Kevin Barboza had every trick imaginable in his arsenal when he was a member of the Harlem Globetrotters.
More recently, he’s pulled out all of the tricks to turn around struggling high school basketball programs into instant contenders.
Now, he’ll bring that impressive resume to the Methuen High girls basketball program.
The 60-year-old Boxford resident, who spent the last three years as an assistant boys coach at Masconomet, has been named the new Methuen High girls basketball head coach.
He replaces Ryan Middlemiss, who made the move to Methuen boys head coach, replacing Anthony Faradie, who left to become the head coach at Wilmington.
Barboza is taking over a Rangers program that finished 12-10, but since graduated three returning starters including 1,000 point scorer Samantha Pfeil.
“From what I’m gathering, it’s going to be a little bit of a rebuilding year,” he said. “Most of what we’re going to try to do is get the foundation and the culture built. We want to spend a lot of time with the younger kids, the travel and the recreation program, so we have kids coming through the system and not losing them to other schools. We want to make Methuen High a place that girls want to come and play basketball.”
Barboza has an extremely long and impressive basketball background.
As a player, he was named to the Rhode Island All-State team during his high school days at Shea High in Pawtucket. From there, the forward had a dominant four-year career at Eastern Connecticut University. At the time he graduated in 1986, he ranked second all-time in points with 1,418 and also finished with 643 rebounds and 123 blocked shots.
As a senior, he led the Warriors to their winningest season (18-9) in 15 years. That year, Eastern qualified for the ECAC New England Division III tournament and posted the program’s only ECAC tournament victory to date.
He was the first player in program history to be named to the ECAC All-New England team, and was later inducted into the college’s Hall of Fame.
After that, he spent two years with the Harlem Globetrotters (1987-88) before getting into coaching. He spent three years at Woonsocket High in Rhode Island and took a team that finished 5-21 in his first year to 22-2 the second year, reaching the state championship game.
He left coaching to play three years professionally in Portugal, then returned to coach a year at Manchester-Essex, and that team went winless in the first half and won five games in the second half of the season.
From there he became the owner/operator of Axis Spin and Conditioning located in Topsfield as well as the Axis Basketball Director of the NSSA Blizzards, an AAU Girls Program.
“You would be hard pressed to find a better basketball resume than Kevin Barboza,” said Methuen High interim athletic director Tom Ryan. “Methuen High School is lucky to hire a coach of his stature and is looking forward to the energy and passion that he will bring to our girls basketball program.”
Barboza has three boys, Matthew (33), Branden (32) and K.J (7). Matthew played at Franklin Pierce and Branden played at Suffolk University.
The new coach said that Dec. 2 can’t get here fast enough.
“I can’t wait to get going. I’m very excited about this opportunity and to compete in the Merrimack Valley Conference,” he said.
Twitter@JamiePote