Nick Gurney probably didn’t need a reminder, but first-year Plymouth State University wrestling coach Jason Holder dropped the challenge in cyberspace, anyhow.
For Gurney, a 184-pound senior from Dixfield and two-time Class C individual state champion at Dirigo High School, the 2005-06 campaign represents some significant lasts. In addition to Gurney’s last chance to grapple competitively, this winter is his last opportunity to help put one or two pieces of New England Conference hardware in the PSU trophy case.
Just in case the tri-captain forgot the particulars, Holder chimes in as the equivalent of the voice in one of those old movies where the main character is thinking of selling his soul. Only you can’t quite tell if he’s the angel perched on one shoulder or the devil whispering from the other.
“It is time,” Holder said on the team’s Web site prospectus, “for some of our upperclassmen to step up and place in the conference.”
Time, specifically the weekend of Feb. 18-19, will tell if Gurney successfully picks up the gauntlet. As for the opening segment of his senior campaign, Gurney is showing more of the steady improvement that characterized his previous two seasons with the Panthers.
Gurney’s 5-0 shutout of Rhode Island College counterpart Kevin Davis provided the winning margin in Plymouth State’s only dual meet to date. His triumph in the final match of the night unlatched a 21-21 tie and gave the Panthers a three-point victory.
At the Oneonta State (N.Y.) tourney, Gurney had his arm raised after two of his four trips to the mat. And in the 39th annual Rochester Institute of Technology Invitational, the fifth-ranked Gurney upset a higher seed in the first round. He’s 4-4 overall on the season.
Gurney was one of only four Plymouth State wrestlers to post a winning individual record last year, when he went 16-14 at 174 pounds. That was a dramatic jump from 2003-04 and a combined four victories at 184 and 192 pounds.
Tops in her field
Springfield College reached the NCAA Division III field hockey quarterfinals before falling to Bowdoin last month, and the national attention provided Sarah Brooker of Auburn with a superb, career-ending individual highlight. The Edward Little High School graduate has been named a first-team All-American by womensfieldhockey.com.
The senior forward fashioned 15 goals and three assists in pacing the Pride’s successful defense of the New England Men’s and Women’s Athletic Conference championship. Brooker was the fifth-leading goal scorer in NEWMAC.
Brooker, a tri-captain, was one of four Maine women on the Springfield roster.
Separate ways
Local high school basketball fans rarely saw twins Leif and Thomas Kothe apart from each other during their stellar, three-year varsity boys’ basketball career at Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School. But college is a time for expressing individuality, and surely enough, the Kothes have veered in different directions as the 6-foot-4 forwards from Paris pursue Division III hoop careers.
Thomas has scored eight points in five appearances for Bates College, which moved to 6-2 with a convincing 88-62 victory over Bowdoin. Leif, meanwhile, has appeared in two contests for Wheaton College of Norton, Mass.
The brothers won’t go head-to-head on the hardwood this season. Wheaton’s NEWMAC schedule keeps the Lyons almost exclusively in Massachusetts, while Bates is off until January before kicking off its New England Small College Athletic Conference campaign against Colby and Bowdoin.
We knew him when
In his first year as the head coach of the women’s soccer program at Florida State University, Mark Krikorian led the Seminoles to the semifinals of the College Cup, soccer’s equivalent of the final four. FSU fell 4-0 to fourth-ranked UCLA in the game at College Station, Texas, last Friday night.
Krikorian was the assistant men’s soccer coach at the Univerisity of Maine at Farmington in 1987. He has also coached at Franklin Pierce, Hartford and with the Philadelphia Charge of the WUSA, achieving more than 200 victories in 14 seasons as a head coach.
FSU upset previously undefeated North Carolina in its sectional final to reach the College Cup for the second time in three seasons.
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