Greg Levinsky
Jess Giorgio, a Bowdoin College women’s basketball team forward, snatched an offensive rebound off the glass. Wedged in an awkward position below the backboard and hounded by a pair of Maine Maritime defenders, the 6-foot-2-inch senior forward did what she’s done for nearly a dozen years, made a play with Megan Tan.
Anticipating the 5-foot-6-inch guard’s cut to the rim, Giorgio fired a wraparound bounce-pass to her longtime teammate and classmate. Tan laid it in for two.
“Go Belmont!” teammates screamed from the bench.
That play, part of a mid-November win against Maine Maritime in which Giorgio and Tan combined for 30 of Bowdoin’s 57 points, illustrates the on-court chemistry built by spending 11 of the last 12 winters on the same basketball team.
From Winthrop L. Chenery Middle School to Belmont High School and eventually Bowdoin College, Tan and Giorgio have hit the hardwood together for hundreds of games, making many memories.
The 2023-24 season represents the final chapter as the 22-year-olds close their college careers. Tan called the moment “bittersweet.”
“I have a lot of gratitude for having been able to play with Jess for all this time for a multitude of reasons,” Tan said. “Not only for the friendship but also for the ability to compete at this high level.”
“It’s pretty surreal that Meg’s been such a throughline for my whole basketball career,” Giorgio said. “To get to play together in a place and with people that we love is really cool. There’s been so much growth in each other.”
Talk to Giorgio and Tan simultaneously, and their closeness is apparent. They find it easier to talk about each other than themselves, one often finishing the other’s sentences. It’s hard to imagine them apart. They claim to never tire of each other.
This year, they are roommates for the first time.
“We have a running joke that we’re carbon copies,” Tan said. “We play basketball at Bowdoin College, are from the same town, and have similar interests to a degree… but we couldn’t look more different.”
Or act more differently at times. Literally and figuratively, Giorgio’s a big presence.
“Jess leads with her heart, and I lead with my head,” said Tan, more of a lead-by-example type.
Class of 2019 Belmont High School graduates Giorgio and Tan first met on the soccer pitch in third grade. Giorgio attended Winn Brook Elementary School, while Tan went to Wellington.
They teamed up on the hardwood in middle school, later posting standout careers for the Belmont High Marauders, enjoying myriad individual and team success. As seniors, Tan and Giorgio led their team to a 19-2 record, including a perfect 15-0 mark in Middlesex League play. Belmont went 68-21 during their careers, and each player garnered All-League accolades.
At Belmont, they caught the eye of Megan Phelps, then the Bowdoin Polar Bears’ lead assistant coach and recruiting coordinator. Tan and Giorgio sought a rigorous academic program and a competitive basketball team.
“They were the opposite of a package deal,” said Phelps, who became Bowdoin’s head coach last season. “Selling them Bowdoin was different for both of them. It was easier to treat them as separate entities.”
Indeed, Giorgio and Tan kept their college recruitment private. Eventually, they realized they sought similar opportunities.
They enrolled at Bowdoin together in the fall of 2019, playing key roles off the bench as freshmen for the 29-2 Polar Bears team that won the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) tournament and a pair of NCAA Tournament games, advancing to the Sweet 16.
But the tournament — and their freshman year — ended prematurely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s the best season the team’s had since they got to campus.
Their sophomore year? A wash. The NESCAC did not field competitive sports during the 2020-21 school year. To preserve their athletic eligibility, Tan and Giorgio took a gap year where neither took classes.
A psychology and education major, Giorgio spent the year with AmeriCorps NCCC, working on service projects in Arizona and Colorado. Tan, an environmental studies and anthropology major, lived in Maine for part of the year, later working on a farm in Tennessee.
They returned to campus and moved into more prominent roles as sophomores during the 2021-22 season. Tan started all but three of the 25 games she played, averaging 8.2 points, 3.8 rebounds and 3.3 assists per game. Giorgio started in 16 of 24 appearances, averaging 4.5 points and 4.5 rebounds. The team went .500 in NESCAC play and fell to rival Colby in the opening round of the conference’s postseason tournament.
Bowdoin’s season ended the same way last winter, falling to eventual champion Tufts. Giorgio developed into a full-time starter. Tan was limited to nine games due to injury.
Both healthy and again in the starting lineup for Bowdoin this winter, Tan and Giorgio are averaging career-bests in scoring early on. They’re flourishing in the second year of coach Phelps’ tenure, the first time they’ve had the same college coach in consecutive seasons. Count Phelps, who described them as “two of her favorite people,” among the many thankful for, as the team calls it, “one last go around for the Belmont gals.”
“They have really left their mark on the program in a special way,” she said.
