Hockomock Alums Power Payton Pritchard’s Summer Workouts

It’s 5:30 on a weekday morning in the middle of the summer and Rocky DeAndrade’s car is filled for a 75-minute ride from Mansfield to Harwich. This isn’t a beach trip. The guys aren’t trying to beat traffic for a fun day on the Cape.

DeAndrade and company are heading to Monomoy High for hours of hard work in a hot gym, running drills, playing defense, and chasing Boston Celtics guard Payton Pritchard through a series of workouts designed to get the former Sixth Man of the Year ready for another grueling NBA season.

How did a group of former Hockomock League and Div. II and Div. III basketball players, as recently highlighted by ESPN, end up spending the past two summers as the regular workout crew for an NBA champion?

After leaving Bridgewater State, former Milford basketball and volleyball standout Michael Soares turned to personal training, working with current and former athletes, some who were trying to get back in shape to play the games they love and others who were looking to get a couple steps closer to their peak.

One of his clients was the sister of a college friend, Emma MacDonald, who became Emma Pritchard after marrying Payton in 2024. After several years working together, Emma approached Soares with a question: did he know of an open gym and any basketball players that would want to work out with Payton? At the time, he was early in his pro career and had yet to establish his place in the Celtics rotation, so he was looking for workouts during the season to build the skills he felt would get him more consistent minutes.

From that initial request, and with Pritchard becoming increasingly settled with and important to the Celtics, into a need for a regular, intense summer training program. Soares knew exactly who to work with and called up his former Bridgewater State teammate.

“The first summer, he was basically saying this is what we’re going to work on today, just kind of directing what we were going to be doing, but this past summer he just had the trust in us that we knew what we were doing,” said DeAndrade. The former Mansfield star and 1,000-point scorer in college has been working on skill development with local high school and college players and he picked a couple of guys to help out, including Bruce Saintilus (King Philip/Clark University) and Trevor White (Attleboro/Western Washington).

This past summer, the relationship grew enough that DeAndrade and Soares were counted on to devise a plan to focus on the parts of Pritchard’s game that he wanted to improve for this season. They got a visit from Celtics assistant coach Sam Cassell to get his thoughts, they watched film, and put together drills and challenges that would emphasize specific attributes.

“It wasn’t just roll the ball and let’s play, but roll the ball and also know what you need to get done,” DeAndrade explained. “When you get to that level, everything is so unconscious, you just play, play, play, but you have to be conscious of what you need to work on.”

Soares added, “Making sure that every rep counts and that everything is intentional is one of the universal rules that I’ve learned being around Payton and everything needs to be 110 percent because then your 110 percent becomes your every day.”

DeAndrade noted, “We’re so grateful to be in that position, but at the end of the day when he’s at the gym he’s an athlete trying to get better at a few things and our job is to help him do that. Once we’re in the flow, you realize this is another session and we have to get him better.”

For Saintilus, fresh off being named the most outstanding player at the NEWMAC Tournament and helping Clark reach the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 15 years, this was a unique opportunity to see an NBA player’s offseason regimen up close. As he waited for his own professional opportunities to come calling, he got to spend multiple hours a week chasing Pritchard around a gym in the Cape, while building skills that he could use in his career.

“It’s definitely eye-opening to see it live and see how intentional every rep is and the mindset and the stuff that people don’t see, the behind-the-scenes stuff,” he said. “I always wanted to be a professional and I’d always look up on YouTube to see what guys were doing but you couldn’t really find much.”

He continued, “I didn’t know where I was going to go, so I was just picking up and learning everything and just asking him a lot of questions. He’s very genuine, down-to-earth, so you can ask him anything and he’ll answer and give you advice.”

Saintilus did get the call to start his pro career. He played in Ireland and China and this August was signed by Etha Engomis Nicosia in Cyprus. Four games into the new season, he’s second on the team in scoring at 16.8 points per game, while chipping in with 5.3 rebounds and 4.3 assists.

“I’ve talked to him a lot about just being a better guard and seeing what he does in terms of angles and how to create space and how to impose your will,” Saintilus explained. “If you want to go somewhere, you might not go directly to that spot, you might need to take them one way and set it up, playing chess in a way.”

Attitude and approach are two things that DeAndrade and Soares believe sets Pritchard, and other professional athletes, apart from the pack. It’s not just that they are willing to work or that they have the talent, but that they are always willing to continue growing, learning, and being taught.

“The top athletes, and Payton’s obviously a great example of this, they have this ‘I want to be coached,; ‘tell me where I can get better,’ attitude about their development and it separates them from everybody else,” DeAndrade said.

“People could say, he’s at the top of his game, what could he really add? And it’s so far from the truth because when you’re willing to be coached there’s always things that you can improve.”

DeAndrade, Soares, Pritchard, and Saintilus (right) after a workout. (Courtesy of Michael Soares)

Naturally, when you pull together athletes who played at a high level (high school, college, pro) and start running drills and games, the competitive juices flow and no one is willing to back down from a challenge.

Soares upped the ante a little by giving Pritchard a target shooting percentage during drills. If he failed to make it, then lunch at Chipotle was on him. It wasn’t about the money, it became about pride for both Pritchard and the guys tasked with making things difficult for him.

“Most people aren’t fired up about going a whole workout just playing defense, so these guys take it as a challenge every day and they would go at it,” DeAndrade explained. “On the flip side, Payton’s been awesome with them. He’ll tell them the best defenders do this or that and now they’re learning from Payton how to be better defenders.”

Even when the day seems done, the Chipotle has been won or lost, Pritchard may set another challenge to meet, to keep pushing himself.

“You can train and just put out a couple cones and do what you need to do but that’s not going to get him to the level he needs to get to and he’s not going to enjoy that process, nor would any athlete,” DeAndrade said. “It is important to keep finding that edge and to keep battling all summer because those reps will end up adding up to what shows on the court in the season.”

Of course, as great an experience as it is to work with and learn from an NBA player, it’s equally as miserable trying to guard one.

“Soares will start talking,” Saintilus joked. “He’ll ask, “You guys smell that? It smells like Chipotle today,” and then Payton might be like, ‘Bet’ and go off for 20 straight.”

“There was one workout, I don’t think he missed for like 30 minutes. And it was just straight net and we were playing hard defense, coming off screens, bumping him, and he’s just bombing away.”

DeAndrade said, “He’s at a disadvantage in every single rep when we start going into the games and he’ll still score on average 50-60 percent of the time.” Soares jumped in to add, “And that’s us knowing his moves, knowing us being aware of how he moves, it’s insane.”

Soares noted, “We’ve had some G-League guys, some pro guys, some DI guys and they just get destroyed. That’s down to Payton. He’s got such a unique game, a unique tempo, and he knows how to get to his spots and really take advantage of his angles to put guys in not good defensive positions.”

The real reward for Soares and DeAndrade is seeing the work that everyone puts in during the summer turn into results on the court once the season begins. Soares said that after game one he texted Pritchard because he tied a career-high for free throw attempts in a game, which was a point of emphasis over the summer.

“Movement is art and it’s so cool to set these goals and actually see it happening in real time,” Soares said. “Guarding him, knowing what movement is coming for the next 10 reps, doing everything in your power to try and stop him but he’s such a high-level athlete to hit that three-foot-behind-the-NBA-line three.”

“It’s because he practices it all the time. Truthfully, these are shots that he takes hundreds of times during the week.”

For Saintilus, who is just embarking on his professional career, chasing Pritchard over screens all summer not only made his confidence as a defender skyrocket (“He would kill me obviously, but then when I was guarding anyone else, it felt easy.”) but it also drives him to continue pushing himself to find another level.

“If you’re at that level and you’re working that hard, it just means everybody who’s not there needs to work even harder,” he said. “If someone who’s a former sixth man of the year is working that hard and I know I’m nowhere near close to where I want to be, then it’s nothing but motivation.”

The next time Payton Pritchard gets that look in a Celtics game and the step-back threes start flying, remember that this isn’t a fluke, he’s not just throwing up heat checks. It’s hours of grinding in a small gym down the Cape all summer, paying off at the highest level.

“The season is a celebration of all the hard work that was put in during the offseason,” Soares said. “So, now it’s just time to show off what you worked on.”