Brewer, PI to play under hot sun Witches heading to S.C.; ‘Cats going to Florida

Despite Wednesday’s less than model weather, southern and central Maine baseball and softball teams have been moving outside to take advantage of actual spring-like weather this week.

With April vacation next week, some teams will head south for a last preseason tuneup before the regular season, which starts April 21.

Brewer’s softball team, tired of a chronically frigid April breaks of past years, will be heading to Myrtle Beach, S.C., tomorrow.

“Last spring, when my parents were sitting out in the lawn chairs, in their sleeping bags, they said, `we have to do something different,”‘ recalled Brewer coach Kelly Cookson.

A 100-inning game, hundreds of Christmas trees, cheesecakes, washed cars, and bottles later, the Witches had raised the necessary $7,500 for 21 players and managers to make the trip.

With 12 players and three managers returning from last year’s sixth-ranked Class A team, the fund raising wasn’t hard, Cookson said.

The Witches will play four teams in the course of seven games while at Myrtle Beach.

Presque Isle’s baseball team also will be making its eighth annual trek to the Sunshine State this afternoon after raising funds by fixing pallets for Tater Meal Inc.

The team will play seven games against teams from Florida and New York, whose schools’ enrollments are similar to Presque Isle High School. The Wildcats will take time off for tours of Universal Studios and an amusement park.

“The great thing about this is that we do it ourselves with the blessing of the school board,” said Coach Tim Olore. “We go out and work it up and the kids appreciate it a little more because it isn’t given to them.”

For 16 players and seven chaperones to make the trip, the team had to earn nearly $19,000 – one dollar at a time.

“We fix their broken pallets that the forklift uses,” Olore explained of assistant coach Owen Estey’s arrangement with Tater Meal Inc. “They break them left and right, so we fix them at a $1 per pallet. We fix thousands of them. I can do those in my sleep.”

Old Town’s Wendy Lahey was recognized for her contributions to Maine high school athletics with a distinguished service award from the Maine Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association last weekend.

Lahey, the wife of longtime Old Town High School athletic director Bob Lahey, was recognized for her 17 years of behind the scenes management of the association. The late Bob Lahey had served as an executive director and was a founder of the organization.

Jim B. Marascio, athletic director at Lawrence High School of Fairfield, received the first Bob Lahey MIAAA Athletic Administrator of the Year award.

Marascio serves as an assistant principal for grades 7-12, and has been active in the Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference, Pine Tree Football Conference, and served as a member of the MIAAA executive committee.

It probably won’t be the Hatfields and the McCoys Monday afternoon when the Bangor boys tennis team takes on Presque Isle in a preseason scrimmage.

But things between the coaches couldn’t be much closer.

“It’s really neat because she taught me to play when I was younger and now, here we are, we’re both coaching teams,” explained Bangor coach Cathy Morris-Gordon, of her relationship with PI coach Terry Hamm-Morris. “She really encouraged me. She made it fun to go to practice.”

And as close as a coach and student can be, they wound up legally-bound.

“Here was this lady who I looked up to, and then she started dating my uncle, it was like `Oh, wow,”‘ Gordon giggled, recalling her thoughts as an 8-year-old.

Evidently Gordon’s uncle thought Hamm was pretty neat too.

“Even the coaches’ clinic we went to a couple of weeks ago, it was so cute,” Gordon laughed. “It was `Oh, this is my aunt and she taught me how to play.’ ”

This will be the first time the two teams have faced each other in recent years, which makes Gordon more than a little jumpy.

“It’s kind of like I’m really nervous,” she said. “I want my team to do really well because I want to impress her.”

Morris, for her part, isn’t worried. Calling Gordon “pretty impressive anyway,” she’s just concentrating on her sophomore-laden team.