If she has any nerves, she doesn’t show them.

Cassidy Emerson, a 27-year-old first-time varsity girls’ basketball coach, paces the sidelines at Bow High School as if she’s done this for years. Perhaps it’s her father, Dale Emerson, sitting beside her on the bench as an assistant coach that puts her at ease.

Emerson took over the head coaching position before the start of this season, having previously coached the Pembroke Academy girls’ JV team and at Rundlett Middle School. Dale, meanwhile, has previous experience coaching at Plymouth State and at Concord, Belmont and Bishop Brady high schools.

Few sports programs at Bow have won more in recent years: Last season, the Falcons finished 20-1 and came one second away from a Division II championship. In 2022, they were also D-II runners-up after a 19-3 season.

A championship has eluded them, but the hunger remains with the new coaching staff in place.

So far, the team is off to a 5-2 start, and while the Falcons’ play hasn’t been as dominant as in recent years, the new head coach and the mostly revamped roster have made positive early impressions. Emerson brings more playing experience to the table than most would to this role, and she has the benefit of not being too far removed from competing in high-level athletics.

She graduated from Concord High in 2015, where she played basketball and softball, and then attended Plymouth State, where she continued her careers both on the hardwood and the softball diamond.

“She’s a multi-sport athlete at a pretty high level,” Bow athletic director Mike Desilets said. “We are a school full of multi-sport athletes, and I wanted those girls to have that role model, a situation where they have somebody that’s been through it, and they have somebody that can help to guide them in that direction as well.”

Add to that Dale’s breadth of coaching experience, and the Falcons have brought on two basketball encyclopedias to their bench.

Some people might not be enamored with the idea of their father peering over their shoulder while they’re working, but that couldn’t be further from the case with Cassidy Emerson.

“It’s better than I could’ve ever imagined,” she said. “And I couldn’t imagine having anyone else by my side, especially during my first year.”

Student of the game

It’s hard for Emerson to remember a time when she wasn’t at a basketball court with her dad.

When Dale coached at Bishop Brady in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Emerson and her twin sister, Molly, always attended practices and games.

“We used to be in the classroom before the game talking about game strategy, talking about what we were going to be doing, and her and her sister were sitting in the front row with their hands folded,” Dale recalled. “She was very, very much involved with that, so that was very exciting to have her in that classroom.”

It all laid the foundation for what was to come.

“You don’t realize at the time,” Cassidy said, “but growing up around that environment teaches you a lot.”

By the time she was in third grade, her father coached her in rec league basketball. She then played at Rundlett Middle School and made the varsity team as a freshman at Concord High. That first year playing varsity, Dale was the boys’ head coach for the Tide, so he couldn’t attend most of the games. Missing those moments killed him.

“One game that I will always remember is that she either made the tying shot or the winning shot at Merrimack High School, and she called me right afterwards,” he said. “I heard in her voice how excited she was as a (freshman) hitting the big shot to end the game, and after we hung up I kind of made the decision right there and then that I can’t be missing any more from that point on, and that’s when I gave up the boys’ job.”

Dale joined the girls’ varsity staff as an assistant ahead of Cassidy’s sophomore season, but he was always cognizant of his dual roles. In fact, he made sure the head coach, Mike Achilles, knew that he’d be more than happy to directly work with any of the other players, but Achilles would have to coach his daughter.

The same agreement was in place a few years later when Dale joined the Plymouth State coaching staff to work under head coach Allison Flynn during Cassidy’s junior season.

“He kept to the coaching standpoint during the games, and then he’d be a parent off the court, so it would never mix,” Cassidy said. “He was a huge support. He held me to a very high standard, and he expected a lot and set that bar, and I think that that’s why I ended up becoming the player and the person that I am.”

‘Something we’ve always talked about’

Emerson embarked on her own coaching journey after graduating from Plymouth State in 2019, first at Rundlett, then as Pembroke’s JV coach.

At Pembroke, she said, was when she began thinking about the legitimate possibility of coaching with her father one day.

“I was like, ‘It would be really nice if my dad could help,’ and it’s something we’ve always talked about. He was like, ‘Someday, I’m going to be coaching under you,’ ” she said. “He was one of the ones that really pushed me to go for this varsity opportunity because he was ready to coach with me as soon as I got a varsity job. That was a huge motivator for me to go for this Bow job.”

Dale wasn’t initially sure he’d be able to come to Bow. He was still the assistant coach at Plymouth State and works as a basketball official. But several back surgeries this summer and the intensive travel that comes with being part of a college program made him decide to step back from his role in Plymouth.

And, he added, it’s any parent’s dream to be able to coach with their child.

The transition from coaching Cassidy to working beside her on the bench hasn’t required a major shift in philosophy.

As was the case when she played, Dale wants her to gain the experience on her own.

“She needs to make her own mistakes, and then I will help her from her mistakes,” he said. “I’m not directing her saying, ‘You should do this,’ or ‘You should do that.’ It’s her team, her program. She’s going to make mistakes, and I’m going to let her make her own, and then I’ll help her correct it.”

From Desilets’ point of view as the athletic director, adding the experience Dale brings to supplement Cassidy’s seemingly uncanny ability to connect with the players has been beneficial for everyone, even though it wasn’t a given he’d come to Bow when Cassidy took the job.

“He’s got pretty significant coaching experience that was just going to be a bonus feature for us to have him,” Desilets said.

“It wasn’t part of the original equation that we thought he might help out … but he’s been there every day, and it’s just been a huge bonus for the program itself and for Cassidy for sure.”

The Falcons still have their work cut out for them over the next few months in order to reestablish themselves as a top program in D-II like they’ve been the last few seasons. But with Cassidy Emerson at the helm and Dale beside her, the program surely seems to be in the right hands.

“We work really well together. We’re very similar, so the girls have a good time with that, dealing with both of us, our humor and cracking jokes,” Cassidy said. “It’s fantastic, though. It’s exactly how I would’ve wanted it.”