There hasn’t been a whole lot of suspense to the Mountain Valley Conference in recent years.

For much of the last decade, Dirigo has been the team to beat. Even if there was a team that could challenge the Cougars, like Jay, those two teams still hovered well above the rest of the field.

Such a dominant team may be hard to find this season. Dirigo has lost eight seniors from its two-time defending Class C state championship roster while a number of other teams have enough talent back to challenge for the top spots in the conference.

“I think there are going to be some tremendous matchups that will bring a lot of excitment to the conference,” said Dirigo coach Gavin Kane.

The Cougars have one returning starter and two regulars from a club that has won 45 straight games and hasn’t lost in the MVC in 85 games, dating back to a loss to Mt. Abram in 1998.

The Cougars should still be a contender in Western C but many of the other teams in the conference are on more equal footing.

Wiscasset returns the bulk of its team that went 12-6 last year before losing in the Western B quarterfinals. Hall-Dale went 14-4 before losing to Dirigo in the Western C semifinals. The Bulldogs graduated five seniors but return a promising group of sophomores. Georges Valley has much of its team returning after going 7-11 last year. Teams like Boothbay, Mt. Abram, Mountain Valley and Winthrop all lost key components to their squads but have valuable players back to make them formidable teams. Younger teams like Jay, Telstar, Livermore Falls and Lisbon return much of their squads and should be improved.

“You’ve got a chance any night you go out,” said Winthrop coach Lonney Steeves, whose team went 14-4 and lost in the semifinals to Boothbay. “That’s a nice feeling. Obviously when you play a Wiscasset or a Georges Valley or a Hall-Dale, you know they are the teams that are probably better than us, but even against those teams, when we used to play Dirigo, you knew (the result). You knew going in. We’d just try to keep it close and see if we could get them into the fourth quarter. I don’t think you’ve got that this year – where you hope you can get someone into the fourth quarter – because I think you think that you can play with them.”

It gives the MVC a whole new look and challenge. With teams like Dirigo and Jay so far above most others in past years, it was hard for teams to believe they could challenge for the MVC crown or a Western C title. This year, those goals could be anybody’s.

“We’ve been talking about that in practice,” said Mt. Abram coach Doug Lisherness, who has to replace Sara Martin but has a promising young club. “They knew last year there were a lot of teams we just could not compete with. Because of the summer program and a lot of other things, I really believe we have the attitude that we can compete with everybody. They did not have that feeling last year. I think that’s huge.”

With so many MVC teams typically earning berths in the Western C playoff field, a competitive regular season may just feed into what could be an up-for-grabs tournament. It should make for a more intriguing and competitive regular season.

“There should be a lot of nights where you don’t know who’s going to win,” said Steeves. “Last year, you could look at the schedule and on most nights, Dirigo would beat anybody and the next step down was Boothbay and Winthrop and Mt. Abram. Those teams against anyone else, they were going to win. You don’t have that this year.”

kmills@sunjournal.com

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