Caribou fans cheer on the Class B girls basketball state championship game on Saturday at Cross Insurance Arena in Portland. Caribou swept both the girls and the boys state championships. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Portland Press Herald

An hour and a half before tipoff of the Class B girls basketball state championship game, Ryan and Amy Deprey were outside Cross Insurance Arena. Their daughter, Madelynn, is a Caribou High senior and a finalist for Miss Maine Basketball. In 90 minutes, she’d take the court in the state final against Biddeford. Her parents were waiting to get inside, and chatting with Caribou fans pulling into the Spring Street parking garage.

The Depreys were among the lead group in the Viking invasion of Portland.

“We travel five hours, and Biddeford travels five minutes,” Ryan Deprey said.

That was a little hyperbole, but Deprey’s point was made. It would be hard to find a community in Maine that travels better than Caribou basketball fans. If the Vikings are playing in Portland, the fans will be there. At Bangor’s Cross Insurance Center for the Class B North tournament, they’ll be there. Ask Caribou to play on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and the Vikings faithful will find a way to be there.

It’s 602 miles round trip from Caribou High School to Cross Insurance Arena. Fans making that long trip got their gas money’s worth Saturday, with both the girls and boys basketball teams playing in Class B state championship games.

Sections S through Z stretch across one side of Cross Insurance Arena. Saturday afternoon, they were a wall of Caribou maroon and gold. That side of the arena produced noise that came with two settings: loud and louder.

“Basketball, it’s something Caribou is known for,” said Melissa Bouchard, a 1995 Caribou graduate who now lives in Lisbon. She was in the front row for Saturday afternoon’s games. “I played basketball for Caribou. The best time of my life was on that court.”

It was at its loudest in the closing seconds of the girls game. Biddeford erased a 10-point deficit in the final minutes of regulation, sending the game to overtime, and it appeared the Tigers would complete the rally and win their first championship. But Caribou freshman (yes, freshman) Quinn Corrigan stole an inbound pass in the final second of overtime, was fouled, then sank both free throws with 0.4 seconds left to give the Vikings a 49-48 win. Corrigan — who will now be mentioned in Caribou basketball stories like Mike Thurston, who made a half-court shot to win the state title in 1969 — drew energy from the legions of fans who had her back.

“We have a great community. It definitely makes a difference with the whole atmosphere when we’re playing,” she said.

We’ve seen this from Caribou before. In 2019, the boys basketball team came to Portland to take on Cape Elizabeth in the Class B final, and thousands of Caribou residents tagged along to see the Vikings win their first state title in 50 years with a 49-47 double-overtime victory. According to the US Census Bureau, Caribou’s population is 7,431. So how did they determine who was left back in Caribou to keep an eye on things?

Madelynn Deprey was in the stands in 2019 and 2020, cheering for her older brothers, Parker and Sawyer. She felt the energy coming from the Caribou side of the arena, too.

Caribou fans cheer on the girls team during its Class B state championship victory over Biddeford. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Portland Press Herald

“All I think about it is, I can’t disappoint them. We know we have to go out there and perform because I don’t want to let a single person in that crowd down,” said Deprey, who scored 29 points and grabbed 16 rebounds to etch her name into Caribou championship lore. “My brothers would always joke, Sawyer especially. He never got his 1,000th point, so he’d be, I’d rather have two Gold Balls than get 1,000 points. I’d say, I’m going to get a Gold Ball one day, Sawyer.”

Did the mental and physical energy they spent (it’s a workout jumping out of your seat and screaming in joy) take anything out of the Caribou fans for the boys game? Not a chance. They remained as enthusiastic as they were during the girls game. The boys game had less drama than a Will Ferrell film festival, with the Vikings breaking open a close game in the third quarter and cruising to a 65-44 win. For Caribou fans, it was easier on the nerves.

Evan Graves has been Caribou’s athletic director for five years. His first year at the school was 2020, when the boys basketball team beat Maranacook, again in double overtime, to win a second straight Gold Ball. About 20 minutes before Saturday’s girls championship game, Graves pointed at the seats full of Caribou fans behind him.

“When the community comes together like that, it sends a message,” Graves said. “We’re invested in our kids.”

This isn’t to say the other communities with teams playing Saturday afternoon at Cross Insurance Arena, Biddeford and York, aren’t invested in their communities. The same goes for the Class AA schools that took over the arena Saturday night. But a 602-mile round trip is an investment. Caribou had an early release from school Friday, wrapping things up at 1:30 p.m. in case any families wanted to get on the road.

For Caribou fans, getting to and from Saturday’s games involved 10 hours in a car or on a bus. For some, it involved a night, maybe two, away from home.

Every mile, every second, was worth it.