3rd time a charm for Job Corp women

BANGOR – Three times over the winter, the Penobscot Job Corps fielded a women’s basketball team for students at the residential vocational school.

Two times, the result was unequivocal failure.

Poor attendance at practice, petty arguments, and differences of opinion reigned, and two different rosters of the Penobscot Lions were swept clean.

“One day I came down and the second team, none of them showed up,” remembers star point guard Krystal Berg. “I was here by myself.”

But after pulling together a third team, made up of a few bonafide players like Berg, a few athletes who had never played and some others who were just plain interested in giving roundball a shot, the Lions, Part III, came through.

The third installment put together a 4-1 record and won the Region I Job Corps Championships with a 28-16 win over Westover Job Corps in the tournament held in Chicopee, Mass., on March 15. Scores were low due to the tourney format, which called for running time in all games.

The girls title was the second in two weeks for 350-student Penobscot Job Corps, as the host Lions’ men’s team earned the Region I title on the first weekend of March in their home gym just off Union Street.

The tourney wins capped a 19-10 slate for the Lions, who defeated Unity College and played against UMaine-Fort Kent and Central Maine Tech, along with several area men’s league teams and some other Job Corps centers.

Fritz Marseille, the student activities manager at the center, has coached the men’s team for both of its years in existence. The former University of Maine captain was a driving force behind the women’s team’s continued efforts as well.

“I told [c-coaches Rick Cortis and Jahmal Ellerbe], `We need a women’s baske another tryout,’ ” Marseille said. “The people who were picked were the people who were willing to be coached.”

Cortis said the results achieved in a short period of time were amazing.

“If you had seen that group when we started, everyone had to learn to shoot except for two or three kids, everyone had to learn how to dribble,” Cortis said.

One exception, Cortis said, was Berg.

“In high school in this state, for the right coach, she would have made all-state,” he said of the 18-year-old from Franklin, N.H.

On the men’s side, the players were much more accomplished from the beginning. Marseille’s squad boasted some players who have the potential to play at the small college level.

Marseille is trying to get one player, 6-foot-7 Jevon Glenn, into Maine Central Institute. Another, 6-2 guard Andre Brown, may go to Husson. Or he may enroll in advanced training through the Job Corps, which carries a job guarantee.

Brown, 22, is from Boston. He said he came to Bangor from Grafton (Mass.) Job Corps in large part due to Marseille and the structured hoop program. Brown played in high school at Cambridge Rindge & Latin – alma mater of NBA star Patrick Ewing.

Brown said his future is still up in the air. He’s juggling family responsiblities with hoop dreams.

“I’ve got a daughter, so I’m thinking about her,” he said. “She lives in Boston. I’m really looking at that and how much time I’m going to be away from her, and what they need back home.”

Marseille chuckles and Brown groans when practice is the topic. In separate conversations, the coach admitted that “I run the crap out of them.”

Brown said one big change took place when Marseille brought real structure to a group used to street ball.

“When we first got here, the team was just not working out,” Brown said. “Everybody did what they wanted to do. Everybody wanted to take the ball to the hoop. He had to show us everybody’s not going to have that great game. Different people are going to step up.”

According to Berg, the early discord on the girls team has turned into something entirely different.

“Even now, the girls team comes down and plays basketball,” she said. “Even though the team’s done, the game’s over with and everything. They still come down and shoot around together. I think that’s important. It shows me that they came together.”