Hornets working to reach Bangor Lubec girls posting best mark since ’83

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So what’s on the minds of the Lubec girls basketball team?

One word: Bangor.

The Hornets, who haven’t qualified for the top 50 percent in the Eastern Maine Class D standings since 1987, are working on a better-than-.500 season for the first time since they went 10-6 in 1983, and all they want is a quarterfinal game at the Bangor Auditorium.

Lubec, which went 6-9 last year – a huge turnaround from previous seasons – is 10-7 this winter with just one game left after beating Calvary Chapel Christian of Orrington 74-52 Monday night.

“We used to say we wanted to finish .500,” senior guard Breanne McPherson said. “This year we pretty much said, we want to go to Bangor this year. Just to make it to the Auditorium. If we make it to Bangor it’ll be the first time in forever. It’s a big thing, especially senior year.”

One big difference in the past two seasons, the girls believe, is head coach David Rice and assistant Mark Jones.

“We’re a lot more disciplined and practice is a lot more disciplined,” said senior forward Logan Newman. “We work a lot harder. We weren’t really competitive. We just played for fun. We still have fun, but we’re competitive now. … They push us a lot more.”

Of course it helps to have good players, and the Hornets have that with their starting five – the most talent McPherson said she has seen in her four years playing for Lubec.

That talent includes standout center Leann Pike, a junior who is less than 100 points away from scoring her 1,000th. The 5-foot-10 Pike has been the Hornets’ top scorer this year and has been averaging about 15-20 points per game. Most opposing defenses will double-team Pike or play a box-and-1 on her.

“We know we can count on her,” Newman said.

And Lubec can handle trick defenses that teams use to stop Pike thanks to good perimeter play.

“We’re all good shooters,” said freshman point guard Chelsea Hall.

Pike, McPherson, Newman, Hall and forward Savannah McPherson (Breanne’s sister) are the starting five. The Hornets have just four players on the bench, identical twins Kristina Scoville and Kara Scoville, Caitlin Wright and Nicole Daye.

The girls have volunteers – mostly high school boys – to go up against in practice.

“We know we have to play a lot,” Breanne McPherson said. “We don’t have five extra players that can just go in.”

Lubec has already beaten Class C Washington Academy of East Machias twice, as well as Class D rival East Grand of Danforth – a squad much better than its 7-10 record.

Still, the Hornets look back most fondly on a loss earlier this season. Lubec forced overtime against two-time defending Class D champion Woodland despite losing Breanne McPherson to a right ankle sprain in the first half (she was out for three weeks). The final score was 55-54 – the Hornets contend that a last-second shot by Hall was not a 2-pointer but a 3-pointer, which would have meant double overtime – but the team was very encouraged by its showing.

“We get excited for those games now,” Newman said. “We know we have a chance.”

Martin vs. Martin?

Among the college options Calais girls basketball senior Crystal Martin is examining would pit her against her sister, former Blue Devils star Lanna Martin.

Lanna Martin is a freshman on the St. Anselm (N.H.) women’s basketball team, while Crystal Martin is looking at attending St. Michael’s in Vermont next year. Both schools are Division II and play each other during the season.

Competing against last year’s Miss Maine Basketball wouldn’t bother the younger Martin, however. The two would be up for the challenge.

“She thinks it’d be funny and I do, too,” Crystal Martin said. “It would be fun to play against her. We’ve always played one-on-one in the dooryard, so it would be a lot of fun.”

St. Michael’s is just one of Martin’s college options. She’s also checking out several D-III schools, including Plymouth State, Colby-Sawyer, Husson College in Bangor, Saint Joseph’s in Standish, and Suffolk University, a small school in Boston which Martin said has a good law program. Martin wants to study either marketing or criminology. She also wants to continue playing basketball, although she has applied to the University of Maine, where she would not play for the Black Bears.

“I’ve been keeping in touch with [the Suffolk] coach,” she said. “I could go there and study criminology or sociology or even pre-law to get me on that track.”

Middle-level sports conference set

The Maine Center for Coaching Education is sponsoring a conference that will address issues involving middle-level sports, which covers athletes from ages 10 to 15.

The conference will run March 5-6 in Orono. Bob Bigelow, a former Celtics player who lectures, will give a keynote address March 5 about what kids and parents should expect from middle-level sports. His talk will be followed by a session on how parents can make sports positive for their children. The session will be presented by the UMaine-based National Center for Student Aspirations.

UMaine men’s basketball coach John Giannini will give a keynote address March 6.

Other subjects to be addressed during the conference will include alternatives to cutting kids from teams, the pros and cons of tournaments and championships, recruiting and keeping teachers in coaching, school and community teams competing for the same child and the latest research about the status of middle-level sports in Maine and at the national level.

For more information about the conference and registration, call MCCE at 581-2443 or e-mail Keith Lancaster, MCCE’s director, at keith.lancaster@umit.maine.edu.

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