Kelly Flagg may be best-known across the country as the mother of Cooper Flagg.
But before one of her sons was making Maine history as the first pick in the NBA draft, she was making history of her own at the University of Maine in the late 1990s.
She was Kelly Bowman back then, and she was a key member of the 1998-1999 University of Maine women’s basketball team that upset Stanford in the NCAA tournament. Bowman and her teammates brought home the first, and so far only, NCAA basketball tournament win in school history.
Kelly Flagg later went on to coach, both at her high school alma mater Nokomis in Newport and at the AAU level, and is now being honored as one of ten 2025 inductees of the Maine Sports Hall of Fame on Sunday in Bangor.
One of Flagg’s teammates on that historic Black Bears squad was Amy Vachon, now the UMaine women’s basketball coach.
“Kelly was an awesome teammate. She was encouraging and whatever was asked of her she did,” Vachon said this week ahead of Flagg’s hall of fame induction. “Kelly was super competitive in everything she did. I always knew Kelly had my back and would never back down from a challenge.”
College and NBA basketball fans have watched as Cooper Flagg’s competitiveness has helped propel him farther than any other Maine basketball player before him. And there’s no question where that will to win comes from, according to Matt Mackenzie, who has been working as the player development coach for Cooper Flagg and his twin brother, Ace Flagg, for years.
“The number one thing people always talk about with Cooper is how competitive he is, and he absolutely gets that from his mom,” MacKenzie said. “He wants to win at all costs, and Kelly was the same way. Kelly wanted to win no matter what.”
MacKenzie said that Kelly Flagg has been the “ultimate role model” for both Cooper and Ace, who is in his first year as a member of the University of Maine men’s basketball team.
“She has been able to instill a lot of really important values to both of her sons, number one being that everything that they do is earned, not given,” MacKenzie said. “And she has been able to coach them with tough love and telling the truth.”
MacKenzie said he is incredibly proud of his close friend for making it into the Maine Sports Hall of Fame, calling it a deserved honor for her accomplishments both as a player and a coach.
“Kelly was a great player. She was somebody who played hard every possession just like her boys do,” MacKenzie said. “She understood the importance of playing not only offense but also defense. She has a claim to fame as having the greatest up and under move in women’s basketball at the University of Maine at the time. I know her boys mock her about that, but it’s true, she had great footwork in the post. And she was a really good finisher.”
And Mackenzie is far from the only one to have described her style of play as one fueled by effort and all-around ability.
“She can score, rebound, handle the ball and play good defense,” former Nokomis coach Charlie Wing said in a 1994 edition of the Bangor Daily News. “She’s a very well-rounded player who does everything well. She also has a tremendous desire to succeed and is very coachable. I wish I had a dozen Kelly Bowmans.”
MacKenzie said Flagg was able to pass along some of her footwork along to her sons, a strength that other coaches have been highlighting about Ace Flagg as he follows in his mother’s footsteps at UMaine.
“We were always coming here to watch the women’s team growing up,” Ace Flagg said this summer in Orono during an early Black Bears practice. “She would take us to games and stuff, so we grew to love the team and the school.”
Ace Flagg is being heralded by the UMaine coaching staff as a tough and versatile player. And that sounds a lot like the way Kelly Flagg played the game.
“She would do anything she needed to do on the court to impact winning, whether it was making a hustle play, taking a charge, getting an offensive rebound, finishing around the basket,” MacKenzie added. “She was tough as nails, very gritty, and from what I’ve been told, she was an incredible teammate.”
