As rivals, former teammates remain friends

They say the friendships forged in college are the friendships of a lifetime. Such seems to be the case for Mary “Kissy” Walker and Kelly Nobert.

For two years, Walker and Nobert played women’s basketball at the University of Maine. Now, six years later, the two former Black Bears find themselves in the coaching ranks keeping their friendship alive through the sport which first brought them together.

Walker, the third-year head coach for the Husson College women’s basketball team, and Nobert, the second-year women’s boss at the College of St. Joseph’s in Rutland, Vt., met for the first time as opposing coaches during the championship game of last weekend’s Paul Bunyan Invitational Basketball Tournament in Bangor.

While Walker’s Braves ran away with a 78-33 victory over Nobert’s Saints, the tournament meant much more to the coaches than wins or losses.

“I wanted to get her up here because I thought it would be a lot of fun,” said Walker, an ’87 UMaine graduate. “There aren’t a lot of people my age coaching and I thought it would be great to get her up here so we could talk about coaching and people would get a chance to see her coach.”

“It was nice to see all those people again, people I haven’t seen in quite a while,” said Nobert, who picked up her UMaine diploma in 1989. “Kissy was pretty much the reason those people knew I was coming.”

The two paths each coach took to get to her position on the sidelines of Newman Gym really did not differ all that much.

Walker went to Maine as a 5-foot-4 guard out of Cony High School in Augusta. Nobert was a 6-0 center from Sanford High School. While basketball played an instrumental part of their college lives, neither expected to make a living out of it following graduation.

“To be honest, while I was at Maine, I never thought I’d be a coach,” Nobert said. “I was a marketing major and I never thought about coaching until I got to do some clinics. I enjoyed it so after graduation, I didn’t have a job, so I coached the freshman girls team at the high school. This job opened up, so I applied.”

Ditto for Walker.

“I never had any intentions of coaching at the college leve “I never had any intentions of coaching at the college level,” Walker said. “I figured I’d coach junior high or high school. It’s kind of neat we both ended up (as college coaches).”

Both coaches have molded their own coaching styles – with a few twists – from Peter Gavett, their coach at Maine, and their respective high school coaches.

“It was funny because at one point, she (Walker) called a play and it was the same one we used to run (in college),” laughed Nobert following the championship game. “It’s funny and it’s neat.”

“Kelly and I had talked about that before the game,” said Walker of her 20-minute chat on the Husson bench during the pregame warmups. “From all the coaches we had, we’ve taken a little bit from one and a little bit from Now, the two are hoping to keep their friendship alive through a basketball rivalry between the two schools.