AUGUSTA – Who said school vacation started at 2 o’clock Friday afternoon? Two hours later, the Monmouth Academy girls’ basketball team took a field trip to Augusta Civic Center.
They arrived with three coaches, a dozen players, ribbons representing free admission to the regional tournament and plenty of pocket change for concession-stand dinners.
Halftime arrived, however, and head coach Rick Amero got the sinking feeling he’d forgotten the two hoop teaching tools that Hollywood made famous: a tape measure and a ladder.
Amero directed the good-natured blame at one of his assistant coaches, Scott Wing.
“Hey, Scott,” he intoned, “isn’t this where you’re supposed to take the team down and measure the height of the basket and all that stuff?”
Wing got the joke.
“The Maine Principals’ Association won’t let me on the floor,” he retorted.
Their exchange invoked a pivotal scene from the 1980 sports theatrical staple, “Hoosiers.” In the film, Gene Hackman, playing the coach of little-school-that-could Hickory High, shows his team that the dimensions of the court at the cold, cavernous championship game site are no different than the ones in their tiny, toasty gymnasium back home.
Amero hopes Friday’s excursion helped the Mustangs see the 94-foot civic center expanse as just another dance floor.
Never mind the echo of the public address system. Or a couple thousand spectators. Or the extra official. Or the acreage behind the backboard. Or the flash bulbs and television cameras.
Or … say, coach, are you sure that rim is 10 feet high?
“That’s mostly what it is, just to get everyone acclimated,” Amero said as his team sat two and three rows down in the bleachers, soaking up the atmosphere of a Western Class B girls’ quarterfinal between Greely and Fryeburg.
“Most of our girls have never even been in this building. We haven’t been to any tournament in four or five years.”
That was the end of a three-year regional title reign in Class D. Monmouth played its last Class C game in the open air here in 1985.
By virtue of its preliminary-round rout of Kents Hill, 13th-seeded Monmouth (10-9) will face No. 5 Jay at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the quarterfinals.
“When you say it’s been 20 years,” said Amero, “that really puts it in perspective.”
Every year, 48 boys’ and girls’ teams are represented in Augusta at the BCD tournament. There’s the requisite personnel turnover from February to February, of course, but by and large, most names across the chest of the jerseys remain the same. Basketball has become a year-round sport, and success begets success.
Monmouth is one of the few newcomers to break through in 2004-05. Poland’s boys are another. The Knights visit ACC for the first time in school history at 5:30 p.m. today, meeting Gorham.
The ambience doesn’t charm newcomers.
In addition to the extra official compared to most regular-season games, teams must adjust to a different style of officiating. Contact underneath the basket and hand checks along the perimeter that are allowed in December seem more likely to draw a whistle now.
Then there’s the elusive basket. At home, there’s barely enough room between the mounting and the padded wall for an out-of-bounds area along the baseline.
Here, it’s at least 30 feet to the nearest wall. To some shooters, the net and backboard appear to float in midair, like the expert setting on a PlayStation game.
“This place can be intimidating,” Amero said.
That goes for seasoned squads, too. Monmouth watched Greely, the defending state champion and a team with five senior starters, shoot 2-for-22 and commit 16 turnovers in the first half before rallying to a 53-45 win.
Amero and Wing both have won tournament games on this court as head coaches.
The “other” assistant is Ray Convery, who merely won more than 300 games and four regional crowns during a fabulous career at neighboring Winthrop.
These fellas know the tournament drill.
“Our girls love to come to practice,” said Amero. “They never know what we’re going to come up with next.”
“They never know when we’re joking and when we’re serious,” Wing added.
Anything to break the ice. And Monmouth’s braintrust hopes Friday’s exposure to the bright lights accelerated the melting process.
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