Susan Altieri recalls one tournament in which she competed while at North Haven High School where her team wasn't exactly the favorite – “that's probably why we were invited!” she said. The Indians won and if Susan wasn't already hooked on basketball, that occasion certainly sealed it.

Being hired as the women's basketball coach at Eastern Connecticut State University in 1994, her first head coaching job, Denise Bierly said right then that she planned on staying. “I don't look at this as a stepping stone at all,” Bierly said upon her arrival. “I'm looking to establish something here.”

One thing Michelle Florin will never forget about her career at Masuk High School in Monroe: the Panthers' unbeaten Class L championship team in 1995. There are a lot of other programs which won't likely forget, either, with that Masuk team in the midst of one of the most dominant runs in the history of Connecticut high school girls' basketball.

Kara Crismale-Burgarella's career highlights at Guilford High School are innumerable: 1,195 career points, playing for the 1992 Class L state championship, listed in USA Today as one of the top 20 players in Connecticut in 1993.

But there were the little things, too.

Jennifer Monti's career path – she is a cardiologist at the University of Pennsylvania – has technically taken her away from basketball. Jennifer remembers, however, that as a former resident at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, to get through a particularly long night at the hospital, she would google “basketball sounds” and let the squeak of sneakers and the bounce of the ball comfort her, bringing her back to the game she loves.

Bill Scarlata, who grew up in Dedham, Mass., as a diehard Red Sox, Patriots, Celtics and Bruins fan, always thought that someday he would become a baseball coach. Instead, former Norwich Free Academy girls' basketball coach Paul Giardi asked Bill, then a math teacher at the school, to become his junior varsity coach.

Judy Sylvester came to work full time for the Connecticut Association of Schools-Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference upon graduating from Hamden High School in 1970. At that time, the association was located across from Hamden High School on Connolly Parkway. The office staff totaled only three. Forty-six years and four buildings later, she continues to be a vital and integral part of the CIAC family.

Carla Berube's two women's basketball snapshots couldn't be more different: the understated one, a blue-collar role player on UConn's 1995 national championship team which went 35-0; and the more outspoken head coach at Division III power Tufts University.

The one thing that's the same is Carla's success.