Bridgette Mitchell, a Trenton native, played at Duke and is now coaching at Wagner/ Photo courtesy of Wagner Athletics

Bridgette Mitchell was back home in Trenton hosting a free basketball clinic during the summer at the West Ward Center on Prospect Street when it finally hit her.

“I was like, ‘You know, this may be my calling,’” she said.

In that moment, Mitchell decided she wanted to coach. It would allow her to stay connected to the game she’s played all her life and help young girls reach the next level.

It’s not like she doesn’t have the credentials. Mitchell was the Trentonian’s Area Player of the Year in 2006 while at the Peddie School — she’s the program’s second all-time leading scorer — and went on to play in four NCAA tournaments at Duke University, and then professionally for teams in France and Poland.

All she needed was her first coaching gig.

Mitchell heard through the grapevine that Wagner College on Staten Island was hiring an assistant coach. Turns out, the Seahawks’ first-year coach, Lisa Cermignano, recruited Mitchell in high school while she was an assistant at Vanderbilt.

Mitchell, who had been working for a marketing company in New Brunswick, checked out a couple of games and applied. A few days later she had the job.

Now it’s like being a freshman all over again.

There are so many things coaches do that players don’t notice. Mitchell uses the example of a scouting report. The assistant coaches cut the tape and identify tendencies and matchups.

“When you’re at school, you don’t pay attention to anything the coaches did,” said Mitchell, who graduated from Duke in 2010 and is working on her master’s degree in management at Wagner. “We would just get the scouting report in front of us, read it, know our personnel and move on.”

So when she got yelled at in college now she knows why.

“As a coach, you’re making that (scouting report), you take offense to it when the players don’t pay attention or know their scout,” Mitchell said. “I’m on the other side of it, so I definitely feel like a freshman. I’m learning knew things, but the game itself is still the same.”

Mitchell is adapting quickly to her new role, something she credits to a playing career — which she insists is over with — that has taken her around the globe.

“I know what it takes to win,” Mitchell said.

To Mitchell, that what’s sold her to Cermignano, who is building from the ground up at the Northeast Conference school as Wagner struggles through a 2-21 campaign.

“You want people around you that know what it takes to win,” Mitchell said. “That’s definitely something she saw in me. Not being the best team in the conference and rising to be the best team in the conference is an accomplishment. If you have people around you that are willing to fight for that, you want people like that around you.”

Mitchell is certainly up for the challenge, even if she hasn’t always felt that way.

“For the longest time, I was like, ‘I’m going to play forever,” she recalled.

Then she thinks back to that basketball clinic she hosted over the summer.

“This may be something where I can still be around basketball and teaching younger players,” Mitchell said. “It really sparked this summer at those clinics and teaching those younger girls how to play — inspiring them to want more, especially in the inner city. To want more, and that they can have more.”