I have been waiting to write this story for six years.

On Monday night, the Toll Gate girls basketball team beat Exeter-West Greenwich for the Division III Championship which was the program’s first in over 40 years. This entire season has been special for the Titans and I would need much more than one column to cover all the ins and outs.

The biggest story is obvious: Adeline Areson’s return.

Adeline Areson was perhaps the state’s most promising underclassman in three sports before suffering a knee injury which kept her sidelined her entire junior year.

Sure, knee injuries are not what they once were in terms of long, challenging recoveries, but nothing is guaranteed. She returned to the soccer field in the fall and was a key piece to that team reaching the championship game and it appeared that she would be good to go for basketball.

She was very much ready … to win a championship.

As the team’s best player, it makes sense that coach Jim Areson would use her in a variety of different roles. There were times where she would be a guard, a forward, center. She lined up everywhere and wore many hats this winter season. She excelled in each area.

When you’re a freshman, your value to the team is simple. Can you score and contribute on defense? By the time you’re a senior and in a leadership role, the duties and expectations expand greatly.

Do you attack the basket on offense? Can you shoot from short range, deep range? Do you hit your free throws? Can you play man defense, zone defense?

Are you careful with the ball? Do you make smart, accurate passes? Do you call out the right play? Can you operate within a script and when you go off script, do you make the right decisions once you’re there?

Do you fight for rebounds, loose balls? Can you guard the perimeter? Can you guard the paint? Can you speed teams up and slow them down in transition? Do you force your opponents into mistakes?

For Adeline Areson, the answer to all of those this season was an emphatic yes. She is the most complete player in the state.

Great players don’t need championships in order to be great. It takes more than one person to achieve a title. There are some players though, that are just meant to have a championship story. Adeline Areson was a member of the soccer team that won a couple years back, but that was not her story. Monday night at the AMP was.

Down in the final two minutes, she did what elite players do. She took control of the game. EWG had no answer, and there was no answer to be had. Adeline Areson is the type of athlete that will find a way. That’s why so many outlets had the Titans winning this game although they were the lower seed. They had one of those players that most teams only get once or twice a decade if they’re lucky. Had Adeline Areson been healthy last year, we’d be talking about the Titans repeating.

Now, they don’t have to think “what if?” Any disappointment from last year has been wiped away.

Adeline Areson proved to be an unusual three-sport phenom awhile ago, but now she has a legendary championship performance to add to her resume. Few athletes can say they’ve done it all. Now she can.

The second story here is about her dad.

When covering high school sports, the credit goes to the kids, as it should, but this is a big one for Jim Areson.

As a three-sport coach for Toll Gate (field hockey, basketball, lacrosse) there is no one in the athletics community that commits to the student-athletes the way that he does. Coaches spend their days, nights, weekends helping kids achieve their goals both on and off the field. The sacrifices they make are substantial, and Jim Areson does it for all three seasons. He loves it, but it is still a lot of work that far too often gets overlooked and underappreciated.

I arrived here in 2018 and as you can imagine, I have covered countless games coached by Jim Areson. I have seen him get so close to championships on multiple occasions. He won a field hockey title back in the day at Vets, but he has been knocking at the door for the past six years. He would disagree with me, I’m sure, but this win was every bit as special for him as a coach as it was for his players. He deserved it.

Similar to the point I made earlier, we also watch these sports for the kids. They’re the ones on the field.

I will say, though, I enjoy watching Jim Areson coach as much as I enjoy watching his kids compete.

Each time I watch a game coached by Jim Areson, I learn something new. There are brilliant coaches out there that reserve their instruction for practice or between periods while others, like him, are facilitating from start to finish.

If you take the time to actually tune into the station that he’s on during the game, you’ll be fascinated by the details you pick up. I tuned in during the fourth quarter while he was coaching center Mary McNulty and I got an eight-minute masterclass on when to transition from the high post to the low post and vice versa.

Jim Areson, Jamal Gomes, Tom Centore, Richard Grenier. Those guys fall into that category of elite gameday coaches.

What I also appreciate about Jim Areson’s approach is how faithful he is to the fundamentals.

Most coaches ignore the fundamentals because, well, they’re fundamental. The goal is for players to master these concepts before they hit the field as a varsity athlete.

The one thing that is consistent with all of his teams is that they will be fundamentally sound. It’s cliché, but a Jim Areson team will not beat itself. Your team will need to be either far more talented or play a perfect game to win. That is why I was excited for him on Monday. Championship coaches deserve to win championships.

It was tough this winter season to not take the cheese on the father-daughter storyline with the two of them. I was patiently waiting for them to win a championship together and that is what finally happened. The family angle always works in sports, but the stuff we witnessed on Monday night is like a comet, it only comes around once in awhile.