Corbin garners position> Van Buren selects alum for boys hoop

Van Buren High School has replaced an alumnus with an alumnus with the hiring of Dan Corbin to coach the boys varsity basketball team.

Both athletic director Susan Parent and superintendent of schools Clayton Belanger confirmed that Corbin has been hired but declined to comment on his hiring.

Belanger said that Corbin was not the persone that he and Parent nominated to the school board. Belanger had nominated Katahdin school system coach Jay Edgecomb but he was not approved by the board.

“My nomination and Susan’s recommendation didn’t pass,” Belanger said.

Corbin, who works for a trucking company in Van Buren, played varsity basketball for the Crusaders and graduated from the high school in 1978. He has coached basketball at the middle school for the past two years.

Corbin replaces Matt Rossignol, who resigned in October to take the boys basketball position at Madawaska High School. Rossignol starred on Crusaders’ teams in the mid-1980s and scored 51 points in a 1986 Eastern Maine tournament semifinal.

The soccer team at the Governor Baxter School for the Deaf in Portland wrapped up a solid 7-4-1 season with an even more impressive achievement: the Islanders brought back a New England Deaf School soccer championship from the 18th annual tournment in Framingham, Mass., last weekend.

The title is the team’s first since 1986.

The GBSD squad, coached by Conrad Strack-Grose and Guilliame Chaftel, won the tourney with a 1-0 win over the Rhode Island School for the Deaf. Corey Turcotte of Mechanic Falls scored the game-winning goal and goalie Joe Cloutier of Bowdoinham recorded 15 saves. Melinda Stack of Stockton Springs and North Jay’s Travis Brougham, along with Turcotte and Cloutier, were named to the all-tournament squad.

“The team has had some recognition and we are continuing to plan more, like a pep rally ,” said Paige Coville, a program supervisor at the school. “We want to salute the team for an especially grand season.”

Other team members include Sarah Carter of Carmel, Jenny Sheedy and Chris Dynduik of Ellsworth, Matt Hughes of Houlton, Casey Johnson of Woolwich, Jimmy Fitts of Lisbon Falls, Bryan MacFarlane of Falmouth, Cloutier’s brother Bryan, Kyle Curtis of Oxford, Tommy Lawrence of Alna, Jon-Erik Huffstater of North Berwick, Turcotte’s brother Travis, Jessica Grodin of Wales and Maria Hammond of Auburn.

Sue Campbell, the chief executive of the Youth Sport Trust in the United Kingdom and a former Commonwealth Games track athlete, will spend the next year observing at the Maine Center for Coaching Education at the University of Maine in Orono.

Campbell spoke at a recent MCCE meeting for the Sports, Schools and Learning Results program that is now in its third year. Kennebunk High School and Hallowell’s Hall-Dale High School have been added to the list of pilot sites around Maine that include Brewer, Hodgdon, Mount Desert Island, Woodland and Orono.

Campbell said she likes the program because it provides a “link between education and athletics; makes a case for funding; raises value of athletics with other teachers; and helps coaches assess their own program.”

Sports, Schools and Learning Results also shows that sports can provide children with life lessons, Campbell added.

“If we get it right, all young people should get a positive sports experience,” she said.

MCCE coordinator Keith Lancaster also announced that he and project director Lora Lindyberg will present the Sports, Schools and Learning Results program to the national conference of the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association in Las Vegas this December.