JAY – The Jay Tigers’ basketball season hung in the balance a day before the season had even started.

The players had gone through the early fall not knowing who would be their coach. While their talent held a lot of promise for the upcoming season, they were worried the coaching situation might distract them enough to doom that promise.

“I remember talking to the guys and we thought the most important thing was, whoever the new coach was, we had to be ready,” senior co-captain Zach Charles said. “It’s not about who’s coaching the team. The coach is an important part, but it’s about us. We’ve got to be ready.”

The Tigers were ready when former Lewiston and Buckfield girls’ coach Mike Child was finally introduced to them last Nov. 16 as their new coach, one day before their first practice together.

For Child, taking a team over on such short notice was not a new experience. In 1999, when he coached the girls’ JV at Lewiston, Child had to take over as varsity head coach when Mike McGraw stepped down four days before the season-opener due to health problems.

“That experience helped a lot,” Child said. “I wasn’t panicking coming in. I’ve learned from Lewiston and my year at Buckfield that being around great kids makes all the difference.”

“He told us straight up that he knew we were a talented team with smart and athletic kids and he was here to guide us through it,” senior co-captain Marc Kelvey said. “That’s basically what he’s doing, letting us do what we’ve always done. He hasn’t tried to put in something totally different.”

It helped that the Tigers were traditionally a running team and Child prefers an up-tempo style. Other than implementing some zone defenses and some new nomenclature, Child said he just had to emphasize team basketball to his new players.

“I didn’t come in here to be a dictator,” he added. “These kids have something to say about the game and I respect that. They’re smart individuals and if we think it’s going to work. We’ll try it. I didn’t have to make a lot of adjustments. The biggest adjustment was playing as a team.”

“He’s done a great job working individually with each player and us as a team,” junior co-captain Justin Wells said. “He came in with a positive attitude. There’s been a few issues. We had a couple of losses early and people were complaining, but we fought through it as a team and a coach.”

The Tigers started the season 3-2. Just as the players were beginning to feel comfortable with their coach and vice versa heading into the Christmas break, a 6-5 senior from Somerville, South Carolina showed up.

There was no doubt Sean Fry belonged on a basketball court. He had been a varsity starter at a school nearly 10 times the size of Jay High School, so it wouldn’t have surprised anyone if Fry decided he could dominate small-time Maine basketball and try to make a name for himself in his new home.

Instead, Fry has been likened to “an oil change” by Child. His size gives the Tigers another rebounder and low-post option, while his athleticism makes their running game even more dangerous.

“We were starting to play well before Sean came here, but he completed the puzzle,” Child said. “He could have stepped in here and said ‘I’m going to take over’. Now, there’s no way I would have let that happen, but I didn’t have to. The kid was just phenomenal and the team accepted him. They all got together the day he moved into his house and, right after practice, moved him in.”

“I didn’t want to mess up the chemistry they had,” Fry said. “The guys brought me in and showed me the ropes and everyone was real nice about it.”

“He acts like he’s been here for 10 years,” Kelvey said. “He fits right in. Everybody likes him. Since he came in, we started clicking. That’s when everything fell into place.”

The Tigers started to get an idea just how well things were starting to fall into place with wins over Wiscasset at home and Georges Valley, Boothbay and Telstar on the road. Then came the highlight of the season so far, an 86-57 pasting of Telstar at home last week in which the Tigers ripped off a remarkable 28-0 run, one of the most dominant stretches of basketball the Tigerdome has ever seen.

Jay has now won 12 in a row heading into tonight’s game with Madison. A win tonight and a Hall-Dale loss and the Tigers will host the first ever Mountain Valley Conference championship game next Monday, plus set themselves up with one of the top two seeds in the Western C tournament.

“Every game is another notch for us,” Child said. “(Madison) is another notch. When we get into the tournament, then we’ve got to pick it up another notch there.”

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