The old playground basketball game Around the World could be compared to the hoops career of Dorchester native Courtney Eldridge who traveled across the globe with a basketball in hand before finally finding a home as an assistant coach for the University of Iowa men’s basketball team.

The 44-year-old Eldridge started his journey on the courts of Codman Square and Fields Corner, then played high school ball at Thayer Academy before taking his game to Division 1 University of North Carolina-Greensboro, where he excelled.

A long professional career overseas followed in countries like Turkey, Brazil, and Italy until he exchanged his sneakers for a spot on the sidelines and worked his way up the ranks in Iowa where he is now an assistant coach with the university’s Hawkeyes and living in Iowa City with his wife Aisha and their four children.

For all that globetrotting, travels, Dorchester is never out of mind for Eldridge. “I still get back there every now and then, a few times a year, to visit my mom; she still lives on Florida Street, same house I grew up in,” he noted. And the courts he grew up on still figure prominently in the formation of his game and his life.

“I really learned how to play and got my love for basketball at the courts in Town Field at Fields Corner,” he said. “That’s where the love of the game started. Being a young kid and watching the older guys come down – at that time there were high school stars coming out…You had to win to stay on and that built that winning mentality at a young age. I’m thankful for that.”

He also played at the Perkins Community Center, and travelled with a team that represented Boston, playing in national tournaments under coaches like Leo Papile and others and “broadening his horizons beyond the confines of Boston.”

Iowa Assistant Coach Courtney Eldridge holds onto the ball while running a practice during a West Coast road trip last month.
Stephen Mally/hawkeyesports.com photo
His first job was at the Dorchester YMCA where he worked and played ball as well. “That little node of Codman Square and Fields Corner has shaped me to be the basketball player I am and to be the person and basketball coach I am now,” he said. “I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”

In the beginning, the game of basketball beckoned to him as he looked at old news clippings about his father, Alex Eldridge, who played at UMass Amherst in the 1970s. Alex died when Courtney was only 17 days old of cardiomyopathy similar to the cardiac arrest that later claimed the life of Celtics star Reggie Lewis. Eldridge noted that there is an award in his father’s name given to a UMass player every year.

But instead of following his father to Amherst, he went south to UNC-Greensboro, where he stood out his freshman year. When a coaching change took place that year, he wasn’t sure about staying, but the new coach, Coach Fran McCaffrey, and the synergy that developed between them changed the course of Eldridge’s playing and coaching career.

“Coach McCaffrey instilled a confidence in me and challenged me to see the game in a different light,” he said. “We developed a rapport and relationship that has gone on to this day some 26 years later.”

He left Greensboro with a degree in business administration and as a top ten all-time scorer and leader in assists. But he wasn’t yet ready to put his sneakers aside.

Ahead lay a fruitful 12-year career overseas, something that he said “isn’t for everybody.

“Getting paid to play basketball was something I dreamed about and I took great pride in the international exposure,” he said. “At the time you don’t think as much of it but reflecting on it now, it was a really great accomplishment. I’m proud of playing as long as I did and at that level. I was a 5-feet-10 guard and there were millions of others like me, and I had to be different. Every year was a job interview, and I had to distinguish myself.”

Being different involved many things that now make him an effective coach, intangibles like always being aware of the time and score, or who has four fouls and needs to be pressed to foul them out of the game. With that kind of awareness, he started coaching at East Boston High School, and then at St. Joseph’s High in Brighton.

While Eldridge was at St. Joseph’s, McCaffrey and his Iowa team were in New York playing in the NCAA Tournament, and he got an invite to come “watch film” with them.

He drove down to New York twice that week, and though Iowa lost, he was invited to be McCaffrey’s guest at the Final Four in Houston. Just a few months later, he was offered the video coordinator job with the Hawkeyes.

Now one of three assistant coaches at Iowa, Eldridge is responsible for recruiting, scouting, player development and in-game assistance to McCaffrey.

“It’s a lot of work but there’s nothing else I’d rather be doing,” he said. “The risk-reward is great…Seeing the growth and success of players coming through the program and going across the stage with their degree is a special experience.”

The season is daunting, he said, with players reporting in June for summer workouts before school starts in August, with the first game of the season but eight weeks away. In the best of circumstances, the last game would be in late March or early April. Right now, Eldridge said, they are in the thick of the Big 10 conference season, and his focus is on player development and scouting games.

“I have five or six conference teams that when we play them, I am the lead scout, coaching the scout team as if they’re the other team’s players,” he said. “Two days before a game I’m the scout team’s head coach and meeting with Fran and the staff and letting them know what that team does in their game plan. I’m Coach McCaffrey’s eyes and ears for that team.”

Iowa’s record was 14-11 as of Monday this week, with a recent road win over Rutgers and a loss to nationally ranked Maryland.

Looking ahead, Eldridge has been invited to Silver Waves Media Elite 75 Future Head Coach Power Lunch during the NCAA Final Four, where athletic directors and head coaches will meet with promising assistant coaches.

“Hopefully my next step is running my own program,” he said. “It’s a goal of mine to be a head coach when the time comes. I’m looking forward to that day and if that day does not come, I look forward to being the best assistant coach I can be.

“It all just shows that people from Dorchester, when you put your mind to something, you can achieve it,” he added. “I’m from the same neighborhood and made it here seizing some great opportunities and so can they.”