to be part of Endicott’s team that won the Commonwealth Coast Conference (Division III) for the first time in school history last year.
What she has enjoyed most at Endicott are “the relationships I’ve built up with my players. I’ve kind of taken over player development being their first-ever assistant coach, trying to turn that into kind of a (Division I) program. Obviously with a (Division III) model, it’s academics first, and sports come after that, but these girls are so dedicated to both their academics, keeping high GPAs, and getting into the gym and working on their craft. That takes a relationship I’ve really built up with my players through individual workouts and transforming them as players over the past two years. That’s really been great.”
She has taken her coaching cues from her own past experiences as a player.
“That’s where I built a relationship with my coaches – when I played in college. It’s having that understanding of the game and teaching that to them so when they’re on the court they’re able to put it into play or you can show them when to put it into play, being able to coach them up from a place of love,” Duggan said.
“That’s the biggest thing for me. It’s crazy seeing the coaching side of things, all the work that goes into the final product, the film breakdown, the scout breakdowns, getting the meals, getting the places we have to stay, transportation, the whole nine, it’s just wild to see it.”
Duggan noted she also loves the “in-game excitement” as a coach.
“It’s different from when I was playing, but you still get the butterflies in your stomach before a game you’re about to coach. I remember before the championship game, being so amped to play, well, for them to play,” she laughed as she corrected herself, “and to coach them up to the best of our ability was exciting.”
She looks back on her days at OCHS fondly, especially senior year as the team went all the way and won a state title.
“Senior year obviously sticks out, winning the championship and being able to give (the title) to the program, to Baruffi, because he deserves it to the utmost,” she said. “The pasta dinners with my teammates. And then tryouts the day after Thanksgiving, just being in the gym with everybody. Those are probably top three.”
She also liked playing basketball with her sister. Emily, she said, “never lets me forget we played together. We did. She said ‘Even though you won the championship after I left, we did play together.’
“It was good to have her around. She was my rock those three years. And once she went off to college (at Gettysburg), being able to watch her play and having her come to my games. My parents and Emily came over to Germany to watch me play, which was really exciting. It was nice to have them there.”
Duggan said she “never thought we would see the day” that Baruffi retired. She joked about it with him a few years ago. She asked him, “When are you going to let me take over the program?’ I think he had a great run and he really did wonders for the program and he deserves a vacation, to go somewhere warm.”
Duggan plans to continue her coaching career and looks for inspiration to female coaches, including those moving into the male basketball ranks.
“There is a female coach at the University of Maine,” she said, referring to full-time assistant Edniesha Curray, the only woman serving as a full-time assistant coach in NCAA Division I men’s basketball.
“To be able to see her do what she does, and the respect she gets from her players,” Duggan said, “I think the possibilities are endless.”
