Rivalries make for friends Four girls palling around at tourney

Last year Jamie Wood was busy at the tournament as a player for the Eastern Maine Class C champion George Stevens girls.

A preliminary-round loss this year means she’s just a fan – and she’s had plenty to root for. In fact, Wood has made the Bangor Auditorium scene several times this week with a group of friends brought together because of high school sports.

Among those in this clique of marquee Class C girls basketball players are Wood, Lee’s Deidra Ham, Lanna Martin of Calais, and Madawaska’s Meghan Marshall. All four girls were at Friday afternoon’s boys Class C semifinal game to cheer on Calais.

Wood and Marshall watched Martin and the Calais girls play Searsport in a quarterfinal Wednesday. Wood wore a colorful, hand-lettered Calais top over a black-and-white striped referee shirt for the occasion and sat with Marshall and Houlton basketball player Sarah Beasley.

Ham and Martin know each other from AAU basketball (Beasley and Lanna’s sister, Crystal Martin, are also on the team), but last year’s basketball tournament and this school year’s fall soccer season really solidified the friendships even though the girls were all playing against each other in playoff games.

Wood and Martin met when their squads played in the Eastern Maine Class C basketball final last year. Ham and Wood played against each other during the fall soccer playoffs; so did Wood and Marshall, who faced off as rival goalies.

Calais traditionally faces Madawaska twice in the basketball season; Ham and Martin are also basketball rivals.

“We all met through different circumstances, though soccer season was when we all got really close,” Martin said. “We just get along. Our personalities match.”

With the long distances among the girls (Lee and Calais are about 66 miles apart, but Madawaska is at the top of the state and Blue Hill is in Hancock County), the group doesn’t get together very often. The girls rely on email to stay in touch.

Ham said she likes playing against the girls.

“It’s more fun to play against your friends, because you want to play well but at the same time there’s no hard feelings. You’re glad if they win and they’re glad if you win.”

The girls have plenty in common because of sports, but Wood has a theory about why the group gets along with her.

“They’re all good. I’m bad, and I think they feel sorry for me,” she joked.

Cilley enjoying multiple duties

Ever since Renee Shain took over the East Grand girls coaching post in the middle of the season, Troy Cilley has been pulling double duty as the boys’ head coach and girls’ assistant.

It has made for a hectic winter for Cilley, who is also the athletic director.

“Very, very busy. Too busy,” he said after the Vikings girls fell to Shead of Eastport in a Class D semifinal Thursday. “But I enjoy helping the girls out. My priority is still with the boys, but I don’t mind helping the girls out.”

The girls’ season is over, but the East Grand boys are playing in the Class D regional final Saturday morning.

Shain took over for Joanna Hamilton, who coached the Vikings last year and started the season with East Grand but left the team when she was offered a promotion at the Georgia-Pacific Corp.’s paper mill in Woodland, where she works. The new position limited the time she had to make the 96-mile round trip from Woodland to the school in Danforth.

Shain, a 1997 East Grand graduate who played for the school, was Hamilton’s assistant at the time. Cilley agreed to help the 21-year-old who had never been a head coach.

“She knew she was relatively inexperienced so she asked for a little help from me and one of my assistants,” Cilley said.

During Thursday’s game Cilley took over some of the fourth-quarter timeouts.

“Normally that’s not the case,” he said. “She keeps me on a short leash and when I overstep my bounds she bites my head off and she’s in charge again. It’s her team and I’m just there to help, but sometimes I get carried away.”