Calais, MDI face uphill title contests

The Valley of Bingham boys basketball team may have captured the state’s attention with its winning streak, but a girls squad in Dixfield has a fine run of its own in the works.

The Class C Dirigo girls have won 43 games in a row, a streak that started with the first game of the 1999-2000 season, kept going through the 2000 Western Maine and state championships, and continued through last Saturday’s WM title win over Jay.

The Cougars have now earned seven Western Maine Class C championships in a row, the first Maine basketball team to do so regardless of class or gender.

Then there’s that other streak the Cougars have compiled – of the past six times they’ve played for the state championship the Cougars are 0-3 in games at the Bangor Auditorium.

That’s where Dirigo, the Western Maine champion, will meet its longtime nemesis in these state games, Eastern Maine winner Calais, for the Class C state crown Friday at 7:40 p.m. at the Bangor Auditorium.

While Dirigo has a tradition of success, the Gray-New Gloucester girls are forging their own school history. The Patriots will take on Eastern Maine winner Mount Desert Island for the Class B state title 7:05 p.m. Saturday at the Augusta Civic Center after winning their first WM championship last week.

Bob McShane’s Blue Devils and Gavin Kane’s Cougars are familiar with each other from playing in four of the last five state games (Dirigo beat George Stevens of Blue Hill last year). The teams are 2-2 in those matchups.

The teams also played a Thanksgiving tournament game in Calais, which the Blue Devils won.

It was at that preseason tourney where, Calais guard-forward Lanna Martin said recently, the two teams expressed their hopes that they would face off at the end of the season.

“We kind of talked to each other and wanted to be at the state game playing each other,” she said. “So we’re both really excited and I think it’s going to be a good game.”

Calais got to this point with a 19-point win over Mattanawcook of Lincoln in the EM final. Dirigo, on the other hand, needed overtime to beat Jay by two points after the Tigers came back from a 16-point deficit in the second half of their regional game.

Eastern Maine fans may remember Dirigo’s top two players this year from last year’s game against GSA. It was Michele Gagnon’s inbounds pass to 6-foot Lyndsay Clark that set up the game-winning basket with nine seconds left in regulation.

This year, against the smaller Blue Devils, Clark should again be the key to a Dirigo win, although Calais handled three taller teams in the Eastern Maine tournament last week.

The Cougars also start 6-1 Natalie Dupill, who has helped out on the rebounding end.

“Their guards are probably quicker than our post players, but we have the height advantage,” said senior point guard Gagnon, who is headed to St. Joseph’s to join her sister Tara, an All-Maine guard who graduated last year.

Gagnon averaged 14 points in the Western Maine tournament and Clark scored 11.6 points per game.All of that may be for naught if the Cougars let the Bangor Auditorium atmosphere get to them again. Their last loss was at the hands of the Blue Devils in the 1999 state championship game.

Kane brought his team to the Auditorium Wednesday for a practice.

“We got out all of our jitters,” Gagnon said.

MDI, which placed three players on the EM Class B all-tourney team, will need stellar games from its three stars if it wants to top Gray-New Gloucester, Trojans coach Burt Barker said after his squad beat Foxcroft Academy for the regional crown.

The Patriots are led by 6-2 junior Katie Whittier, who will head to UMaine after her senior year. She poured in 23 points per game in the Western Maine Class B tournament. Sarah DeLuca, also 6 feet, is the team’s only senior. And Gray-New Gloucester has yet another 6-footer in the starting lineup (Josalee Danielli).

The Trojans can counter with 6-1 senior center Melissa Gott (the tourney MVP), 6-1 sophomore point guard Bracey Barker, and 5-8 guard Shelley Gott, Melissa Gott’s sister.

MDI coach Burt Barker (Bracey Barker’s father) traveled to the Augusta Civic Center Feb. 23 to watch the Patriots beat Greely of Cumberland Center in the WM title game. There he got a good sense of the opposition’s height and speed.

“They ran really well,” Burt Barker said. “They’re big, they’re tough, they rebound well, they play great defense. We’re going to have our hands full, no doubt. But that’s what everybody said when we played Greely four years ago [in the 1997 Class B state championship game] and we thumped them. But we’ll see. Time will tell.”