All around the state, teams are scheduled to play six games, one-third of their schedule, before the holiday break. And many coaches would like the schedule-makers to get a lump of coal in their stocking for it.
“It’s absolutely ridiculous to play six games before Christmas,” Oxford Hills boys’ coach Scott Graffam said. “We’re going to play six games in 10 days — four days of practice and six games.”
“They’re worried about all of the tournaments during Christmas break. They’re worried about schools that have midterms,” Graffam said. “Find out which schools have midterms, and schedule it differently. It’s ridiculous to have a three-game week before Christmas. There’s only one more game that they have to put some place else.”
Coaches cite the lack of practice time as the most glaring drawback to the schedule. It can be particularly frustrating to new coaches or those with young teams.
“It’s crazy. The season seemed to start a week later and yet we’ve already jammed up six games before we go into the holiday break,” said first-year Buckfield girls’ coach Ryan Wilkins. “It’s hard. It doesn’t give us a lot of practice time.”
Buckfield had one game postponed due to weather last week, but that was little solace for first-year boys’ coach Kyle Rines, who pointed out that teams only have two weeks to prepare for the start of the regular season.
“After tryouts, we had three practices before our first game,” Rines said. “That’s a preseason game, but when you get to games, that’s one less day that you can practice. To me, that’s a big difference. I’d like to have what we had in the past where you’d have at least a week full of practice, seven days, before you have a game. Or at least space them out before the holiday break.”
Rines, who also coaches soccer at Buckfield during the fall, would like to see the two seasons moved up to allow for more practice time in preseason for both.
“I would like to see the fall season start earlier, so maybe one to two weeks earlier in the fall and one to two weeks earlier in the winter,” Rines said.
“I think they should give us a month of practice before we start playing games,” Graffam said. “When I was playing, we started November 1st, no matter what. They didn’t care if football was done or not.”
Not everyone had negative reviews for the busy schedule. Oxford Hills girls’ coach Nate Pelletier said it seems to suit his team just fine. His Vikings are 4-0.
“We’ve got a ton of games coming up. We’ve got to play Thursday, then Saturday, and Tuesday then Thursday,” Pelletier said early last week, before the inclement weather altered the schedule. “They pump all the games up early, I don’t know why, but, hey, we seem to play better when we just play games, so we’ll go for it.”
Inside job
Gray-New Gloucester senior center Skye Conley is adjusting to being the Patriots’ only true inside player this year.
Oxford Hills’ Jadah Adams also is making an impact in the post. Adams is undersized and she’s only a sophomore, but neither height nor inexperienced have affected her significantly in the first four games of the season.
Adams leads the Vikings in scoring with a 12.5 points per game average, and scored a season-high 16 points in their most recent game, a win over Leavitt on Friday.
In a 44-31 win over Edward Little on Tuesday, Adams drew two quick fouls on the Red Eddies’ 6-foot senior post Jordyn Reynolds, completely altering the game before it was two minutes old. Adams made all four free throws that resulted from those fouls and scored the game’s first six points. She finished with 11 in that game, and has scored in double figures in all four contests.
“She plays a lot of minutes for us. It’s going to be a long year for her, at times. But she gives us everything she’s got,” Oxford Hills coach Nate Pelletier said. “She’s a sophomore, undersized, but she’s got broad shoulders and she works her butt off. She’s really good around the hoop. She makes it very difficult on the (opposing) post players as well.”
Julia Colby has helped the Oxford Hills girls get off to a 4-0 start to the season, but she isn’t the only freshman point guard who excelled in the season’s first week.
A couple of other freshman points went head-to-head Thursday when Lisbon hosted Oak Hill.
Desirae Dumais scored a game-high 14 points for the Raiders in their 39-35 win. For the Greyhounds, freshman point Giana Russo put up 11 points.
Russo is Lisbon’s second-leading scorer with a 13.3 average. Dumais leads Oak Hill with 29 points in two games.
“She’s just a freshman. She’s got a great head on her shoulders,” Raiders coach Mike Labonte said of Dumais. “She’s got a great temperament. She doesn’t get overly rattled. So it’s going to be fun for the next four years.”
Labonte is excited to see four years of showdowns between Dumais and Russo, with whom he also is familiar.
“I know G pretty well,” Labonte said. “So it will be fun the next four years with the three of us kind of going at it.”
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