Win or lose, hoop time a great escape

With just under three minutes left on the clock at the Bangor Auditorium, George Leino is beginning to squirm in his seat.

His hands fidget and his legs are in full nervous-jitter mode, bouncing in time with the band’s brassy encouragement from the other end of the crowded bleachers. The Stearns High School Minutemen are down by six to the boys from Piscataquis Community High School, and Leino is waiting for a turnaround that would prove justice really does exist.

Like the hundreds of other fans from Millinocket who gathered in Bangor on Tuesday, he was hoping that both the Stearns boys and girls teams could pull off victories in this hallowed old basketball barn. Considering all that the townspeople have lost since the paper mills went dark, and all they stand to lose in the months ahead, a couple of wins and a berth in the semifinals would do a lot to help keep the good feeling alive just a little while longer.

But the girls lost earlier in the afternoon. And now, with the clock down to 27 seconds, it looks like the boys, Leino’s son among them, also will be wrapping up their season when the buzzer sounds.

“Sure, a win would have been great,” he says, conceding the contest with a shrug. “But just the fact that the kids made it down here is good for them and good for the town, too. We can all use this escape.”

In working-class towns, where traditions matter, this annual tournament is like a balm to the spirit, a roaring, frenzied, hoop-shaped declaration passed through the generations that the world will always stay the same, even when it doesn’t, and that good things won’t end, even when they do.

Leino made his own lasting memories as a player in this very gym about 30 years ago, just as his son, Matt, was making his on the floor Tuesday. Back in 1970s, he says, many high school seniors would leave this raucous arena behind and within a few months walk straight into the paper mills.

Leino did, after trying college for a couple of years, just as his father had done before him. He made paper for the next 27 years, in fact, until the mills closed at the end of December and finally snapped a century’s worth of continuity.

Now, Leino’s wife raises her eyebrows at the mere suggestion that her son might even consider that the resurrected paper mills would play a role in his future.

“Oh, definitely not,” says Valerie Leino, “Young people don’t think of the mills like that anymore. My son wants to go to college and study physical therapy.”

As the mill tradition erodes, however, the basketball tournament tradition endures as a promise of familiarity to small towns wrestling with uncertainty. Rob DiFrederico, whose son, Derek, also plays for the Minutemen, says it was heartening to see so many people – teens and adults alike – milling around the team-spirit bonfire at the pond outside town the night before.

“It’s important for people to get together like that,” says DiFrederico, a pipe welder by trade, “The kids will be fine. They’ll go on with their lives. But it’s rough when you’re someone who has 30 years in the mill and you have no idea what tomorrow will bring.”

While the tourney will probably always feel the same, Leino says, the attitude of many back home is slowly, grudgingly, changing with the times.

“It was hard at first to think that you might not be working at your old job again,” he says with an eye on the scoreboard clock. “It was hard for the kids at home, too, reading the paper every day and realizing that some of their parents might never go back to the mill. But I think most people in the community are starting to accept the fact that there will be life after Great Northern, no matter what happens. If I don’t go back into the mill, I’ll go to school again. It took a while, but I can see myself doing something different.”

If the Katahdin region schools consolidate one day, as many feel they must as leaner times loom, there may be no Stearns Minutemen to root for the way Millinocket people always have. There may be no Schenck High School, either, at least not the one the people down the road in East Millinocket have always known. Traditions don’t come with lifetime guarantees, after all, no matter how much people wish they did.

“But I think our schools and our communities will be stronger by coming together and changing,” Leino says as the buzzer signals a Piscataquis win and the bleachers start to empty. “It’ll take time, and it’s going to be tough for a while, but it will happen.”