Sunday Sitdown: Dighton-Rehoboth coach Bill Cuthbertson on how high school baseball has changed over his 45 seasons

Boston Globe

29-03-2025

We wondered the same thing, so we sat down with the coach, who has also spent 34 years coaching basketball at Dighton-Rehoboth (11 girls, 23 boys), winning a combined 1,038 games between the two sports.
I found it hard to find much about your background in my research. Take me back to your childhood. Where did you grow up and were you big into sports?
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It's all a secret! I grew up in Barrington, R.I. I played basketball and baseball in Barrington and then I went to Bates College and played basketball and baseball there. Barrington was a great place to grow up.
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Where did your love of athletics come from?
My father got me involved early in life. My parents really encouraged it. I had some great coaches at Barrington. [Late Providence Journal sports columnist] Bill Reynolds was my English teacher in high school. I grew up watching him play and all his teammates.
As foreboding clouds approach, D-R coach Bill Cuthbertson hits fungoes ahead of a scrimmage against North Attleborough.
John Tlumacki/Globe Staff
What are some differences between coaching the two sports?
Obviously, the fundamentals and the skills are very different. But, in the end, at the essence of both of them, you're just trying to get the kids to exceed their potential and get them to understand the game and appreciate the game. Hopefully, when they become parents and get involved, invariably many of them end up coaching their own kids, or kids in their community. I certainly encourage all of them if they don't get involved in coaching to become officials.
I imagine there's more getting into the granular of scouting every game in basketball?
100 percent. The way the technology has changed now, you're video-taping every game and you can share it with the kids on Hudl and I can edit the videos and send them out to the kids. I'm getting scouting videos and you're breaking them down and showing them to the team. That has changed dramatically.
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Years ago you were driving to a parking lot to hand off a VHS tape.
Exactly. Or you have to travel some odd night to go scout somebody. Now you can watch them live on streaming services. Being a retired teacher I'm not working on anything else so I spend a lot of my days just breaking down video.
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Talk about some other ways you've seen high school sports change.
It's changed dramatically, for sure. The biggest thing now is all the offseason training. This was never available when I played or when I started coaching. Now we have kids who train year-round, AAU programs, they play in the summer, and deep into the fall.
How do you feel about that specialization? Are we producing better athletes?
It's a double-edged sword. You see the development. Kids are bigger, stronger, faster, more advanced, and have more coaching. They're better trained and more developed. But, I'm from the train of thought that I like kids playing multiple sports. Three-sport athletes who have had different coaches and different experiences in competition. Unfortunately, that has gone the way of the dodo bird.
Bill Cuthbertson talks with his players ahead of a preseason scrimmage. The coach cites his relationship with the kids as the primary reason he continues coaching.
John Tlumacki/Globe Staff
How have the kids changed? Anecdotally, you talk to some coaches and they say 'The kids these days are nothing like they used to be.' But then you talk to other coaches and they say 'The kids don't change that much. Things around them change. The technology changes. But the kids, at their heart, are pretty similar.'
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I agree, that's how I view it. Kids are kids. In a lot of ways they haven't changed that much. They want to be good. They want to compete. They want to win. They want to have fun. They play because they love it, and that's really special. Now, the world around them has changed dramatically with technology and social media. Their lives are so much more complicated than my life was at their age. I can't imagine trying to navigate the world they live in when I was a teenager in high school. It's very complicated. I don't know how they manage to get through the day. That's the beauty of coming out here to play. You're playing baseball. There's a simplicity to it.
One thing I hear is there is maybe a little less persistence than there used to be . . . Is there a sense that if there's not an immediate reward it's on to the next thing?
Yeah, that's what I was alluding to. They've had all this training and preparation and now they expect to have success and it's not easy. Some kids struggle to succeed. That's part of the beauty of it, from where I stand as a teacher. They're learning not just how to be successful, but how to deal with adversity and failure.
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We talked about the kids. How about the parents? How have they changed in 45 years?
It's a lot different. Parents are a lot more involved. I've been very fortunate here for a long time. Great parents. Great kids, administrators, athletic directors, assistant coaches, but obviously there's always exceptions to the rule. They love their kids and they want their kids to be successful and I understand that. But we want everyone to keep it in perspective.
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There was that 2019 suspension [during basketball season]. If I remember correctly it was a little bit over old-school coaching. Did you take anything out of that? Did you change your approach?
That was a very difficult situation. If anything, it has motivated me to continue what I'm doing. I know what I'm doing is important and we're going about it the right way. Kids are still responding positively to me and I still think I'm doing a good job.
Your wife, Cindy, is a longtime very successful field hockey coach at Apponequet. What's that dynamic like?
It's great being married to another coach. She certainly gets it. We talk a lot about each other's teams and situations we run into. She's been very supportive and I'm glad she's still coaching. We're going to keep doing it as long as we can.
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Did you ever question if coaching two sports was too much?
I've been very fortunate. I love basketball and baseball. I love the competition. I love teaching the game. My wife and girls [Caitlyn and Kristen] were very supportive, wanting me to coach and encouraging me to coach. The way I've always looked at it, the baseball field and basketball court are really classrooms. I've always looked at it that way. It's just an extension of teaching. It's always been a passion and I love doing it. I feel fortunate I am able to continue doing it.
Time management, though. That must have been tough with you both coaching and two daughters playing sports?
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We laugh now. How did we do it? Where did we find the time? Of course, we were a lot younger and had a lot more energy and we could function on a lot less sleep.
Do you have a message to young coaches or someone thinking of getting into the profession?
One of the things I learned very quickly was that winning isn't the most important thing. Especially as a high school coach, you're really a teacher. While we all want to win championships and compete at a high level, the most important thing is your relationship with the kids and how their experience is. You want it to be positive and fun, but you also want them to take away lessons that will help them going forward in their lives.
Bill Cuthbertson says his fire for coaching still burns, despite more than 1,000 wins across two sports.
John Tlumacki/Globe Staff
Brendan Kurie can be reached at