Women’s Basketball Head Coach Bridgette Mitchell—Coach B to everyone who knows her—joined Fordham in 2023 with serious bonafides. She played for Duke, where she won an Atlantic Coast Conference championship, then played professionally overseas. In 2021, she began her head coaching career at Northeastern, where she led the team to their first-ever regular season conference title.
Here at Fordham, Mitchell is cultivating that same culture of winning. In her first season, the Atlantic 10 Conference preseason poll predicted her team would finish 13th; instead, they tied for eighth, securing the most wins by any first-time women’s basketball head coach at Fordham in over 30 years.
This season, after a hot start that saw the team in fourth place, they’ve had a few tough losses—including an overtime loss at St. Louis University—but are hoping to finish strong heading into the A-10 tournament. With two weeks to go before the conference tourney, Mitchell and her players remain focused on making every game, and every practice, count.
“You can’t go out and win a game if you haven’t practiced hard,” Mitchell said. “I am a firm believer from experience that if you’re focusing on winning the day, and being better than you were yesterday, the wins are gonna come.”
Stacking Wins and Rewarding Victories
At the start of the season, Mitchell gave her coaching staff a copy of The 2% Way by Myron Rolle, reinforcing her philosophy that committing to small, daily improvements leads to big wins.
Forward Rose Nelson, a junior communications major from Australia and the team’s co-captain, says the team has embraced this mindset. “We harp on it every day—stacking drills, stacking days, stacking wins.”
Mitchell, in turn, celebrates her team’s hard work, treating them to ice cream, for instance, after road wins. In Pittsburgh, that meant a trip to the Milkshake Factory to celebrate beating Duquesne, 64-62, and to Lickety Split after routing Loyola Chicago, 68-53.
“We don’t even let her talk after a game,” said Nelson. “We just start screaming, ‘Ice cream! Ice cream!’”
‘Representation Matters’
In Mitchell’s first year of coaching in 2023, the women’s basketball team retained just four players. Some had graduated; some went on to play elsewhere via the transfer portal, which makes it easier for college players to move around and for coaches to recruit rising stars.
Co-captain Taylor Donaldson, a grad student at the Gabelli School, was one of Mitchell’s first recruits. The New Mexico State transfer, a leading scorer with an average of 16 points per game, said she was drawn to both Fordham’s academics and the opportunity to play for Mitchell.
“Playing for a Black woman head coach is rare in college basketball,” she said. Though Black student-athletes make up 41% of Division I teams, only 23% of those teams have Black female head coaches according to NCAA data.
“Representation matters,” said Mitchell. “For me to be leading and mentoring—I’m honored.”
This season, Coach B and the women’s basketball team were invited to the Raising the B.A.R. tournament, featuring teams led by Black female head coaches. From left to right, Xavier’s Billi Chambers; Fordham’s Bridgette Mitchell; Cal’s Charmin Smith, the invitational’s founder; and Temple’s Diane Richardson. Photo by Brooke Alverson
Cultivating Team Spirit in Greece
To build chemistry among the new and returning players this year, Mitchell took the team overseas to compete in Greece before the season.
“Getting to bond so early really helped us,” Mitchell said. “We played basketball, but we also had fun, and that strengthened our relationships.”
She reinforces those bonds with group activities throughout the season, be it a community park cleanup or a team-building exercise, like a scavenger hunt on the court using words alone as clues.
“Communication is crucial for defense on the court,” said Mitchell.
It’s also key to her coaching style. Mitchell has made forging personal relationships with her players a priority, in part to work through any personal or academic stress that may impact their playing. She assigns assistant coaches to meet weekly with small “families” of players and holds one-on-one monthly check-ins herself.
These bonds help strengthen her players’ commitment to the team. As Nelson put it: “When your coach cares about you, you want to play for them.”
Teaching Skills for Life
Mitchell sees all of these efforts as vital to her team’s success, as players and as people.
“If you’re not touching the endline in practice, that means you’re taking shortcuts elsewhere. And shortcuts don’t get you anywhere—you’re cheating yourself. We’re learning that through basketball, but you are also learning that skill for life.”
Cheer on the Women’s Basketball Team
There are four games left before the Atlantic 10 Conference tournament, with a special Black History Month game on Feb. 19 featuring a marketplace of Black-owned businesses. Find the schedule and get tickets for their upcoming games at Rose Hill Gym here. Employees get a 50% discount by calling the box office, buying tickets in person, or emailing [email protected] in advance. All games are also broadcast on ESPN+.
