Dana Smith has emerged from last year’s coaching tumult with two new coaching jobs.

Smith, who was fired and rehired as the baseball coach at Sumner of East Sullivan last year, has been tabbed to coach the Ellsworth baseball and girls basketball teams.

Smith also served as the boys basketball coach at Sumner. He resigned from both the basketball and baseball coaching posts there at the end of the spring season.

“Not to rehash it, but I felt it was time to move on,” he said.

Smith said he was informed by Ellsworth athletic director Jay Brown that he had the girls basketball post. Smith said he has been approved by the school board as the baseball coach.

Coaching girls will be a new challenge for Smith, so he plans to talk to the returning coaches to get familiar with the team, which went to the Eastern Maine Class B quarterfinals last year. Most of those girls have graduated, he said, but he has some good young talent to work with.

“That really appealed to me,” said Smith, who lives in Franklin.

Smith had coached the Sumner baseball team for seven years when the Flanders Bay Community School Board voted in March against a recommendation to renew his contract.

Four days later, four other spring coaches resigned to protest the action.

The board met again two weeks later and reversed its decision, confirming Smith as coach and he coached the Tigers to an 8-9-1 playoff season. The four other coaches were reinstated.

Higgins on target

The Ellsworth boys soccer team has won six games in a row, including Tuesday’s 3-2 victory over Mount Desert Island, a streak it can trace back to its Sept. 26 game against Bangor.

The matchup between the Class A Rams and the Class B Eagles ended in a 1-1 double-overtime tie, but coach Brian Higgins said after the game that the result could be key for the rest of the season.

Ellsworth played most of that game without forward Kris Tracy and defensive midfielder Noah Jordan. Both starters had been knocked out of the game due to injuries.

“Hopefully they’ve got it in their minds now that this is what they’ve got to do to get better for the end of the season,” Higgins said that night. “To do that well, without your best forward, best offensive player, really our MVP for the first three games, we really stepped up.”

Since then Ellsworth, now 9-3-1, has also beaten Sumner of East Sullivan, Orono twice, Caribou and Bucksport. The Eagles have a tough game against Hancock County rival George Stevens of Blue Hill Friday. Ellsworth will be after a bit of revenge after losing to GSA 1-0 in overtime Sept. 21.

“That didn’t sit well with the kids, to lose in overtime, and outshoot them 16-3 and that just didn’t sit well,” Higgins said after the Bangor game.

Warriors winding up

Nokomis of Newport’s boys soccer team is trying to build some momentum before the playoffs after starting off the season a bit rocky.

The latest example is Tuesday’s game against perennial playoff contender Hampden Academy, in which Nokomis won 2-1 on a goal with seven seconds left in regulation.

The Warriors, now 6-6-1, won on a long direct kick by Corey Rodrigue, which went 45 yards before it was redirected on a Seth Bradstreet header to David Buzanoski, who knocked the ball in with a half volley from 8 yards out.

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