The initial appeal of the Mott Community College women’s basketball coaching job was simple for Ryan Trevithick: as a Flint native, he understands what basketball means to the city.
“Flint is the Mecca of basketball,” Trevithick said.
Trevithick grew up in Mott Park, and even played in Ballenger Fieldhouse when he was growing up. He’s been the coach at Flint Powers Catholic High School since 2020, a role he will continue in while at Mott. Once his family was on board with him taking the job, he jumped at the chance to coach Mott.
“Just to be here in this space every day, it’s a blessing,” he said.
Mott is not Trevithick’s first college coaching job. He was an assistant coach at Division II Saginaw Valley State for three seasons and was the interim coach of that program during the 2018-19 season before taking the head coaching job at Powers. He’s built Powers into one of the top girls’ basketball programs in Genesee County, with the team posting a 40-10 record over the past two seasons.
He’s also in tune with the youth basketball pipeline in Genesee County, serving as deputy director of the Michigan Mystics, one of the most successful youth girls’ basketball travel programs in Michigan since its founding in 1998.
As Mott prepares to open its season today (November 8) in Battle Creek against Kellogg Community College, Trevithick is really just excited to see how the team’s impressive practice habits since he took over in April translate to game action.
“I’m excited to see the girls take what we’ve been working on into competition and just kind of see where our growth has been,” he said. “We’ve had good practices. Every time we compete, we have an opportunity to grow from that. The girls have done a great job of every single time we step on the floor, we’re getting better. So I’m excited to see what Saturday looks like.”
Trevithick replaces Letitia Hughley, who had coached at Mott since 2005. Last year’s team finished 12-16, but several players on that roster returned, which was helpful because Trevithick didn’t have much of a recruiting window after his hiring in April.
“I’m blessed to be able to be a part of an association with the Michigan Mystics where there’s deep roots and connections in the Flint area and Genesee County for basketball,” he said. “That was helpful. But we didn’t really have much of a recruiting season. We had kids that wanted to come here and be a part of Mott and then we had to find some kids that were gonna fit the way that we wanted to play. And we were fortunate to find that early on.”
That returning group includes last season’s two top scorers, Kyndall Dotson, a guard from Carman-Ainsworth, and Ella Prevost, a guard from Lake Fenton. Chloe Thompson, a sophomore out of Montrose who was second on the team in rebounding last season, also returns. Other returnees include Allanah Liggins (Grand Blanc), Ali Anderson (Powers), Tamia Taylor (Saginaw Heritage), and Anna Prevost (Lake Fenton).
The team also added transfer Ryleigh Zinn, who was a standout at Genesee High School before playing last season at Lake Superior State.
Collectively, the team only has four freshmen, so the experience level is high for Trevithick – a rarity for a new coach at the JUCO level, where roster turnover is common.
“It’s a great makeup, we have really good balance, very physical guards,” he said. “We’d like to be able to shoot the ball a little bit more freely, which means we gotta spend a lot more time getting shots up and working on our shot. But the girls are doing a great job (in practice) and I’m excited to see that pay off.”
Thompson noted that the team is undersized, but their goal is still to be a tough defense-first team. She credits the work the coaching staff has done to put them in a position to improve.
“Our coaching staff this year is amazing,” Thompson said. “We’re all improving a lot with them.”
That mentality is important, because the coaches are hoping a strong defensive approach makes opponents have to work hard on both ends of the floor against Mott.
“We always preach discipline, we want to have a disciplined basketball team defensively,” Trevithick said. “We’re gonna do everything we can to take away the other teams’ primary options and make them beat us with secondary options. As far as the offensive side, we’re gonna pound the paint. We’re gonna find a way to attack the rim. And then we want to be able to get pressure on the rim and transition. So we’re gonna get out and run. And we’ve got really good rim runners and we’ve got people that are super physical inside. One of our goals every single game is to make more free throws than our opponents attempt. We’re gonna play true to that style.”
Mott plays in a tough Eastern Conference in the Michigan Community College Athletic Association (MCCAA). Last season, Jackson, Schoolcraft, and St. Clair finished in the top three in the conference with three or fewer league losses each. Oakland Community College and Macomb also had competitive seasons. Trevithick is just focusing on the team playing competitive basketball this season, understanding the recent success of other programs.
Statewide, Mott hasn’t qualified for the national tournament since 2007 and Mid-Michigan Community College is the only Michigan team to qualify in the last three seasons. Trevithick hopes Mott can get back to that level, but he’s also simply focused on improvement as the season opens.
“We’re not in a situation to sit there and say, oh, that’s a win on our schedule,” he said. “For us, we’re taking it singly day by day, every step, who’s in front of us, whether it’s ourselves or whether it’s another team. That’s the competition that day. I know the league runs through Schoolcraft and SC4 and Mid-Michigan and Jackson, and I mean, you can go up and down with Oakland and Wayne, like there’s schools all over the place that can compete and play. We’re just very blessed to have incredible amounts of talent in the state of Michigan.”
For the players, they’re just excited to get back on the court and see how the work they’ve been putting in translates.
“We have a really good group and our chemistry is really great,” Thompson said. “We’ve been working so hard throughout the summer, I’m just excited to get our first game going and see how it goes. I just wanna win. It’s about our team winning.”
Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to catch up on all of our headlines every Tuesday.
