Calais girls tie regional mark for straight wins

History was made in Eastport last night.

The Calais Blue Devils girls basketball team defeated the Shead Tigers 68-35 to recorded its 47th straight victory on Monday night, tying the Eastern Maine record for consecutive victories by a girls basketball team.

A loss would have made Calais coach Bob McShane, disappointed, but a more relaxed man.

“(A loss) would be a favor for us really,” McShane said hours before his team took to the court against Shead. “We’ve been playing so sloppy and not executing well the last couple of weeks. Our defense has been carrying us through.”

The Blue Devils have gone 44-0 through two undefeated state Class C championship seasons. They started this season 2-0 with wins over Washington Academy and Fort Kent, allowing only a total of 12 first-half points over both games. Calais only surrendered 10 first-half points to Shead.

McShane said this year’s young Calais squad is starting to feel the heat of the streak.

“I think this group is starting to feel the pressure,” the eighth-year coach said. “It’s something we don’t talk about. I try to make every opponent a Goliath and we’re the David. We’re trying to take it one game at a time. But some night we’re all going to have a bad game and it will be over. We know that.”

Now Calais has tied the record, Jonesport-Beals blocks the road on Thursday. And, McShane knows, each team the Blue Devils play is looking to end the streak.

“Everybody has been getting up for that,” McShane said.

Come the end of the week, the Blue Devils might hold the Eastern Maine mark for consecutive wins. And forget all the talk about the number of regular season wins, or wins over an Eastern Maine opponent, or number of home victories against teams which start with `H’ on Wednesday nights.

This win streak is about taking on all comers, regardless of class and region.

The Blue Devils will still have to wait a while before they even start worrying about any state records, though. That record looms at least two more years down the road.

From 1979-82, the Westbrook Blue Blazes girls team of the late 1970s, won 76 straight – a mark which still stands.

Even the Gorham girls from that same era (69 straight) and the Stearns boys team from the George Wentworth era (62 straight) are well ahead of the Blue Devils on the list for consecutive victories.

“We just take things game by game,” McShane said. “The people around town have been talking. We just knock on wood and move on.”

Gladys Ganiel, a senior at Narraguagus High School in Harrington, finished sixth in Saturday’s Kinney Foot Locker National Cross Country championships at Morley Field in San Diego’s Balboa Park.

Ganiel ran three consecutive splits of 5:38 to post a time of 17 minutes, 25.9 seconds over the 3.1-mile course.

After the first mile, Ganiel was in 23rd. She moved up to seventh with just over a half mile to go and got as high as fifth before getting outkicked with a quarter mile left.

On Monday night, less than 24 hours after returning to Bangor, Ganiel returned to basketball with her ‘Guagus teammates, as she scored 12 points in a 59-22 win over Sumner at East Sullivan.

The race will be shown on a tape-delay basis on Monday, Dec. 19, at 5:30 p.m. on ESPN-TV.

It was a good soccer season for the Mountcastle clan of Orono.

Brothers Andrew, Paul, and David were all a part of the St. Mark’s School championship team down in Southborough, Mass.

St. Mark’s won the New England Prep School Council Small School, Class B championship last month.

Paul Mountcastle scored the game-winner in the first round of the playoffs for St. Mark’s, a private secondary school of 315 students.

Former Bangor High School athlete Melissa Bryce has returned to alma mater as an assistant coach under Tom Tennett on the girls team.

Bryce, who played four years of hoop at Plymouth (N.H.) State College, is also the girls freshmen coach at Bangor.