VERMONT SPORTS HALL OF FAME

Photo Courtesy Vt Basketball Coaches Assn.

Multi-sport athlete/coach: Basketball

Bristol

Inducted 2025

Connie (Bouvier) LaRose has had an incredible, legendary athletic career for over 50 years as both a high school and college student-athlete and a high school coach in Vermont. 

Basketball was her primary sport as a coach, where she amassed a 486-232 career record coaching at three high schools.  She won five girls basketball state titles, including the Division II crown in 2022 — her final year of coaching at Mount Abraham. She reached Division II state 16 final fours and 11 title games. 

 LaRose is the fourth winningest female head coach in Vermont high school history and is one of only seven women coaches selected for induction (2014) into the Vermont Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame.

A 1962 graduate of Bristol High where she played both basketball and soccer for four years and softball for three years, before going on to win two varsity basketball letters at Champlain College.

LaRose returned to Addison County where she immediately gave back to the game and supported student-athletes through coaching.  A pioneer in women’s sports in the state before Title IX, she was first hired at Beeman Academy in New Haven in 1966 and moved the following year to Bristol High.   

The school soon after transitioned into the new Mount Abraham Union High School in Bristol and she coach at Bristol-Mount Abe for 31 seasons.  The last state title came against top-seeded Spaulding in 2022, bouncing back from a regular season rout by the Crimson Tide. Many of her Eagles through the years went on to play college basketball.

During a few summers in the 1990s, LaRose worked at a well-known basketball camp in Philadelphia owned by three-time national college champion coach Cathy Rush of Immaculata.

She also coached the Mount Abe girls soccer team from 1989 to 2010, and coached softball at Middlebury College for three years before moving over to the Middlebury Union High softball team from 1996 to 2004. She also was an amateur and youth sports coach in Bristol for many years

She was inducted into the VPA Hall of Fame in 2018 and as of 2025, she still serves on the board of directors of the VBCA.