Christina Batastini: St. Andrew’s Coach on D1 Guard Musts

Stanford Final Four guard, pro vet, and USA Basketball 3x3 U23 coach Christina Batastini joins Cory to deliver clear, no-nonsense guidance for families navigating prep school basketball. Now the head coach at St. Andrew’s School (NEPSAC AAA), Christina breaks down what truly translates to college—defending your position, decision-making, and making teammates better—and why the Ivy League is real Division I basketball. She explains the prep vs AAU recruiting dynamic, the difference between offers and interest, and how the transfer portal has shifted commitment timelines (and why late spring/summer decisions are increasingly normal). You’ll also hear how reclassing or a post-grad year can be used strategically—without forcing a path that doesn’t fit the student-athlete. If you want practical answers on exposure, academic fit, and the right level (AAA/AA vs A), this conversation keeps the hype out and the player development in.

💡 Key Topics

 📌 Ivy League basketball level & academic balance (Ivy League recruiting, high-academic D1)
 📌 Reclass vs Post-Grad strategy (reclassing timing, post-grad year structure)
 📌 Offers vs Interest & portal era timing (scholarship strategy, commitment windows)
 📌 NEPSAC AAA exposure and scheduling (college visibility, national showcases)
 📌 D1 guard essentials (defense, decision-making, basketball IQ, shooting)
 📌 Prep vs AAU roles in recruiting (placement strategy, coach communication)

🏀 About Christina Batastini:

 A Parade/Nike All-American and Stanford guard who reached the Final Four, Christina played professionally across Europe before coaching at Brown and leading USA Basketball 3x3 U23 Women. She is the Head Girls’ Coach at St. Andrew’s School (NEPSAC AAA), where her teams compete nationally and place student-athletes at collegiate programs.

🔗 Connect with Christina Batastini:

Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/sasrigirlsprephoops/
Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/sasriathletics
Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/christinabatastini
Twitter | https://x.com/SASRIAthletics
Twitter | https://x.com/SASRIGirlsHoops
Email | CBatastini@standrews-ri.org
Website | https://www.standrews-ri.org/

🔗 Connect with Cory:
 
Website | https://www.prepathletics.com
Twitter | https://twitter.com/PREP_Athletics
Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/prep.athletics/
Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/PrepAthletics
Email | coryheitz@gmail.com
Phone | 859-317-1166

🔖 Subscribe to the PREP Athletics Podcast:

iTunes | https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/prep-athletics-podcast/id1546265809?uo=4
Spotify | https://open.spotify.com/show/6CAKbXFiIOhoHinzsReYbJ
Amazon | https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/3c37179d-3371-47f9-9d97-fd569e8802a7/prep-athletics-basketball-podcast #AmazonMusic  

Transcript

Cory Heitz (00:00)
Welcome to this week's episode of the prep athletics podcast. I'm proud to have on my friend, Christina Batastini, the head coach at the St. Andrew's school in Barrington, Rhode Island. Christina was a parade all American, Nike, all American, new England player of the year back in high school. And she chose to play at Stanford and her first year there, they went to the final four and she won pack 10 titles, three or four years. And after that, she got to play professionally all over Europe.

came back and coached at Brown, coached in high school, and she's been, I think she's now entering her seventh season as a girls coach at the St. Andrew's school. And we get into it. We talk about her basketball, playing for a legendary coach at Stanford, the pros and cons of playing in Europe, how she talks to families about their recruiting goals and what she's going to do for them, what it takes to be a D1 guard, some of the best players she's coached against. Doesn't matter what level you play at ⁓ in the prep school world, New England.

and more. So we really get into it. It's great having her on. ⁓ Our dog, Maple barks a little bit in it. She's coughing a little bit with the cold, but that's how podcasts work. Right? So you get the, you get the full flavor of it. If you like what you hear, please be sure to subscribe and all the major podcasting platforms. Subscribe to us on YouTube so you don't miss a beat and you get bonus content and go to prepathletics.com to sign up for our newsletter, which comes out every month. So with that, enjoy my podcast with coach Christina Batastini here today.

Christina Batastini (01:52)
Hey Cory, how's it going? Glad to be here.

Cory Heitz (01:50)
Christina, welcome to the podcast.

Good, glad we finally got you on after years of requesting you and we finally got some time on your busy schedule. So it's a pleasure to have you here. And I want to start out by asking you about kind of your background. You grew up in Rhode Island and you became a really, really good basketball player back to winning the New England Player of the Year award before going to Stanford. So let's step back. How'd you get into basketball and how'd you get so good?

Christina Batastini (01:57)
You

I'll try to be pretty concise, but it's a rather long story. So my father was a youth basketball coach. He coached basketball for 68 years before he retired. So I was pretty much, ⁓ I grew up in the gym, had the opportunity to watch him coach. I played for him for years as a youth basketball player. And I think it was kind of a collision of two things. One, he was an excellent coach. And two, ⁓ I happened to be...

a pretty sound athlete. it was an interesting twist of events for him. You know, he coached 68 years and I think I was probably his only player that went on to play at like a really high level of division one. So was sort of this like gift that we were both given. And then after I played for him at the youth level, I went on to classical high school, which is a public high school out of Providence. And as you mentioned, New England player of the year, Nike Parade All-American.

which ultimately allowed me to earn a full scholarship to Stanford University. I was there from 96 to 2000. In 96, we were the number one team in the country. We went into the NCAA tournament with only one loss to Old Dominion. And ultimately, we lost in the final four in double overtime to Old Dominion. But that was an unbelievable experience. I think through my four years at Stanford, we're Pac-10 champions. Following my collegiate career, I played professionally overseas, started in Italy.

Then I went to Scandinavia, Norway and Sweden. Then I finished up my professional career in Switzerland. My last year was pretty amazing. I was actually a player coach, kind of like Bob Cousy back in the day. So I not only coached the team in French, but I also played for the team during the games. At the time, at 26, I thought I was old. But now looking back, I realized that was quite the responsibility.

And then once I got home, when I was 26, I started coaching at Brown University. I followed that up by immediately after a year. I didn't think that college coaching was for me. So I got into coaching at the prep level. So I the Lincoln School for about six, seven years. Then I got my master's degree from Harvard. I took a little break when I had my daughter. And then I started coaching again when she was five. And I've coached her all the way through. She's currently a junior.

She placed for me here at St. Andrew's. So my coaching career is kind of like an inverted pyramid. I started out coaching professionally. I went all the way down to five year olds. Now I'm back at a pretty high level prep school. it's been a very cool experience. And in the last three years, I've had the opportunity to coach at the national team level with the United States Olympic program. So I am the 3X3 U23 women's national team coach.

⁓ which again is very different than five on five. ⁓ But I think if you would ask me like some of my proudest moments as a player and a coach, I would say that coaching with USA basketball is definitely my number one achievement.

Cory Heitz (05:25)
I'm going to step back and some of the things you said there. That's awesome. I love it. You helped get me going on some of these questions here. You chose Stanford, but you being a caliber player, you were, I'm sure you had other amazing options out there. Who were some of the other final schools you were down to before you ultimately chose the Cardinal?

Christina Batastini (05:27)
Sure, I'm sorry, that was a long answer.

So Stanford got in late. ⁓ I was, I wouldn't say under recruited. Coming out of Rhode Island, ⁓ we don't produce, or back then, we don't produce a lot of ⁓ high level Division I players. So I think there was a reputation that I couldn't do it. Probably not until my junior year did people recognize that maybe I could play Division I. So I was being recruited by high academic, ⁓ Ivy League, Patriot League schools, and then Stanford saw me.

pretty late. I believe it was April of my junior year. I went to the USA basketball. I don't even remember what it's called. They don't have it anymore. Olympic Festival tryouts. ⁓ Ironically, they were at Old Dominion and that's when Coach Vandiver saw me play. So they saw me spring of junior year. Prior to that, I was looking at Biggie schools, Villanova, Providence, Wake Forest, ⁓ Tulane, Boston College. So my last five.

was Providence, Boston College, Wake Forest, Tulane, and then Stanford. And again, Stanford came in late, so I wanted to go to a full scholarship, high academic institution. ⁓ I actually really wanted to go to Harvard. Both of my parents were teachers. And then ⁓ in terms of the aid package, it didn't come back where we needed it to be. So that's where I focused more on the high academic full scholarship division ones.

Cory Heitz (07:07)
Yeah, absolutely. then playing at Stanford, mean, you played for a legendary coach. What did you take away from her during your time there?

Christina Batastini (07:15)
I think that my greatest takeaway was her level of preparation. Our practices were incredibly intense. And if you didn't show up every single day, absolutely focused on what we were trying to do, it was unacceptable. her level of, what's the word I'm looking for? Her expectation level was super high. I'm talking about taking a day off. You couldn't take a breath off.

⁓ Also the way in which she, ⁓ she was one the first coaches I played for that was absolutely obsessed with film. So she'd go home at night and watch hours of film. So I think the one thing I learned from playing at Stanford ⁓ was the degree of diligence that you need. If you want to play at that high level, and we're not talking like average high level, we're talking you want to be in the top 10 in the United States. ⁓ She really pushed us in ways that I had not yet encountered.

especially coming from Rhode Island in a small place.

Cory Heitz (08:19)
Yeah, unbelievable. just that experience you had of those four years just was probably unlike most people. So it's cool to see that. But, you mentioned your pro career and you hear some people right on the men's and women's side to have some just really tough places they go to to play professionally. And you kind of went to the other end and played in amazing places your whole professional career. So what were the best parts of playing internationally and what were some of the worst parts or most challenging of playing internationally?

Christina Batastini (08:20)
Yeah.

So I

was really fortunate my first year in Italy, obviously I have an Italian last name so they thought that they'd be able to get me Italian citizenship, which I was really close. So that's how I ended up in Italy. I played the second half of the year. I went out there in December. That was the first time I ever missed Christmas. And then following Italy when I was unable to attain Italian citizenship, which would have completely changed the outcome of my professional career because then I could have played as a European player.

and then heading to Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, I think the one thing that I took away most is, you know, the contract may read a certain way, but upon arrival, everything is very different. It's not the same apartment. It's not the same car. It might not even be a car. It is not, oftentimes, you know, you don't get paid a certain month.

especially women's basketball when the amount of money wasn't really significant enough to make a living. Like you really had to love the game. And I was fortunate as a child, my mom again was an educator. She was a high school English teacher, but she was huge in terms of like education through traveling. So starting at the age of eight, all the way through 14 until my athletic career became pretty impossible to travel. She took me with her. I was her little travel companion. So I was accustomed to traveling overseas in ways that I think some

young women don't have that experience. So when I got overseas and things became difficult, ⁓ I loved the game so much that I just persisted and stayed with it ⁓ and made it through. Although I will tell you a funny story. When I was in Norway right before the holiday break, ⁓ I did get called in by the committee and I was sent home ⁓ because I shot the ball too much.

Cory Heitz (10:39)
Come on, American.

Christina Batastini (10:40)
Yeah, that was it. was, you know, honestly, I was trying to pad my stats a little bit so I could get out of Norway and get to get to a better situation, which ultimately I did. I ended up playing in Sweden. But yeah, I got fired playing in Norway at the time. It was not funny. But now looking back, it was pretty interesting experience. And then the other thing that that's interesting that I had to learn as a young person, if you were being paid to play.

and your team goes out and you win a game and you score 12 points. After the game, you're out with the team, you're out with the committee, everyone's buying, you know, they're buying you drinks, you're a great time, you go on a dinner. If you lose the game and as a foreign player, you score 28, they're trying to fire you the next day. So for me, it was like week to week. That pressure of not only performing, but also getting that win was...

was something that I hadn't experienced prior to playing overseas. Because they're reactive. So you can have a great game, your team loses, it doesn't matter. You didn't do enough and we're gonna go try to find a better foreign player that can take your spot.

Cory Heitz (11:53)
I love that you say that because you and I pitch foreign players all the time about coming to the U S to learn the U S culture and style of play. And there you had to learn that style of playing culture from them to keep your job. So just interesting. And in it.

Christina Batastini (11:57)
Right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was funny because

each country was different. Like when I first got to Italy, I was coming out of a system like Stanford was very system driven. And it was, you you play defense, you rebounded, you move the basketball, you were, you know, limited your dribbles. You weren't seeking your own offense. That's how you get in the game there. And if you turned it over, forget it, you're sitting down. So I get to Italy and a couple of weeks into my time there, the head coach called me over and he's like, they called me Cri.

And they're like, you're good. You shoot, like you defend, you rebound, pass. Then he goes, but you must, you must shoot score. You must shoot score. And I'm like, is this guy telling me to like, pervert like in the American standards, you want me to gun? you, every time I get it, you want me to score. And that was his message. Then I went to, you know, Scandinavia and it was more of a climate where, you know, everything was even, right? I don't know if it had anything to with like the socialist background, but it was, you know.

Cory Heitz (13:04)
Right?

Christina Batastini (13:05)
Everything was like, no, you gotta share the basketball. And we played, even the Americans who were ⁓ being paid to play, we played half games. It was a wild experience. Then we went to Switzerland, then I went to Switzerland and it was sort of that nice balance where, you know, you're competitive, but that's when it came into play where, like, if you're not playing, if we're not winning, we are shipping you out and finding someone better.

Cory Heitz (13:30)
What a mess. a fun experience, right?

Christina Batastini (13:33)
Yeah, it was amazing. the time, ⁓ was very emotionally, like obviously, like if you play basketball at that level, in the way that I grew up, I was very like emotionally involved in my professional career. Now looking back, it's just a story that I get to tell, like my daughter and my players. I've got another very interesting story. My first year in Switzerland, I think we went, we lost two games the entire season. ⁓ And then right before the playoffs, they replaced me with a player from the Ukraine.

So I had to sit on the bench during the entire playoffs in order to receive my salary and watch another girl play in my spot during the playoffs. After we'd only lost two games, ultimately the team did not advance and did not win the Swiss Championship. So it was just wild. It was just really bizarre. like, you have one player the entire year and right before the playoffs, you're going to switch out the foreigner because you don't think that, you know, that one player, you thought you'd

you could do better after you've developed a chemistry and sort of a sense of how to play together. those kind of things happened in Europe ⁓ that at a young age were shocking, but now looking back, I'm like, of course, that makes sense, you know?

Cory Heitz (14:49)
Do know that happened in the NBA? Um, Chris Webber, right? NBA all star leader of the Kings. He was out all season, maybe a season and a half of the micro fracture and he had surgery and my cousin was playing on the Kings at the time and they were like the top, team in the NBA, right? And right near the playoffs is the number one seed. Webber's healthy, but he hadn't played in a year and a half. So do you bring him back and screw up the chemistry or you're paying them all this money? Do you put them in, you know, do you keep them out or not? They brought them back, screwed up the chemistry.

Christina Batastini (15:03)
well.

Yeah.

Cory Heitz (15:19)
And the number one team in the NBA was bounced in the second round. So it does happen even here at the highest level. it's just, that's the beauty of sports though, right? It's just that, that chess playing.

Christina Batastini (15:22)
Yep.

Right, when you're

being paid to play. It's business at that point. ⁓

Cory Heitz (15:31)
Yeah.

When you coached at Brown, obviously the Ivy League is a league a lot of prep school players want to go to. What were your takeaways from being in the Ivy League?

Christina Batastini (15:40)
So I was at Brown 2004 to 2005. I can tell you my first experience walking in, I knew the coach for a long time. She recruited me out of high school. She eventually became a really close friend of my dad, a family friend. And I walked in the first day and this is when people, I'm gonna date myself, VHSs, right? There were like ⁓ hundreds of VHSs stacked in the corner and they were like, Coach Battistein, your job for the next two weeks is to.

Cory Heitz (16:04)
Okay.

Christina Batastini (16:09)
watch those VHS tapes and tell us if anyone who's interested in Brown is actually good enough to play here. And my standards were not appropriate because there were a bunch of kids that actually sent us their tape that ended up playing at Harvard and winning an Ivy League championship. And one of the assistants after the fact was like, who reviewed this tape? Like, who said this kid wasn't any good? And I'm just like, it may have been me. Sorry, it may have been me. ⁓

Cory Heitz (16:20)
Right.

Move.

Christina Batastini (16:39)
It was a wild experience. ⁓ That was when the women's basketball recruiting calendar was vastly different than it is now. So the entire month of July was an open window. So we recruited ⁓ the every single day. So as a 26 year old, ⁓ I was recruiting the West Coast because of my connections having played at Stanford that would resonate more with recruits. So I was sent out West to recruit in Oregon, ⁓ Washington.

Cory Heitz (17:02)
Mm-hmm.

Christina Batastini (17:08)
There was also big tournament in Las Vegas and then I kind of made my way back across the country. So we were tasked at, and this was before like the internet and all the things that we have at our fingertips now. I was watching half games from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. for basically like 31 days straight. I midway through I remember like, you know, I had one of those.

one of those razor flip phones and I was talking to my sister and I was like, I'm seeing basketball demons. I can't even watch these games. Everything was just, so you'd go, you'd watch these games and we had a system with five different colors, had pluses and minuses. Then you'd get back to the office after being a month on the road. You'd have to input it all into the database and then you'd have to call their schools and ask for their transcripts because we didn't know who was academic and who wasn't.

⁓ So it was a major challenge as a young coach ⁓ to recruit at that level. ⁓ But the upside was when we did start practice, the players were so like high intellectual, high IQ, they were very, very easy to coach. They were tell-it-once kids. ⁓ They were excited to be at Brown, the campus itself, the community at Brown. My father went there. My grandfather went there.

I coached there, my daughter's father coached there. ⁓ So we have a really strong connection to the Brown community. And it was an enjoyable experience. It just wasn't for me at that age. I think if I had maybe started coaching later ⁓ or started coaching at a full scholarship school where we weren't recruiting everyone we were seeing, it would have been a little bit more enticing for me to stay at the collegiate level. ⁓

But I love the Ivy League. Obviously I'm from New England. It's where I wanted to go to school. And financially we could have made it work. ⁓ So it was a great first stepping stone into coaching, like within the American ranks.

Cory Heitz (19:19)
Yeah, well, let me ask you this. So a lot of players you and I deal with want to go the Ivy leagues. What do they need to know about the Ivy leagues? They might not know. Like you have the inside scoop from being there. You deal with coaches from that league right now. Like what is something kids don't realize or parents don't realize about the Ivy league that you think they should?

Christina Batastini (19:38)
That's interesting. know, so much has changed. It's been over 20 years since I coached at that level, which is really, it's really frightening to say that out loud because I don't see myself as being 20 years away from coaching at Brown. I think the first thing people need to recognize, especially now, is that the Ivy League level of basketball is legitimate, like Division I high level.

Cory Heitz (19:44)
But you're still dealing with them on a daily basis.

Christina Batastini (20:05)
⁓ I think back in the day, ⁓ maybe even when I was in high school, there was sort of this assumption that if you played at the Ivy League, you were low division one. That is not true. That is absolutely not true. Go watch an Ivy League practice, go watch an Ivy League game. You have to be an exceptional basketball player to play at that level, like period. That's it. ⁓ Academically, ⁓ I think they do a really good job of balancing the pressures of athletics.

Cory Heitz (20:15)
Yeah.

Christina Batastini (20:34)
and academics in ways that maybe some higher level Division I programs don't do. ⁓ So while it may seem like a daunting task to play high level Division I basketball and the same time balance the academics and the stresses, they have sort of ⁓ safeguards in place where their student athletes are not practicing as much. ⁓ They do have like, I believe they have like more time during exam periods. So I think it is manageable. ⁓

But I also think that ⁓ whatever rumor is out there about the Ivy League as being like softer or easier or not as athletically ⁓ high level, it's completely incorrect. And I think it is a fantastic ⁓ conference. if I had a choice where a lot of my high school players would play, I would have them play that.

Cory Heitz (21:29)
Gotcha. Love it. you're now at St. Andrew's school in Rhode Island, Darrington, Rhode Island. We've worked on a lot of players. Obviously Mike Hart has been on the podcast. He's a great friend of the program. For those that don't know about your school, give us a pitch on St. Andrew's school and your basketball program.

Christina Batastini (21:35)
Yup.

Sure, so St. Andrew's is a private school. We are sort of half boarding and half day. We're located in Barrington, Rhode Island, which is about 20 minutes from Providence, which by the way is an amazing city. If you haven't visited, you should definitely visit. We're an hour from Boston and about three hours from New York. So in terms of location and recruitment, if you come here as a student athlete, we are really in a perfect location for those Ivy Leagues, the Patriot League, we have Great Northern Nescahack.

We just have a bunch of conferences ⁓ and schools surrounding our campus that are high level athletic and academics. I would say that the basketball tradition here started when Coach Mike Hart got here. He's been here 32 years. He's produced 178 college players, which he just reminded me about recently. So he started the program on the men's side. He sent five guys to the NBA. ⁓ When I was in high school and then when I came home,

and I was coaching at Brown, St. Andrew's men's basketball, boys basketball, however you want to call it. They were a national name. So he took a very small school in terms of the basketball program and put them on the map. ⁓ Literally like eight years ago, I got the call from Mike. He's been a, I mean, we're from Rhode Island, everybody knows each other. So he was a good friend of my brother's. He actually did the score book. So when I was playing high school basketball as a freshman, he was on like the score table.

So I'm like 14, 15 years old running around playing at Smithfield High School and coach Mike Hart is sitting there doing the score book. So I've known him forever. He gave me a call eight years ago and said, hey, we want to build the girls program ⁓ to be like, you know, on the same level as the guys program. Would you be interested? And I said, absolutely. When I was at the Lincoln school for seven years, we played against St. Andrew's and I saw their potential. They had invested a little bit more on the guys side at that time. And I was so excited eight years ago.

when they decided let's do this with the girls. So the team moved up to double A, which was the highest level in New England at the time. We are now triple A. And I would contest that it is the best or arguably the best league in the Northeast. Every single game we are playing against teams that have three to four, could be more, division one players. McDonald's, All-Americans, Carolyn Duchar from Yukon.

Aaliyah Boston from South Carolina are some of the big names that have come out of our conference. ⁓ Last year, ⁓ we played a team that had a player going to Kentucky who was a McDonald's All-American, a player going to Vanderbilt, a player committed to Providence College, a player committed to Colgate, and then three or four other younger players who have a number of Division I scholarship offers. ⁓ Our schedule is the national schedule.

So when I compare it to how I grew up in my high school, like we didn't, our games were probably 30 minute drives. ⁓ We will go to Virginia, Arizona, New York, New Jersey. So we go to a lot of the high level showcases that other schools aren't able to go to. So we're in NEPSAC AAA, but we're actually not part of a smaller league. We're allowed to play 30 games. So we are required to play 14 of those against AAA teams.

The other 16, we can play against whoever we want. And that's where I like to challenge our players and myself and put us out there so we can get the maximum exposure. So in the seven, this is my seventh season. So in the six seasons that I've been here, ⁓ every single player that's come through the door has gone on to play collegiate basketball, mostly at the division one level. But we have division twos and some division threes. The division threes have all been high academic.

⁓ And I think we're able to achieve that because of our scheduling and also because of the nature of being at a private school like St. Andrew's. I'm a huge proponent of playing multiple sports, but if our basketball players choose not to play in the fall, we do have like a comprehensive 11 week preseason conditioning, lifting and open gyms that we offer. Our season goes from the second week in November until the second week in March. ⁓ In the spring, we connect them with

the higher level aau programs. So anyone who comes here, whether they're from Canada or Spain or Germany, we connect them with the best programs in New England. And so in the spring, they can play aau with those programs and continue to get seen. I just think St. Andrew's in terms of like the academics and the basketball piece, it's a really unique place. I think if players come here and they are self starters and you know, if they are...

⁓ really aggressive in pursuing what they want, can get it here. We have two gyms that are available all the time. We've got a brand new weight room that is also almost available all the time to them. ⁓ And it's just a relaxed campus environment, small class sizes. I think the teachers here are absolutely fantastic. I talked a little bit about my academic background. ⁓ Both of my parents were educators, went to Stanford and Harvard.

My daughter goes to school here and if this weren't a place that I believed in in terms of the academics and the teachers and the culture that they've set in their classrooms, like I wouldn't be here. So I just think it's a fantastic ⁓ prep school environment that a lot of people don't know about, but they probably should.

Cory Heitz (27:17)
Yeah. And we've talked about that. Me, you, other girls coaches is how do we let folks outside of New England know that this option exists? Right. And mind you, there's prep schools, other prep schools for girls that are high level outside of New England. I'm a couple, but like, it's just letting them know. And then, ⁓ the families you do talk to from outside of New England, are they finding you? Are you finding them or is your team mostly New England players?

Christina Batastini (27:20)
Yeah.

Right. ⁓

It's been a combination. ⁓ So when you mentioned the prep school thing, ⁓ it's a real, that is real. ⁓ I travel a lot with USA Basketball, whether it's, you know, I'm going overseas or I'm staying within the United States and I've lectured a few times, ⁓ you know, with USA Basketball to other coaches. And when I introduced myself as a prep coach, a lot of coaches are like, well, is that...

higher than varsity, is that a level below varsity. And then I have to explain that prep basketball for me and for us means that we offer a post-grad year, which is something that people kind of from outside this region don't really understand. So we can take players who have already graduated high school for an additional year and for whatever needs ⁓ the player may have. It could be academics, it could be injury. ⁓ But I've had teams in the past

that are like, you know, have a couple of 20 year olds and 19 year olds ⁓ on a high school team. But we're able to give that fifth year to student athletes, which is unique. There are only a few schools in New England ⁓ that offer that. ⁓ It's also become pretty normalized here in New England to reclass. So even if you are academically sound, socially sound, and you're not injured, a lot of players will reclass. And reclassing has become ⁓ pretty standard here at St. Andrew's as well.

⁓ So I kind of lost track a little bit with that answer. ⁓ But yeah, it's just people don't really understand what it is outside of New England. ⁓ And they don't really know that it's an option. So if you're not from this area and you're a senior in high school and you don't have the looks that you want, right? Like you've worked your entire life, you had goals to possibly play.

Again, I'm gonna go back to Ivy League, I'm gonna go back to Patriot League, whatever level you wanna play at. And you're a senior and you're not getting what you want. We are the choice to not settle. And that's a big thing for me. I talk to my daughter about it all the time. I'm like, don't settle. If this is what you want, try to go get it and we'll figure out a way to do that. St. Andrew's is a place where you can do that. So if you're a junior or a senior, you're injured, you need an additional class, you're not getting recruited at the level that you think and another year is going to help you.

Wear that program, wear that school that can get you there. Especially with how we travel, the exposure tournaments that we attend. I think they get pretty good coaching here. We have a lot of respect from college coaches because they know when they come out of this program, they're going to be more college ready than most. In terms of basketball IQ, understanding what college coaches want from you.

⁓ I think we're able to do that ⁓ and I think we do that pretty well. ⁓ So it's just a great option for anyone. Now you don't have to be from New England. We've had players this year on our team. We have a player from Canada. We have two players from Germany. We have a player from Spain. We have a player from New York. So five of our nine players are from outside of New England. The other four are from Rhode Island. So that's kind of been our split since I've been here.

The Rhode Island players, mostly our day students, obviously the international and the ones who live farther away, they're in the dorms.

Cory Heitz (31:09)
I love it. Now tell me this, your coaching experience, both at the professional ranks, the DUI ranks, USA basketball ranks, like what do you take from that, that you incorporate now into your team?

Christina Batastini (31:21)
So I think most recently, the biggest thing I've learned in terms of USA basketball and having the opportunity to coach these super high level basketball players, ⁓ the difference for me is like when you coach a player like Haley Vanliff or Cameron Brink and these other high level like collegiate slash WNBA players, their will to win, their competitive nature, that competitive spirit, ⁓

is so intense. It like burns off of them when you're around them. And if you have that desire to compete the way that they do, it's only natural that their preparation and how they work in practice and all the things they do off the court mirror that intensity and their desire to win. And that's the one thing that has struck me that I try to talk to my players about.

⁓ Maybe they were like that when they were 15, 16 years old or maybe they had someone who told them, like, hey, Haley, hey, Cam, this is what you need to do. ⁓ But that sort of like intrinsic, ⁓ like unstoppable desire to like win ⁓ was unbelievable. Like I was able to coach those young women. think it was two summers ago. We were in Canada for like a 3x3 women's series event and it was...

It was an incredible thing to be around and realize that like that's the level that we can all possibly get to. ⁓ You know, if we want to compete and enjoy competing and winning because they were just like stone cold winners. ⁓ It was awesome to be around and I'm trying to instill that into the young woman that played for me at St. Andrew's.

Cory Heitz (33:09)
Gotcha. Now, if a family is looking into the option of reclassifying or not, what advice do you give them?

Christina Batastini (33:16)
So for me, I don't force a reclass. The great thing about St. Andrew's is if you come here, let's say you're in the class of 26, meaning you're a senior this year, and you come to St. Andrew's as a 26, and you don't want to come in as a 27, right? Because maybe as a 26, you'll be seen, you'll get what you want, you can graduate on time, and then you can go play scholarship level basketball.

what we can do here, can come in and stay in your class, and then if you don't necessarily get what you want and you don't want to settle, we can then post-grad you, which is pretty amazing. So a lot of families, particularly families that aren't from the United States, they're uncomfortable with the idea of reclassing. ⁓ They'd rather keep them in their grade, keep them with their social age group, and then it doesn't work out, they can then post-grad. ⁓

So yeah, we don't, if someone wants to post grad, 100%, but I don't force families to do that. I think they need to be comfortable with where they want to put their child. again, what's cool about us is that we don't have to force people to do anything. They can come, they can reclass, they can stay in their class, and then if they need a year, they can then post grad. So they can get what they need by coming here without having to like shift.

their ideals or like make any major changes to their kids like educational path.

Cory Heitz (34:47)
Yeah, makes sense. Now for those kids that do post-grad, what does the academic year look like for them?

Christina Batastini (34:53)
So it's a legitimate post-grad year. ⁓ They are in school. The second half of the year, ⁓ they're in an internship, but they're also able to earn six college credits during their post-grad years. So we offer a couple classes through Syracuse University. So they come here, they are in class, they're earning college credits. And the second half of the year, they are interning in whatever ⁓ interest or specialty they may want to continue in someday, either as a major.

or as some sort of employment opportunity. ⁓ So yeah, the post-grad year, it's not just show up and play basketball and take an art class. ⁓ It's a real year where they're getting real development and again gaining college credit, which is fantastic.

Cory Heitz (35:42)
Yeah, that's great. I think the college credit thing is great. And sometimes families need to know this. Those college credits will not transfer to a college you choose. But what I tell families is, ⁓ worst case scenario, if that happens, at least you now know what a college classroom is like, and you're going to be much more prepared for it. Yeah. Now, ⁓ what's your college placement strategy? Like with the transfer portals, with all the other avenues that college coaches are looking at now.

Christina Batastini (35:58)
Exactly. ⁓

Cory Heitz (36:09)
Are you doing a majority of this? Are you letting the aau team do it? Is it a blend? What do you tell families that ask you about your placement strategy?

Christina Batastini (36:16)
It's definitely a blend. think, you know, during the basketball season, the college coaches are coming to the high school coach. During the AAU season, they are predominantly dealing with the AAU coach. ⁓ It's been wild for me. ⁓ In the past couple years, we've had a number of players go Division I, and I have not spoken to some of their college coaches, ⁓ which is a misstep, in my opinion. ⁓ I don't mean to disparage some college coaches, but...

Cory Heitz (36:43)
Mm-hmm.

Christina Batastini (36:46)
I would think you'd want to talk to the high school coach. ⁓ Only because, not only because, ⁓ you know, high school basketball is significantly different than AAU basketball. We have to win games. ⁓ You know, there's a score that matters. And, you know, when it's time and score, you need to be able to do what you're being asked to do. I don't think that's necessarily the case with AAU. ⁓ I also think that high school basketball, specifically at the Nepstack level,

mirrors college basketball a lot more. There is structure in the game. ⁓ There are things that you have to be able to do in a competitive environment ⁓ that you're not necessarily asked to do in AAU. So it would make sense to me that a college coach would speak to the high school coach, but really for me, my experience in last few years is that college coaches deal with me during our high school season, but once against the AAU, the spring and summer, it's the AAU coaches that they communicate with.

Fortunately for us again in New England, it's a very small area and with girls basketball, I know all of those aau coaches. We have a great rapport. So I'm on the phone with them a lot. So while the college coaches might not be talking to me specifically outside of our season, I am talking to those aau coaches ⁓ about where that fit may be. And it's just that it's a completely different.

environment than it was and the only thing can compare it to is like how it was when I was when I came out of high school right you came out of high school you were recruited you were offered an official visit you took the official visit maybe at the end of that official visit they offered you a scholarship then you went home you thought about it or maybe you had your home visit because you also took home visits

And now it's different. It's like, we're going to offer you to express interest. And then we're going to recruit you. And I think that's created a lot of issues, not only for the players, but for the parents, where you've got young players.

who are not college ready and they're receiving offers and I think that changes their approach. I think it changes their parents' ⁓ Unfortunately, in most situations, it makes them harder to coach ⁓ because now you're subbing out, you're taking out a Division I player for someone who doesn't have offers and it's like, what's going on? Why is my Division I kid on the bench when you have other players in the game?

And it's kind of a ⁓ reversal world for me. The other issue is those offers, as I said, to me, they come across more as interest and they go away, but they kind of silently go away. ⁓ I had a player a few years ago who I thought was an absolute unbelievable talent. She received one offer in the winter. ⁓ She decided to play the spring and the summer.

didn't get any other offers, called up the school and said, hey, I'd like to take the offer. And they said, like, you know, our bad, but you know, someone else took it. But without even communicating that to her. So she played the entire spring summer thinking she was going to get better, a better deal. She didn't get a better deal. She went back and it's gone. Which is only, which is fair, but it's only fair if you let that player know that that offer is contingent upon maybe you, maybe you offered 25 other players.

Cory Heitz (40:15)
Yeah.

Christina Batastini (40:21)
which is happening in this region. in terms of, you your question was about college placement, it's kind of a wild time because ⁓ there's, you know, we've got players here who have offers, ⁓ but they're not necessarily talking to those programs anymore. So are those offers real? And then we came across a situation, there's been a lot of rhetoric, there's been a lot of talk about how the transfer portal is going to affect high school players.

and a high school player that maybe four years ago would have been able to get a scholarship to Division I-II. They're now being replaced by seasoned players who are in the portal. But then this year, very late into the summer, I was recruiting a European player who had graduated high school. She was going to come here in post-grad. And then at the last minute, she had these super high level

I'm talking top 10 teams come in. So she ended up going to play for like a top 10 team in the United States, right? As a 25. So, what's that?

Cory Heitz (41:31)
And what month was that?

What month was that?

Christina Batastini (41:35)
⁓ gosh, was, this all transpired right around St. Andrew's graduation. So was June. It wasn't late summer, it was June. So in June of this year, I thought I had secured this unreal player from Europe. know, was signed, sealed, and delivered. I'm telling everybody about it. A week later, she gets a call. She takes a trip. Now she's at a top 10 school ⁓ in the United States as of 2025.

Cory Heitz (41:42)
Let's see.

Yeah.

Christina Batastini (42:04)
So this was

a June commitment. And I think that's also shifting. now you have, not only do have a portal, right? But you also have the opportunity to enter the portal. So you have these division one schools who they really don't know what their roster is gonna look like. So when it comes May and they have four roster spots available, right? And some of those high school kids, I don't think this like doom and gloom about the portal ⁓ is accurate. think yes, initially they're gonna, people,

Some college coaches are going to look into the portal, but then they also have to fill a roster that has lost spots because those kids are in the portal if that makes any sense. So I think we're going to see a lot of like late commitments now than we hadn't seen before. And I think the November commitment period ⁓ may be, you know, more sparsely like you're going to see a lot less sidings potentially in November because of everything that's changed.

But do I think ⁓ high school kids are going to be negatively affected by the portal? ⁓ For me, I'm not sure. But I'm at a school where if you are negatively affected by the portal, we offer that post-grad here. So there's light. If it doesn't work out for you, you can still have that additional year.

Cory Heitz (43:29)
Yeah. And a couple of points of what you just said, you know, it's that I call it herpes, right? Because when a kid gets a call or text from a D1 assistant coach, even if it's one from that point on, they think they're D1. You can never kill that dream, whether it's realistic or not. And these families got to know these assistant coaches are calling hundreds of kids, not knowing which ones might take off or not. Two, um,

This whole thing with the transfer portal, you know, in the old days, you remember these were the open gym period was so important and a lot of action would happen in the fall. Now we have to let parents know ahead of time about this timing because if you're doing a post-graduate, if you've reclassed, there's a lot of stress you're feeling now. If you're waiting until April, May, June to do your college commitments, you have to deal with the brunt of that being the coach, but that's a challenge and like,

Christina Batastini (44:12)
Right.

Cory Heitz (44:17)
Family's got to put faith in these prep school coaches that they will get placed. And I've never heard of a kid not getting placed even with the portal. So you guys are still doing your jobs, but from a family's perspective, it's high stakes. But what I want to ask you is when a player commits to you, I know you guys have a recruiting meeting at some point, so you can know like, they want to be East Coast, West Coast, big school, small school? Walk me through what your conversation is like with families when you talk to them about their needs and desires.

Christina Batastini (44:23)
Right.

Well, yeah, the first first thing I asked is like what what are your goals? ⁓ you know a lot of times the the goals ⁓ Don't necessarily match the reality, right?

Cory Heitz (44:55)
Yes.

Christina Batastini (44:56)
I think that's a lot of what we have to do ⁓ as high school coaches is to sort of like reframe ⁓ what's realistic and what's not. And that's a very sensitive conversation to have because I think it's our job as coaches to tell the truth. ⁓ But oftentimes that truth isn't absorbed in a very positive way, right? Like we're always going to be on the side of our student athletes. So find out what the ultimate goal is. ⁓

figure out how important academics is, figure out location, figure out ⁓ style of play. Because there's some schools that are out there that players want to go to, but it doesn't match what they can do on the court. Like some coaches are really like high IQ cerebral. They're running a motion offense and some players are five out dribble drive and that's all they played through AAU. Not a good match, right?

Other things to take into consideration when having these conversations is like, you may have the offensive ability to play at that level, but do you have the defensive ability, right? It's a cliche now. I'm not big into cliches, but it is important. Like if I play the one at this level, can I guard the one at the next level? Nobody ever wants to talk about that. They always want to talk about, I'm division one. Well, you might be offensively, but can you guard your position? And that's what I hear a lot from college coaches when they come watch our players play.

or the ones that have been on the cusp, like in the last six years, the ones that are like, they're like, mm, know, the mm is always about their defensive ability to guard their position. It's not about their shooting. It's not about their decision-making. ⁓ You know, for the most part, we have high character kids here. So you're going to get the communicators, the good body language, the hard workers, ⁓ but it's that ability to defend at the next level. So all of these things you need to talk to parents about because they don't think about that.

⁓ I probably named like five or six things that never come up when they're sitting at dinner with their child, talking about where they want to go. And it's also important to like, I'm a good example. I came out of a small place, public high school, scored a zillion points a game, and I went to Stanford. You couldn't go from a bigger jump, like a huge fish in a small pond, to like the biggest pond of all, right? Both academically and athletically.

Cory Heitz (46:57)
Mm-hmm.

Christina Batastini (47:20)
And I had to manage that, which was very difficult. ⁓ And I went out there like, well, I thought I was like the queen of New England basketball. And I found out right away, like, you're not, right? ⁓ So you've got to figure out too, do you want to go to a place and sit and win games? Do you want to go to a lower level and play and be like an integral part of your team? ⁓ And those are questions that I don't think a lot of parents

and players actually, they actually really think about because they always think that their success now is going to be their success in college and it's never going to be the same. I mean, people talk about the 1%. There are some people, but those are like the, you know, what's the word people say? Like the unicorns, the very rare unicorns are gonna go from high school to college and still have that success. Everyone else is not.

Cory Heitz (48:13)
Thank you.

Christina Batastini (48:18)
So I think it's important that you find the academic fit, you figure out how far away you want to be from home. know, and even small things. Do you want to play for a female coach? Do want to play for a male coach? You know, who have you played for in the past? Have you had all female coaches? Have you had all male coaches? What are you comfortable with? What style? Do you want to play for a coach that is ⁓ like an over communicator that sits down with you, that makes you feel like, you know, you're in a family environment? Do you want to play for a coach that just is like transactional? Like if you play well,

then you're going to play. If you don't, then you're sitting. Because you get all those different types at the college level. And I find that families are really uniquely focused on just one thing, that's that chasing that Division I scholarship, where they're not thinking about all the other components. That in four years, when their daughter graduates from college, most of them are not going to go play in the WAA. Most of them are not going to go play in Europe. So are they going to be...

What does their life look like at the age of 22, 23? After this whole dream of division one is over, right? I think that whole piece is missed right now.

Cory Heitz (49:28)
I love that you shared all that Christina, that is the stuff families do not hear. ⁓ and you've got to go into that stuff, right? And the thing you said, we use that in prep school too, go somewhere and be on a great team and sit, go on a smaller level team and play. It's up to you what you want to do, but let us know what you want. Right. So it's about communication, but tell me this one. ⁓ doesn't matter which class in New England that a girl's team competes in.

Christina Batastini (49:33)
Yeah. Yeah.

Okay.

Ha ha ha ha ha!

Cory Heitz (49:56)
Soap go ahead get on your soap box. I see you pulling it out.

Christina Batastini (49:59)
So, I'm going to say yes. ⁓ And then I'm going to contradict myself and say no. But the yes is always the no. I think if you play at the highest level in New England, you have the opportunity to be seen more. I think there is a huge amount of respect for Nepstack AAA and AA teams. College coaches know the level. They know that this is the closest thing that you're going to get as a high school player.

to playing in college. We have no bad games. I ⁓ kind of wish we did. I kind of wish we had some easy games mixed in where we can get that win and feel good about ourselves. But our schedule is in complete insanity. Every single game we are playing top-notch competition. And whether college coaches are coming to see us, they may be coming to see the team that we're playing against.

But that affords our players the opportunity to be seen. So the AAA and AA level in New England, ⁓ if you play at that level, ⁓ there's an automatic respect. And not everyone can do it. Everyone thinks they can do it, but not everyone can do it. So I think it does matter the level. Having said that, if you're really good and you go play in Class A, Class B, Class C, Class D, and you're really good, really good is really good.

It doesn't matter. Like colleges are going to find you if you're really good, if you're exceptional. But you know, if you're not like super exceptional, but you're good and you're playing AAA and AA, you're going to have way more opportunity of being seen. I mean, I don't know a lot of college coaches going to watch like low, you know, lower level, NEPStat games, but I know they're coming to the higher level ones. So that's what I think it does. I think it does matter.

Cory Heitz (51:52)
What do you see as the future of prep school basketball?

Christina Batastini (51:55)
The future of prep school basketball? ⁓

Cory Heitz (51:57)
How's it looking? Five years from

now, how's it going to look compared to today?

Christina Batastini (52:01)
I think it's gonna be even better. ⁓ know from my really from my You know, I I'm from Rhode Island, right? So this is my viewpoint ⁓ and anyone from Rhode Island or anyone from southern New England who is Relatively good at basketball. They do not stay Playing for their like their state, you know, their their state association People are reclassing in middle school and then they may play a year or two and they're not even doing that anymore

Used to be like play one or two years of like Reba basketball or MIAA basketball, public school basketball, and then you go prep. People are prepping right away. ⁓ So all the talent is leaving and they're going to prep schools. And I think that talent is just going to continue to push everybody up. ⁓ So if you can play basketball, you're going to a prep school right now, especially in this area. ⁓ And the level just gets higher and higher.

Cory Heitz (52:41)
Interesting.

Christina Batastini (53:00)
And we've seen a huge influx of college coaches, especially this year in the Nepstack AAA and AA, who have left Division I and now they're coaching at the Nepstack level. So we're getting better coaches ⁓ and the competition just continues to get steeper and steeper. ⁓ So I think in five years, Nepstack basketball is going to be the closest thing to college basketball that you're going to see at the non-collegiate level. ⁓ I mean, the...

I can't, it's hard for me to explain to my players like, you know, when I was in high school, we got in a yellow bus and we went, you know, 15 minutes down the road, we played a game at four o'clock. We played varsity before JV. You know, we got back in the bus, we went home. You know, we are, we do a variety of overnights. We're practicing, sometimes double days. We have strength conditioning. It's not even in the, it's not even in the same stratosphere as what

like I saw growing up and what the opportunities that they have now at the prep level. And I think it's going to continue to get more professionalized for lack of a better term. It's just really high level. And in five years, I can't imagine it's going to go backwards. It's just going to keep going more more forward. And we're just going to get, and the more players that we put out, you know, at the collegiate level, like those big time stars, the Nepsac League, it's just, it's going to blow up.

Cory Heitz (54:27)
Alright, last big question. What does it take to be a D1 guard?

Christina Batastini (54:29)
Thank

Okay, D1 guard. Well, I'll go back to what I said earlier. You have to be able to defend your position.

⁓ So what I've seen as a coach, ⁓ I've seen that length and athleticism is being highly

like, if you have length and you're athletic,

Does that automatically mean that you're going to join a college program and help them win games? No. ⁓ I think to be a college guard, you have to understand how to play. Basketball IQ to me is the biggest thing. ⁓ And if you're a guard, I say it all the time to the guards that play for me, you can be a good guard, but great guards make other players better. So you have to be able to make the players around you better. And I think that has to be your mindset. ⁓

You know, you got to be able to move the basketball. You got to be able to space. You got to be able to understand when to screen, when to cut, when to take your shot. Decision making is really, really key. ⁓ And playing within a structure ⁓ is hard to do at the high school level. It's hard to get players to do that. But if you want to play at the Division I level as a guard, your desire to make other people better is huge. Your ability to defend your position is huge. You've got to be able to make shots.

I think the quality of shooting in general, like we have some great shooters in New England, I'd like to see more shooters. You gotta be able to shoot the basketball. ⁓ And decision making, shot selection. ⁓ And again, like this is me, maybe this is old school, but like dribbles per possession. When I put on college women's basketball and I watch what's happening on the court, I do not see a player coming down and taking 18, 19 dribbles and then maybe starting the offense. That doesn't happen.

⁓ So why do we allow that to happen at the high school level? Watch a women's college basketball game See how they play see what they want. See what's allowed See what the players are doing on the court who are on the court and that's what you need to do at night That's how you need to train

I wish we could just like, like I wish that the high school level coaches would watch what college coaches are playing, who they're playing and model like what they want off of, you know, what we're giving our players.

Cory Heitz (56:41)
Yeah.

Christina Batastini (56:53)
this is a good one. I ever played against people will be surprised by this. Not people from here.

Cory Heitz (56:50)
Best player you ever played against.

Christina Batastini (57:00)
So Cindy Blodgett played at Maine. She was an assistant coach.

at Brown University when I was in town and we used to have this thing called the Lunch Bunch. So every Tuesday, Thursday, we'd all meet at Brown and we'd play at noontime. And I'd have to guard her, right? You're playing with a bunch of guys, so the girls guard the girls, right? She would absolutely cook me. I think she had like 5,000 points. think she led the Division I in scoring in the early 90s. And like really tiny. If you looked at her, you'd be like, she can't play.

like way small, she's like 5'7", like maybe 115 pounds, and she was an absolute killer. talking about like that high IQ, she'd run you around, she'd run you off screens, you know, she's slipping, she's cutting in ways that I'd never seen. ⁓ She had a release, she had different releases for every different shot, so like, you know, your hands are down, she's up here, all other times, she was just unguardable.

And she did have a she had a stint in WNBA, but I think physically she may have been a little bit too small or perhaps Her ability was undervalued at that level, but she was absolutely fantastic And you know, I played against some greats like we played against Chimico Holtsclaw You know, I was in college from 96 to 2000 Kate starboard was an easter's player of the year In 97 and I was tasked with guarding her every day as a freshman

But Cindy Blodgett used to give me fits in ways that other players did not. So that is my unorthodox answer and I am sticking with it and I hope she sees it. She was, yeah, she's now the head coach at the Lincoln School where I used to coach. So there's a lot of overlap, especially in Renown Girls Basketball.

Cory Heitz (58:41)
Okay.

What about the best player you've coached against at the prep school level?

Christina Batastini (58:51)
Ooh, yeah, this is a good one. ⁓ There are a couple. ⁓ Caroline Duchar, who is at UConn right now and hopefully is healthy and is going to have a great year for them. She played at Nobles and coached against her for one year. ⁓ And she was just a dynamic scorer at her size. She would literally shoot the three when she crossed half court, but she could also post you up and she could take to the basket. So the first time we played them,

My strategy was probably what everyone else's strategy was, like don't let her get the ball. But she was so adept at like cutting back door. And if you stayed on that cut, she would just post you up. It was an exercise in futility, like trying to deny her the basketball, exhausted my best defenders, and then she got whatever she wanted. And so when we played them an additional two times, I told my team, just let her get the ball. Let her get the ball and then stay in front.

and then we also tried to force her to play some defense. So we isolated her a few times at the high post to try to get her to foul trouble, but she was, she's probably the player that I spent the most time game planning against and like really focused on and trying to figure out ways to slow her down so we could potentially win the game. ⁓ Other than that, ⁓ Yuluchi who is, ⁓

Cory Heitz (1:00:13)
Ruff, ruff,

ruff.

Christina Batastini (1:00:16)
who is now Maryland she was at Duke she played on two different nepsa teams ⁓ just an unbelievable like physical specimen ⁓ she was a guard we could not keep her off the boards it was just impossible she's probably about five-nine five-ten but you know she I don't know how many offensive rebounds she got a game against us what she did at Duke she'll probably do the same thing at Maryland she was tough ⁓ and I feel like this is an unfair answer and I'm not giving

enough time to think about all the unbelievable players that I've had the opportunity and the pain to coach against, but those are the two that jump out to me.

Cory Heitz (1:00:57)
Alright, favorite movie.

Christina Batastini (1:00:59)
The Godfather, the first one.

Cory Heitz (1:01:04)
Last one, are your hobbies when you're at St. Andrew's or trapezing the world coaching basketball?

Christina Batastini (1:01:09)
⁓ hobbies include all boring stuff. ⁓ I love to read. ⁓ Total like total nerd. It relaxes me a ton. I read a lot of... ⁓ I really should be like a middle-aged man honestly. I read a lot of crime fiction. A lot of international crime fiction. I do enjoy a good binge watch of again like British crime shows. ⁓

What else? I got two rescue dogs that I spend a lot of time with, go on lots of walks with them, and, geez, I sound incredibly boring, don't I? But that's pretty much it, you know? There isn't a lot of additional time for hobbies. ⁓ I could say that my hobby is following around my 16-year-old daughter, which feels like a full-time job, especially she doesn't have a license yet, so. I was like, it might be time to get a license.

Cory Heitz (1:01:46)
No.

That's great. Is there anything you want to mention that we didn't touch on?

Christina Batastini (1:02:12)
you know, I wish we'd talked a little bit more about, ⁓ you know, the academic experience here at St. Andrew's, the small class sizes, the campus itself. I mean, we're on a number of acres. looks like when you, when you walk around St. Andrew's, it looks like a small, like liberal arts, New England college. You know, we have the brick buildings, it's atmospheric. It's absolutely beautiful. ⁓ Especially when it's sunny out and in the fall. ⁓

The campus is big enough that you feel like you're on a campus, but it's small enough that you're not overwhelmed. ⁓ The community here is outstanding. I think they're, you know, if you were to ask someone what their impression would be or what they would assume a New England prep school is like, they may have ⁓ an idea of what it might look like from movies. ⁓ But it's not like that. We are extremely diverse in terms of our student body.

in terms of ⁓ our, in terms of the makeup of not only like socioeconomic but also of our learners. We have an IB diploma, but we also have like a learning services component at St. Andrew's. ⁓ I just think it is a very, very cool place. Anytime I walk around campus, I'm also seeing it from my eyes like a public school kid from Providence. Granted, I've had the opportunity to go to some other, like some high level schools and travel the world.

⁓ But I'm still grounded in like where I'm from and like what I did at this age and when I walk around campus and I see like what my daughter gets to see every day and what her friends get to see and what my team get to see like they are so lucky. Like my mom was on campus yesterday because we're running a USA basketball open gym like 3x3 event and she you know she came she came to watch it and then we walked up to the cafeteria we got brunch like who gets brunch? Like who goes to school on a Sunday?

and gets brunch, right? So she walks in and she's like, what is this? I was like, yeah, we, you know, we got the, was this full spread. And she's like, they do this every week? And I'm like, yeah. And all the players, like my daughter and her friends, all the, they're like, you know, after they're done playing, they're like, oh, we're going to go get brunch. Like, what are you talking about? You're going to get brunch? We didn't have this. You don't go get brunch after you have like a basketball practice, but this is very normal for them. And I just think they should, like the level of appreciation.

and the opportunity. It's a fantastic place to be. And whenever I'm here, I don't forget where I came from and what opportunity I'm able to give student athletes. And I think that's important. But St. Andrew's is a fantastic place. ⁓ If people don't know about it, it's unfortunate. But hopefully this podcast will help them learn more about it. And if they're interested, let us know.

Cory Heitz (1:05:03)
Yeah, how can they reach you if they're interested?

Christina Batastini (1:05:07)
Instagram presence, so you can check us out on Instagram as well as Twitter ⁓ and sort of follow what we're doing this fall. But yeah, feel free to reach out. You can inquire directly through admissions, but you can also reach out directly to me.

once you provide my ⁓ personal information.

Cory Heitz (1:05:26)
Christina, thanks so much for coming on this podcast today and all your wisdom, your background. We've been trying for years and I'm so glad we finally connected on this. And I think it was a great one and I think people are to learn a lot from this conversation. So thanks so much for tuning in and joining us

Christina Batastini (1:05:28)
got it. ⁓

Yeah, as

I got all the information across that people needed to hear. I appreciate the opportunity,

Cory Heitz (1:05:44)
Yeah, you did great. Well, if you enjoyed this, be sure to subscribe on all the podcasting platforms and our YouTube channel. If you want to subscribe to the newsletter that comes out every month, do so at our website, prepathletics.com. And if you have any interest in the prep school world or any questions, please go to that website to reach out to me. I get back to everyone and we'll see you again next week on the Prepathletics podcast. Take care.