With Winslow and Stearns gone, the competition in Eastern Maine Class A girls has changed. This year’s schedule will incorporate both experienced and inexperienced squads, with all the teams playing opponents in the Big East. A few schools will also face Class B opponents.

Richard Barstow, seven-year coach of the Presque Isle Wildcats, will play a team that is “going to be real young. There are only three seniors. Right now, we’re pretty well-balanced abilitywise. From No. 1 down through No. 12, anyone of them can start at this point.

“Our one returning starter is (senior) Lisa Bernard. She will be a point guard,” Barstow said.

The Wildcats play a Big East schedule and also face B teams from Houlton and Fort Kent, both of which Barstow rated as good squads. Which opponents will be tough?

“As far as we’re concerned, they all are. Nokomis, Bangor, and then Old Town and Brewer: I think they’ll be the tough ones,” Barstow said. “As far as us making it to the tournament (the Wildcats finished 4-14 last year, so they did not come to Bangor), it doesn’t look too good. It depends on how soon the young players can develop. If we lose games early and the kids don’t get down about it, we have an outside chance.”

In a school that has been renowned for sending teams to the tournament, coaches like Barstow noticed a problem with winter sports this year. Presque Isle has a freshman team and a jayvee team “with only 10 players on each of those two squads. We only had 32 kids come out, where we might see 44 or 45 in the past,” Barstow said.

The reason for a lower turnout? “The mall came into Presque Isle, and a lot of kids decided the mall was an exciting place to work. It’s not only girls’ basketball; other sports are being hit as well,” Barstow said. He noted that “I can think of at least two girls who probably would’ve tried out (for basketball) if they hadn’t been working at the mall.”

After four years away from eastern Maine, Old Town native Lauree Gott has returned to coach the Brewer Witches. “I was at Northeastern University for four years and at Husson for a year before that,” Gott said.

The Witches mark the first varsity squad that she has coached at the high-school level. “The girls have been great,” Gott commented. “I couldn’t ask for a better group of girls to work with.

“It’s a change for me coming from Northeastern, where I had mostly inner-city kids, coming back to Maine, where I have rural kids,” she said. “They have a much better work ethic than the inner-city kids.

“It’s different, too, at the high school level vs. college. These kids aren’t on scholarship; they’re here because they want to be. It’s fun to work with them, because they do want to work hard and try to get better,” stated Gott.

The Witches want to improve their performance from last season, when they “struggled a little bit,” the coach said. “I think we’re going to do all right. We’re still pretty young, all juniors and seniors. We have a lot of juniors, but they had a lot of playing experience last year.

“I think the outlook’s good,” Gott said.”We’re going to improve as the season goes along. Our defense is going to carry us far, I hope.

“We’re a well-balanced team, fortunately, which I would much rather have. I don’t think anybody’s going to be able to key in on any one of our players to shut us down,”though among the Witches, Brynn Clough stands out as “real strong inside, a strong rebounder,” Gott said.

She described the Witches’ schedule as “quite tough. We play Lawrence twice, which is new to this schedule. Bangor and Old Town and Nokomis: There are going to be some real tough teams in the Big East this season.”

After finishing 13-5 in February 1993, the Bangor High girls entered the Eastern Maine tournament in sixth place, only to lose to Winslow. Coach Tom Tennett believes his squad will make the return trip this winter.

“We have pretty good balance this year. We have two kids who started off and on last year. We have nine lettermen returning, so we have a pretty good nucleus coming back,” Tennett said.

“Morale has been excellent. It’s been one of the best preseasons (that) we’ve had,” with the Rams winning all four games in the Big East preseason tournament, he pointed out. “It’s a group of girls who have got along really well so far. They worked very hard in the off-season, in the summer programs.

“Our schedule’s going to be really tough,” Tennett said. “We play the entire Big East schedule, 12 games out of that. Then we play six games in the KVAC, two with Waterville, two with Cony, and two with Lawrence.”

Tennett will miss playing the girls from Stearns. “We’ve had a great rivalry with Stearns. (Coach) Jerry (Burleigh) does a great job, and we’ve always enjoyed playing them,” Tennett said. “When we dropped Stearns, we picked up Cony, so we lost a great team as far as competition goes, but we picked up a better team, more competitive.”