ORONO – It’s a four-hour drive from St. Agatha to Orono, but bridging the basketball gap from Eastern Maine Class D star to Division I starter has been a three-year odyssey for Tracy Guerrette.

This season, under the guidance of first-year head coach Sharon Versyp, the junior point guard has developed into the University of Maine’s offensive leader on the court.

The 5-foot-9 Guerrette, who is averaging 6.1 points per game, continues to come into her own. She ranks third in America East with 3.54 assists per game and sports a 1.08 assists-to-turnovers ratio, eighth-best in the league.

“She strives for excellence on the basketball floor and is hungry to learn and become the very best that she can be,” said Versyp, a former Purdue point guard who has tried to take Guerrette and fellow point guard Ellen Geraghty under her wing.

For Guerrette, it has been a slow developmental process.

Working her way up

Guerrette graduated from Wisdom High School in 1998 and walked on at UMaine. She asked only for the opportunity to be part of the Black Bear program.

During her first two seasons with the Bears, Guerrette worked tirelessly to improve and contribute however she could. Her initial efforts didn’t go unnoticed as, prior to last season, then-coach Joanne Palombo-McCallie rewarded Guerrette with an athletic scholarship.

As a sophomore during 1999-2000, she averaged less than 10 minutes per game as a backup shooting guard on UMaine’s sixth straight NCAA Tournament entry.

“It was just an honor to be on this team and I took pride in wearing the uniform, even though I was sitting on the bench,” Guerrette said. “I wasn’t getting a lot of playing time, but it was all right because I worked as hard as I could [in practice] to get Amy [Vachon] and Kristin [McCormick] better. That was very rewarding.”

Hard work has never fazed Guerrette, whose parents, Clifford and Theresa, both grew up on potato farms. Watch UMaine practice and chances are Guerrette will be out in front during sprints and drills. She thrives on the challenge.

“I’m very competitive like that. Everything I do, I do to the best of my ability,” Guerrette said.

She recalls picking potatoes in cold, snowy weather and admits she sometimes helps out her uncles with haying during the summer – just for fun.

“It’s just natural. I pride myself in working hard. I’ve grown up with that work ethic that my parents have instilled in me since a young age.”

Coming from one of Maine’s smallest high schools, Guerrette needed that internal drive. Class D basketball doesn’t come close to matching the intensity and skill level of the Division I game, but she refused to allow her humble, small-town background to hold her back.

“I think people limit themselves. I don’t think it matters where you’re from,” Guerrette said. “I just want to achieve the most I can at the top level. My goal was to come to college and become the best player that I could be, and I knew that would only happen if I came to a Division I school.”

St. John Valley girl

While not as deep as her Acadian roots and the French spoken in her home, basketball has always been an important part of Guerrette’s life. She learned the game in her own yard on a 10-foot by 10-foot patch of pavement frequented by older brother Jamie, himself an athlete at Wisdom.

“It was the little sister-big brother thing,” Tracy admitted. “Everything he did, I did.”

It wasn’t unusual for the two of them to go out, shovel off the asphalt and play during the winter. When the grass turned green, Clifford Guerrette drove some rocks into the soil to mark a 3-point line.

“It was small, so we’d have to dribble on the grass. Maybe that helped my ballhandling skills a little bit,” said Tracy, who, while attending Wisdom High, often burned off nervous energy by letting herself into the school gym and shooting around.

Former athletic director Paul Michaud, who used Tracy as a babysitter, made it easy for her.

“I had a key to the gym,” she said with a grin. “I’d be in bed and I’d decide that I wanted to go play, so I’d get up and go over to school at, like, 11 o’clock.”

All the hours spent in the gym have paid off for Guerrette, who was a NEWS All-Maine first-team pick in 1998 when she sparked coach Mim Gagnon’s Pioneers to the Class D state title. She scored 1,549 career points at Wisdom, where she also was a four-year letterwinner in soccer and softball.

Getting to the Point

This season, Guerrette and her UMaine teammates received a fresh start with the arrival of Versyp. Guerrette’s role on the team intensified almost immediately, as she was named a captain along with senior Kizzy Lopez.

“Tracy represents the classic student-athlete role model,” Versyp said. “She leads by example with her heart and her desire and her determination. And that’s on and off the floor.”

While there was optimism and excitement about the coaching change, an opportunity to earn playing time and Versyp’s different philosophies about basketball and team dynamics forced Guerrette basically to start over.

While she had played point guard – and all four other positions – at Wisdom, her new responsibilities with the Bears were numerous and sometimes overwhelming.

“Being a point guard is one of the toughest jobs because you have to know everyone’s role; you have to know everyone’s strengths; you have to know how to pass the ball to certain people,” Versyp said. “The whole concept of running a team and having to have every mental and physical aspect of the game, it’s very tough.”

Guerrette found out just how difficult it could be. Early in the season, she was prone to turnovers and bad decisions. Opponents pressed full-court, further complicating UMaine’s difficulties.

“My learning curve was so high at the beginning of the season,” said Guerrette, who hadn’t been subjected to the more structured aspects of playing the point. “[In high school] I usually just took it down and shot every time. It was really hard adjusting to everything.”

The Bears’ early season struggles stemmed largely from overall inexperience, but Versyp knew she had to establish consistency at point guard. The progress was slow, but steady.

“She’s had to work through the mistakes. I think that’s why she’s grown so much,” Versyp said. “She has completed her cycle from being an infant point guard to now where she’s still growing and going through the maturity phase.”

Versyp refused to settle for less than constant improvement. Using a hard-nosed, demanding approach, Versyp and Guerrette achieved results, together.

“She’s a kid that I can get after,” said Versyp, who even commented publicly early this season that the Bears didn’t have a point guard. “I’m very hard on her and Ellen. They hated it, but now we do [have two capable point guards].”

Guerrette said her coach’s tactics are direct, but effective.

“Coach lets us play through mistakes. She lets us learn,” Guerrette said. “I’m starting to think like she is more, on the court. Hopefully, we’ve gained a lot of experience from our losses.”

Striving for consistency

As this season winds down, Guerrette still struggles at times with consistency on the court. Even so, the results achieved this season make her optimistic about the potential for future success.

“I think everybody has gotten more confidence, especially playing as a team and executing more. I’m doing my job and I’m not turning the ball over as much,” Guerrette said.

In retrospect, she marvels at the accomplishments of her UMaine predecessor, Amy Vachon.

“To play 40 minutes and do the things she did, then to guard the [opponents’] toughest players, wow!” Guerrette said. “She never turned the ball over and she had crazy assists.”

Paging Dr. Guerrette

Amidst the changes and challenges of the 2000-2001 season, which has included the unexpected departure of two teammates, Guerrette has remained focused on her academic goals. She is a dean’s list student in biology and is preparing for a career in medicine.

“At my kindergarten graduation, I went up and said, ‘I want to be a doctor,'” said Guerrette, who may lean toward pediatrics or oncology (cancer) research.

Guerrette also is focused on taking charge of her basketball career and her team as UMaine’s point guard.

“She’s the one with the ball in her hands and she’s the one who’s got to make the decisions,” Versyp said. “At the beginning of the season, we didn’t have a point guard, but now we do.”