Whether it’s selling tickets, serving hot dogs, fund raising, or helping to construct fields, Bill and Connie Laughlin are a constant presence at Hermon High sporting events, booster club meetings and other athletic activities.

In return, the school was to dedicate the field hockey field to the Levant couple Monday night. Hermon school superintendent Patricia Duran said she believes it’s the first time the school has named an athletic facility.

“That speaks to the level of dedication they have shown to the program,” Duran said Monday afternoon.

The field will also be dedicated in honor of the Hermon Boosters Club, of which Bill Laughlin has been president for the past three years.

“Anything we’ve given, we’ve gotten back twofold,” he said.

The Laughlins’ daughters, Amy and Tonya, both played field hockey for the Hawks, which got Bill and Connie interested in the sport initially.

Even though they don’t have any more children in the school system, the Laughlins have stuck with the Hermon athletic programs, especially field hockey.

They were instrumental raising money and finishing the school’s field hockey field, which was incomplete in the seven years since the new high school building opened. The field will be available for the fall 2002 season.

“We have taken a liking to field hockey,” Bill Laughlin said. “When we first started watching we didn’t know the rules but we quickly got into it and now a lot of the kids look at us as a mom or a dad. … I didn’t think [the boosters] would ever raise the $6,000 to finish it. But we did.”

Bill Laughlin, a senior deputy with the Penobscot County sheriff’s department, feels a need to get involved because the town does not have a Police Athletic League program.

“This is my opportunity to do my thing for the good of athletics and the students,” he said.

Connie Laughlin, the Hermon Boosters’ treasurer, is a supervisor at the University of Maine bookstore in Orono.

Limited facilities don’t limit Eagles

With no regulation-size track on the island and few places where athletes can practice field events, the Islesboro track and field team has developed its own methods of training.

“We run to Kirstie Alley’s house somewhere on the island and back,” sophomore Cassi Gray said of the “Cheers” actress’ former home. “We do calisthenics, jumping exercises and we’d rotate through different stations to work our muscles out. We just do it in our gym.”

Despite limited opportunities to practice events like long jump and shot put, the Eagles sent three athletes, including Gray, to Saturday’s state Class C track and field meet at Orono. It was the first time in eight years the school has sent athletes to the state meet, said principal John Kerr, who also coaches the team.

Gray finished seventh in the long jump and eighth in the high jump, just out of scoring position (the top six score), and David Pike was 10th in the racewalk, but Rory Diffin placed fifth in the shot put.

The school does have a high jump mat and equipment set up in the gymnasium so Gray is able to train. She does not have easy access to a long jump pit, however.

“I practiced every time I went to a meet,” said Gray, whose family moved last summer from Ogden, Utah, to Islesboro, which is in the Penobscot Bay. “Every time I went up there it was, OK, let’s try this. It’s halfway natural [ability] and I also try to remember what my coach in Utah told me to do.”

This year there are 13 student-athletes on the team, including two eighth-graders (there are only 29 students in grades 9-12). Islesboro does not offer baseball or softball this season.

The Eagles traveled to four meets this year.

“We don’t really do team competition,” Kerr said. “We try for personal bests and qualifying for regional and state meets. We really just try to have fun.”

Dory Kistner, a former world lumberjill champion who moved to the island to teach science this school year, assists Kerr.

On Saturday, after competing in the high jump at about 3:45 p.m., Gray faced another familiar challenge of island life: she was going to miss the ferry to Islesboro.

“The last boat was the 5 p.m., which I was planning to be on for my prom, but there is a Quicksilver, so I’ll have to catch that,” she said.

Millard, Gaston are Ivy-bound

Orono’s Maria Millard and Kara Gaston of John Bapst in Bangor, both seniors who provided key points for their teams in Saturday’s Class C state track and field meet, could meet again next year.

Millard will attend and compete for Cornell University next year, while Gaston is headed to Princeton, where she wants to continue running.

Princeton and Cornell compete against each other in Ivy League and ECAC competitions. Neither school offers athletic scholarships.

Millard, who was recruited, wants to try the heptathlon, a contest in which athletes earn points in seven events: the 100-meter hurdles, high jump, long jump, shot put, 200 dash, javelin and 800 run, during the outdoor season and decathlon (10 events) during the indoor season.

“That’s the plan,” she said. “I don’t really know because I’ve never done the long jump before. I’ve run the 800 and done pretty well in that but the other events will be interesting. I’m hoping I can figure it out when I get there.”

Gaston, a distance specialist, was told by the Princeton coach that her 1,600 time was a bit slow for the Tigers, but Gaston is thinking of taking up the 5- and 10-kilometer races.

“I was undecided for a while but I don’t want to give track up,” she said. “I’m going to work really hard and go for it.”

Jessica Bloch can be reached at 990-8193, 1-800-310-8600 or jbloch@bangordailynews.net.