---

There was a time in Missy Traversi's life when the sound of basketballs bouncing in a gym was an irresistible invitation for her to run onto the court and start playing.

That's no longer the case, however, and you'd naturally assume that the former Bishop Feehan High School and University of Maine standout, soon to turn 26 and in the midst of her athletic prime, would miss the action.

Guess again.

"Everyone asks me that," the new coach of the Dover-Sherborn High School Raiders said Tuesday, "and honestly, I don't right now. I am so consumed by my basketball training business and working with these girls, that I haven't even thought twice about it."

Traversi, an Attleboro native, played professionally in Sweden for two seasons, sandwiched around one year of coaching at Brookline High School, after graduating from Maine. She also had a brief tryout with the Chicago Sky of the WNBA, and it was the challenge of continuing to develop her on-court skills that led her to leave the Brookline post and return overseas. There wasn't a dull moment in her second pro season. After being released by her first team and being signed by another squad as a player-coach, Traversi continued to display the scoring touch and leadership from the point guard position that made her one of the best players in the Swedish pro league. But she suffered a severely broken nose late in the season, which required surgical repair about nine months ago.

Having started an elite basketball training business before her second pro season, Traversi decided the time was right to call an end to her playing career. Then, almost on a lark, she interviewed for the vacant head coaching position at Dover-Sherborn - and it was an offer she couldn't refuse.

"So far, I am enjoying my stay here at Dover-Sherborn," Traversi said after a 51-39 victory at Norton High on Tuesday. "The community has been very supportive and the youth program is very excited to have me here. And the girls are responding to my coaching. Tonight I was a little more vocal with them than I usually am, but I need that with them. I need them to get motivated by my intensity."

Intensity and Traversi have never been strangers, but now it has to be channeled and expressed differently than in the past - and as a young coach, Traversi knows she has much to learn. That she would throw herself into it with the same intensity as when she played, and with the same sense of accountability, should come as no surprise.

"I'm learning something new every day," she said. "I've grown immensely in the last couple of years in terms of seeing the game at both ends of the court, especially in regard to post play. As a point guard, I often spent too much time focusing on the guard play as opposed to the post, and I've really done a good job of educating myself in post defense, and just watching the game and watching film, and going to clinics."

She was quick to admit that she has made mistakes.

"I was like this as a player," she said. "When I turned the ball over, I was the first to say, 'my bad.' As a coach, I have no problem with showing the girls that I may be wrong in a certain situation. I'm not the law, and I do make mistakes.

"But the girls have faith in me and I have faith in myself, that I can bounce back from those mistakes, and so far it hasn't cost us any big games," she said.

It doesn't help that Dover-Sherborn is in one of the tougher girls' basketball leagues in the state, the Tri-Valley League. Westwood dominated the TVL for many years, but several of the rapidly growing schools in the league have caught up, and Dover-Sherborn has aspirations of doing so as well.

It won't happen overnight. Entering this week, the Raiders have a 5-6 record and are in the middle of the pack in the league, which is reasonable to expect of a first-year coach implementing new ideas. But the competitive nature within Traversi makes her impatient, so she has picked as many brains as she can in search of coaching pointers. Recently, she visited the practices of Bentley University's Barbara Stevens, one of the most respected coaches in the sport, to watch and learn.

"She's a wealth of knowledge and helped me out a lot," Traversi said.

That same competitive nature intensifies Traversi's frustration when things don't go exactly as planned on the court.

"There are games when I want to pull my hair out, and I often do that on the sideline, but the girls that I have, they respond to that," she said, citing point guard McCleary Philbin as a player who mirrors her own hard-nosed attitude from back in the day.

"These girls want someone in their face, and that's the kind of kid I want to coach," she said.

One might think that Traversi wouldn't be able to pull herself away from playing altogether, even if just as a release from knowing that she can't run onto the court, steal the ball and score in transition to help her new team win a game.

Guess again.

"I was asked to be in a league the other day, to continue playing," she said. "But I'm still concerned with my nose situation, so I'm trying to take it easy and try to get as much out of this coaching as I can. I'm putting all of myself into it."

MARK FARINELLA may be reached at 508-236-0315 or via e-mail at mfarinel@thesunchronicle.com. Read Farinella's blog, "Blogging Fearlessly," at thesunchronicle.com/farinella.