Not long after the implementation of Title IX, propelling the growth of women’s sports, Sandra Hamm provided one of the building blocks to history, serving as the first head coach of the 11-time national champion University of Connecticut women’s basketball program.

Roger Gautrau is a referee, but could very well double as a historian. Gautrau’s estimable career with the International Association of Approved Basketball Officials has spanned 52 seasons, from 1972 to the present, and he has officiated a Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference state tournament game for 45 consecutive seasons, including 29 state championship games.

Long before the gymnasium at Bacon Academy was named in his honor, Dave Shea was a proud graduate of the school and its first 1,000-point scorer in boys’ basketball. Shea, still a resident of Colchester, went on to honor his alma mater by winning 778 games and three state championships over 49 seasons coaching first the boys’ basketball team, then the girls.

Angela Mele-Craig is Western Connecticut State University’s all-time leading scorer and a member of the school’s athletic hall of fame and that’s only the beginning of an extraordinary career in which Mele-Craig led the Colonials to the postseason in all four seasons and to three consecutive Division III NCAA tournament appearances.

DaShena Stevens has achieved success at every level academically and athletically, from her career as a member of the women’s basketball team at St. John’s University, where she gained entry into the school’s Athletics Hall of Fame, to her current position as deputy athletic director at University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio.

Nadine Domond's exceptional story as both player and coach began in Bridgeport, at the Boys & Girls Club where she challenged all comers to one-on-one matchups and at Bridgeport Central High School where she won the 1994 Class LL girls' basketball state championship along with her sister Nancy.

Brian Hurlock recently completed his 30th year running a basketball camp in Farmington - Hurlock's Basketball Camp, spanning two weeks at 37 campers per week - but his passion for sharing his knowledge of the game extends much further. Brian has coached at several high school programs throughout the state over a 40-year period and prides himself in seeing the teams' vast improvements.

The first time Ellen Geraghty learned to shoot a basketball, she was about 13 years old and she was wearing skateboard pads. She remembers attempting an "awkward granny shot" and doesn’t think she even hit the rim, but she remembers how being introduced to basketball that day changed her life forever.