LIVERMORE FALLS – Local coaches won a recent challenge against teenage basketball players. Now they’re ready to take on a professional comedy basketball team Monday to raise money for the girls’ high school team.

The SAD 36 All Stars will play The Harlem Rockets at 7 p.m. Monday at Livermore Falls High School on Cedar Street. Pre-admission is $5 a ticket in advance, or $6 at the gate. Tickets are available from girls’ basketball team members, coaches or at Sturtevant & Ham Insurance on Main Street.

All-star Margaret Leclerc remembers the last time she played the Rockets a couple years ago.

“I think I had six points but I poked a guy’s eye,” Leclerc said. “They all thought it was part of the skit but I took him out of the whole game.”

She said he even had to put ice on his eye. She’s going to make sure that doesn’t happen again.

“We got creamed; we were outmatched big time,” Leclerc said of the game. “I think we’re going to do OK” this time.

Leclerc, who is an assistant coach of the girls’ team, said she hasn’t shot a basketball for two weeks.

“I better start going to the gym this weekend,” she said.

Some members of the SAD 36 teams beat a mixed team of girls and boys high school players this winter.

“We beat them, we did real good against them,” She said. “We showed them the old alumni still have it, but these guys are 7 feet tall.”

She’s not so sure how they’ll do.

But Ken Jones, the high school girls’ basketball coach, has a little more confidence.

“We’ll do fine,” he said. He played basketball in high school and some pickup B-ball after, he said.

“My best move is sitting on the bench and giving orders,” Jones said. He, too, remembered how well the team did against the teenagers and has high hopes.

The Rockets, in their 10th year as a comedy basketball team, may prove to be too much for the locals. They’ve been concentrating on putting more comedy into their playing this year as well as more of “razzmatazz” brand of basketball. Rockets will be led by the legendary Sayee “Rainbow” Muntaqim, Johnny “Magic” Dadzie and 7-foot, 2-inch Ricky “Rim Rocker” Lopes.

Among the Livermore Falls team are Jones, Leclerc, John Trask, Ross Hamblin, Jack Richard, Tim Madden, Debbie Finley, Mark Cyr and Greg Boivin.

dperry@sunjournal.com

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