From the time she was a senior at the University of Maine at Farmington, Rebecca Fletcher has made coaching her conduit to the game she loves.

Now, Fletcher has been given her first varsity job. That is no surprise considering for the past decade, she has had Maine coaching legend Gavin Kane as a boss and mentor. The job is with her alma mater, which is no surprise, either. But it is with one of the elite Class C boys’ teams in the state, which would probably be a surprise to most people, except Fletcher.

The MSAD 21 school board approved Fletcher as the new boys’ varsity basketball coach at Dirigo High School. She replaces Dave Gerrish, who resigned after one season to take a job in Skowhegan and in doing so becomes a rarity in Maine, a woman coaching a boys’ varsity basketball team.

“I’ve been coaching basketball, whether it’s been boys or girls, long enough that I just think of it as being a basketball coach,” Fletcher said. “I’ve coached boys already. It’s not like that hasn’t happened before, so I don’t really see it as being any different.”

Fletcher, 32, is a physical and life science teacher at Dirigo, and she’s been coaching longer than teaching.

She was a member of the mid-1990s Dirigo teams that began a run of 11-straight Western Class C titles and was a senior star on the first of Kane’s six state championship teams in 1996.

She played basketball for three years at UMF, then began coaching with Kane at Dirigo her senior year. After a couple of years as an assistant, she worked as Dirigo’s girls’ junior varsity coach, staying on that job for seven years while also serving as an assistant to Kane with both the girls’ and boys’ teams. Kane coached the boys for four years, reaching three straight regional finals, and coached them exclusively during the 2007-08 and 2008-09 seasons before resigning to become as assistant women’s coach at the University of Maine.

Last season was the first Fletcher didn’t coach in 10 years and her first not directly involved in basketball since she was a child.

“I definitely missed being involved in coaching,” she said. “That’s definitely a part of me.”

Coaches usually fall into two camps philosophically — adjust to the players or make the players adjust to you. Fletcher falls mostly in the former group.

“A lot of it is determined by the types of players that you have,” Fletcher said. “I’m very flexible in terms of what style of play we will use, based on the players that I have and also based on the opponent you’re playing.”

One area that she won’t be flexible, she said, is defense, which will be the same hard-nosed style to which Dirigo fans have grown accustomed.

“Defensively, there’s no adjusting to the players,” she said. “I’m going to expect some defensive intensity and commitment to that end of the floor, and obviously I’m going to want execution on the offensive end.”

While the first day of practice is less than three weeks away (Nov. 16), Fletcher isn’t worried about starting her tenure so close to the season. She has quite a bit of familiarity with her players because she’s coached them during Dirigo’s summer basketball camps and also coached some of them during summer basketball after Kane resigned. She also has some of the players in class.

“I think it will be new to a great extent anyway because it’s going to be a very young team,” she said.

Last year under Gerrish, the Cougars finished 18-4 and won their second straight regional championship before losing in the state final for the second straight year. They graduated all five starters and are expected to return just two players who saw significant time off the bench, senior Spencer Ross and junior Cody St. Germain.

With that lack of experience, Fletcher said the Cougars will work to try to reach the high expectations that come with Dirigo basketball’s perennial success, “but I don’t think it’s realistic for any program to think that that’s just a constant. I think that our community probably has an inflated sense of expectation because of the success that’s been in both programs, and that’s OK, but I just hope the kids are going to be willing to work hard to achieve it. It’s not something that’s just going to happen.”

Dirigo athletic director Charles Swan said Fletcher’s history with Dirigo basketball and coaching background with the boys’ program made her a strong candidate for the position.

“She’s obviously somebody who’s been involved with Dirigo basketball since she played here and been active in many different capacities with both the girls and boys programs with Gavin,” Swan said. “She’s somebody we feel is going to be very successful and positive part of our basketball program.”

Kane was known for being a tough and demanding coach during his time at Dirigo, though Fletcher doesn’t think those terms necessarily apply to her.

“I definitely have high expectations for players, and hope to motivate them to want to reach them,” she said. “I wouldn’t necessarily call that demanding or tough, but if we want to be successful, we need to do what’s necessary to achieve our goals.”

Fletcher said learning under Kane has made her completely comfortable with coaching boys.

“I don’t think of it (as unusual),” Fletcher said. “It’s probably not going to make it not be an issue, but I certainly don’t concern myself with that.”

“Being part of coach Kane’s staff, I certainly never met any resistance (coaching boys),” she said. “It felt natural to be coaching boys right on through. I know, or feel, that I have support from our administration and certainly from our athletic director.”

Swan said he had fielded no “direct” complaints about Fletcher taking over the job, but said it would be “ignorant for me to think there wasn’t some resistance.” He said he was confident Fletcher would be able to coach and motivate boys and that she has the full backing of MSAD 21 administration.

“Like I told coach Fletcher,” Swan said, “she wouldn’t have my support or the principal’s support or the superintendent’s support if we felt she wasn’t someone capable of filling that role. We feel confident if anybody can handle it, she can.”

“I realize it’s unusual. I get that,” Fletcher said. “But that’s the last focus I would want to have is on that. I would like any kind of focus on Dirigo boys’ basketball to be on our team.”