Morrison resigns Calais positions

After two seasons on the sidelines in the fall and on the bench in the winter, Randy Morrison has stepped down as Calais’ boys varsity soccer and basketball coach.

Despite having a number of key players back this winter, Morrison decided now was the time to step down because his son is a senior at the Maine School of Science and Mathematics in Limestone and Morrison wants to be able to attend many of his son’s activities.

“It was hard because I coached this group quite a bit and knew them quite well,” Morrison said. “At some point, I’d like to get back into coaching and hopefully I’ll have an opportunity.”

Another complication that went into Morrison’s decision is the time constraints of his job. He is a boiler operator at the Georgia-Pacific mill in Woodland and works three-day shifts (three on/three off), which made it necessary for him to use three vacation weeks and juggle his shifts last season to give the team his full attention. It paid off in a run all the way to the Eastern Maine Class C title game.

“I wanted to try and get the Calais boys program back up and into the tournament,” Morrison said. “I left the program better off than before we started.”

The man to inherit a defending regional runner-up with three returning starters is former Bucksport star big man Keith Ogden, who may also be familiar to many fans as a men’s league standout forward for Hamlet Motel’s basketball team.

He led Bucksport to consecutive State Class B championships in 1978 and ’79 before taking his talents to Bangor’s Husson College.

Ogden, who is a transition coordinator at the Calais Alternative School, was the freshman boys basketball coach at Calais years ago, but this is his first varsity post.

“He hasn’t coached for the last couple years, but he certainly knows the game and has played an awful lot,” said Calais athletic director Chris Johnson. “When he found out the job was open, he thought this might be a good time to get back into coaching.”

Ogden’s transition has started out a little rough as two players have been suspended for the season due to violations of the school’s alcohol and drugs policy.

“It happened between the fall and winter seasons, but according to our policy, there’s no dead time,” said Johnson. “They’re guys who may have played and it could affect us in terms of team depth.”

Rarified air for St. Hilaire

University of Tennessee and current Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning. Longtime NFL passer Jeff George, brother tandem and college stars Ty and Koy Detmer, USC signal-caller Pat Haden, and current Texas star Chris Simms.

Those are just a few of the household names whose impressive numbers have been eclipsed by a rocket-armed quarterback from Winthrop.

To say Lee St. Hilaire has had a great career wouldn’t really do justice to his accomplishments.

The newly announced Gatorade Player of the Year for Maine has written himself into the local, state and national record books as one, if not the most prolific passer in Maine high school sports history.

St. Hilaire recently finished his fourth season as a varsity starter by completing a whopping 140 of 205 passes for 2,382 yards and 21 touchdowns. He was intercepted just three times while completing an astounding 68.3 percent of his pass attempts.

This comes on the heels of an undefeated junior season in which the Ramblers won the Class C state title as their QB passed for 2,453 yards and 30 TDs while getting picked just four times.

His final season’s numbers have elevated him into the national career record books for career completion percentage (63 percent) and total passing yards (8,272). He is ranked 27th all-time nationally, just behind (here’s a future trivia question for Mainers) Kelan Luker of Stephenville, Texas, who had 8,297 in three seasons (1996-98).

“I don’t think there’s been anyone in the state who’s done this before,” said Ramblers coach Norm Thombs, who also coached St. Hilaire in middle school.

And people have been starting to notice. The 6-foot, 200-pound senior has been actively recruited by the University of Maine, Massachusetts, Hofstra, New Hampshire, Colgate and Wagner College in New York. He has also received material from Purdue and Pittsburgh, and requests for film from Iowa and Alabama.

“I’m not totally surprised because I knew what his potential was early on. You should see tapes of our middle school games,” Thombs said. “We didn’t let him use the middle school ball because it was too small for him. He could put his hand all the way around it, so we had him use an NCAA ball and he could still throw it a mile.”

St. Hilaire ventured several miles from home as the only Maine player invited to the Nike All-American Camp at Rutgers University late last summer. He came out of it ranked third overall among quarterbacks from recruiting hotbeds like Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.

“This is all new to me, as well as him, so I asked a college coach one time how good he really thought Lee was. I mean, what should we be expecting?” Thombs recalled. “He told me not to take anything less than a full scholarship.”

With Jan. 1st the next major date on the recruiting calendar, allowing programs to make specific offers, St. Hilaire is just waiting for the offers to roll in.

Andrew Neff’s High school report is published each Wednesday. He can be reached at 990-8205, 1-800-310-8600 or aneff@bangordailynews.net.