New England College’s women’s basketball team has a 1-2 guard punch that’s been terrorizing teams across the state and region since they first played together in elementary school.

The two, Macy Gordon and Mackenzie McDonald, now juniors in college, compare their pairing to a now-iconic NCAA duo, Iowa’s Kate Martin and Caitlin Clark. But NEC’s dynamic duo nearly split up before even reaching college, and neither had planned on playing college hoops.

“I always agree, because I don’t score a lot of points, but I always try to work the ball, and I like to box out and rebound, that’s my big thing,” said McDonald. “And Macy’s a freaking dead-on three-point shooter. Sometimes they don’t go in, but she shoots them from Caitlin Clark’s range, too.”

They graduated from Merrimack Valley High School in 2022 after a semi-successful campaign that ended with a loss to Laconia in the quarterfinals. The match before that defeat, against Coe-Brown, was when everything changed.

Gordon knew she wanted to stay close to home, and McDonald was set on becoming a doctor. At that game, NEC’s head coach, Erica Ledy, was there to watch Gordon play, and the whole team knew it. McDonald said they tried to make Gordon look good and added to her highlight tape with great shots, but McDonald’s 24 rebounds stood out just as much.

“(Ledy) came to our game and talked to me, and she was like, ‘I really like No. 33 (McDonald) and the way she plays. Can you go grab her?’ And so I went, and Kenzie wanted to be a doctor, so her plan was not to come to NEC,” Gordon said.

“(Ledy) was like, ‘I’d love for you to come play for me.’ And I didn’t really know if I wanted to play sports in college,” McDonald added. “I got to tour NEC with Macy, and we watched practice. It was close to home, I liked the small campus, and it was pretty and everything. So I just ended up coming here and playing.”

They were two of three MV players rewarded for their performances in 2022 alongside fellow senior Alyssa Woodman. McDonald earned a spot on the All-State second team and Gordon received an honorable mention their senior year.

Ledy has coached at NEC for over 20 years and has led many winning teams in the past with 22 all-conference athletes and numerous all-academic student-athletes over the years. Her experienced eyes saw the potential in bringing two tough and competitive local players to the next level with the Pilgrims.

“Macy had a real good shot, and she actually drove more, I thought, in high school than she does now. But she really had a really good shot, and she didn’t just play offense. She got back to the defensive end,” said Ledy. “And (McDonald), I thought, was real tough. She could go inside and outside, and I liked her toughness inside, her rebounding inside. I like that Macy went, could rebound as well.”

Gordon said that continuing to play at the collegiate level with high expectations under a coach like Ledy has helped in basketball and in most facets of life. Ledy is always pushing them to become better players and better people, according to McDonald.

“She’s definitely hard, but she’s so supportive in anything that you do. She’s involved in everything. She’s checking our grades every day. She’s making sure we’re going to class. If we need anything, she’s always in her office for us to come in and talk to her,” said Gordon.

In terms of on-court production, Gordon is the primary ball carrier of the two and plays in a traditional point or shooting guard style. Meanwhile, McDonald – although listed as a guard – will spend more time in the paint and be an outlet for Gordon while crashing the boards on both ends.

“A lot of the time we worked off of each other, and it got to the point where we were this dynamic duo that we could basically read each other’s minds,” McDonald said. “We just worked really well together, and it’s continued now into college.”

The two usually are stacked on the right side of the Pilgrims’ zone defense and know how to space the floor together, whether on- or off-ball, and they can move rapidly and fluidly on both sides of the court.

One look at the scarce film available online from last season showed that, with a glance, they can communicate the play on offense and switch on pick-and-rolls or double-team.

“My favorite part about getting to play with Macy is that I’ve played with her for so long. Always having somebody from where I started, and getting to grow together and push each other in practice was never something I thought I was going to be doing, but I’m happier because I am,” McDonald said.

The payoff for the Pilgrims has been huge, and both are usually starters or sometimes first off the bench. Gordon is averaging 5.2 points, 1.3 rebounds and 1.2 assists per game in her collegiate career, and McDonald is putting up a solid 4.1 points, 3.5 rebounds and 0.8 assists per game in the same timeframe.

“The best thing about those two girls is that they’re good kids and they’re good people, and I appreciate kids that are good people,” said Ledy. “They’re good students, they go to class, they communicate well and they’re very unselfish. Even if there’s something about them that’s not what I need or what I want with the team, you can talk to them and they’re coachable.”

Most of their teammates are not from the area, so the duo has been a grounding force for incoming players, and they have enjoyed building chemistry with talented teammates from across the country. The ’Grims are off to a solid start this season, and both Gordon and McDonald are looking forward to continuing to perform at a high level.

Alexander Rapp can be reached at arapp@cmonitor.com.