The Final Quarter
Jay Tilton retires from coaching Exeter boys basketball after 23 years
The 2012-13 Exeter boys basketball team was riding high when it returned from the holiday break. The team was7-0 as it prepared for a game at Kimball Union to tip off the second half of the season.
“Sure enough, we got our brains beatin and we were brought back down to earth,” Harry Rafferty ’13 recalls. “The loss reminded us that we were a special group, but we still had to get off the bus and compete. We had to hold true to the principle sour coach had laid out for us.”
In case anyone had forgotten one of those principles, coach Jay Tilton had T-shirts printed to remind them: HUMBLE PIE. EAT IT.
“It was not a fancy font or anything like that,” Rafferty says, laughing. “True to Jay form, it was black font on a white shirt; as basic as it gets.”
Exeter didn’t lose another game the rest of the season, going 25-1 and capturing the first NEPSAC Class A title in program history. The Big Red went on to win four more titles during Tilton’s tenure as coach.
But his 210-96 career record and seven championship game appearances are just part of the legacy he leaves behind as he retires from coaching to become regional director of major gifts in the school’s Office of Institutional Advancement.
“Coach T could always see the bigger picture,” Emmett Shell ’18 says. “He left a lot of us with life lessons that have been invaluable. He got me to see a way of approaching not just basketball, but life with a little more toughness, a little more consistency, and a little more energy, which I think can make all the difference.”
Tilton began leading the program in 2009 after nine seasons as an assistant coach under Malcolm Wesselink. Tilton’s father, Mark, coached for 21 years at New Hampton School, where the basketball court is named in his honor. “I grew up watching the modeling of coaches and student-athletes, so that has always been in my blood,” says Tilton, 56, who was born in Berlin, New Hampshire, and spent four years as an assistant at Dartmouth College.
“Life lessons were taught through athletics, and my greatest mentors in my life were coaches, but they were also educators.”
When Tilton was considering the move to Exeter, his peers told him he couldn’t win there because of the Academy’s academic standards. He took that as a challenge — one he passed on to his team.
“Coach T was really good at making sure everyone was producing and contributing at their highest capacity,” says Shell, who was a co-captain his senior year. “He pushed me in ways that I never thought I could be pushed.”
Tilton describes himself as an emotional coach, but Rafferty says that emotion never turned negative. “He has this Ted Lasso-like sensibility or optimism that makes guys really want to play for him,” Rafferty says.“Aside from him being a great coach, he’s genuine and he has every one of his players’ backs, long after they played for him.”
Tilton began pondering retirement a couple of years ago. He felt he had accomplished all he could, and he wanted to spend more time with his wife, Darcy, and his son, Cameron. They had sacrificed so much, he says, because of the demands of coaching. When Rafferty joined his staff as an assistant coach this season, a succession plan was in place.
“I knew I was on the back nine,” Tilton says. “I just wasn’t sure if I was on 16, 17 or 18. When Harry told me was getting out of the college coaching world and coming back to the area, I was like: ‘Wow. What are the odds this is happening right now?”
“Harry Rafferty was the best teammate I’ve ever coached because he really understood people, he is an exceptional motivator and, of course, he really knows how to coach. The program will be in good hands.”
Before the team boarded the bus to head to the 2025 NEPSAC title game in March, Tilton spent a quiet and poignant moment in the gym. It took him back to the 2012-13 season when, just before his team claimed its first title and altered the trajectory of the program, he sat in the gym by himself and thought, “We’ve arrived.”
“This time around, I knew it was going to be my last bus ride with the team,” he says. “It was an emotional moment because it was a reflection of everybody that’s been through that journey with me. I remember the big wins and the trophies, but the highs and lows that you share with a group of young men who are committed to working together — whether you achieved or you fell just short — those are the things that I will remember the most. I feel so incredibly grateful to have had those moments with these young men, these Exonians.”
— Craig Morgan
This article was originally published in spring edition 2025 edition of The Exeter