Donald Allen knows well the ins and outs of the girls basketball program at George Stevens Academy.

He’s coached the junior varsity team for the last three years. He is a 1976 graduate of the Blue Hill school. And his daughter, Nikki Allen, was a standout for the Eagles several years ago.

So it makes sense that Allen would take over GSA’s girls team this winter.

Allen was approved for the job this summer.

It’s his first head coaching job at the varsity level, although Allen coached an AAU team that was the runner-up at a national tournament.

It’ll be a comfortable situation for Allen, who works for a Sedgwick-based construction company, because this winter’s team will be made up of mostly of the girls he has coached the last three years.

“[The girls on the team] know me,” he said. “We all seem to be on the same page.”

Senior Bethany Roberts is one of the team’s top returners.

Allen replaces Larry Deans, who took over the program in 2001 and coached the Eagles to a 17-37 record in three seasons.

“We just decided it would be better if we went in a different direction,” GSA athletic director Jim Murphy said. “We talked and he decided he wanted to try something else.”

Donald Allen played for the Eagles and was a guard and senior captain on a GSA team that made it to the Eastern Maine Class C semifinals. Nikki Allen was a junior on the Eagles’ Eastern Maine Class B championship squad in 1999 and a senior on an EM Class C championship team the next year. She is now playing at the University of Southern Maine.

Allen coached the Maine Ice AAU team which featured players such as former Mount Desert Island standouts Bracey Barker and Shelley Gott.

Coach makes quick return

John Bapst field hockey coach Gina Schuck skippered the Crusaders of Bangor to a 1-0 win over Bangor High Tuesday, Sept. 9.

The next day she gave birth to a son, Peter McKinley Schuck.

But there would be no sitting on the sidelines for this coach. That Friday she attended the Crusaders’ 3-0 victory over Hermon and missed just two practices. Schuck, who works as a sonographer for a Bangor obstetrician, sat with the parents. She did talk to the team at halftime

Schuck said she had planned to take off two full weeks, with Susan Laferriere, a certified field hockey coach and the mother of player Heather Laferriere, helping out junior varsity coach Kelly Dow.

It was hard to stay away, she said.

“I got home, I felt good, I have a loving, supportive husband [Tim Schuck] who made it possible for me to go to games,” Schuck said after the Crusaders fell to Foxcroft in an Eastern Maine Class B quarterfinal last week.

Peter and Tim frequently tagged along to games, although the baby didn’t make an appearance at last Thursday’s Eastern Maine Class B quarterfinal, which was played in rain and cold temperatures.

“A lot of times if the weather was nice I would take Peter with me, feed him right before, and we’d go,” she said. “He was three days old when he saw his first field hockey game at Hermon.”

Schuck made for quite a sight during the Bangor game. Nine months pregnant, the fiery coach still yelled out directions, stomped the ground when the Crusaders made mistakes, and cheered when they made good decisions.

Norwood shines in soccer, too

Jessica Norwood is well known for being a good shooter on the basketball court. But she’s good at saving shots, too, as she displayed for the MDI girls soccer team this year.

Norwood, a senior who was a key member of MDI girls basketball teams that won three straight Class B state championships, had a stellar season as the Trojans’ starting goalie.

Belfast coach Don Hoenig said Norwood was one of the best goalies his team had faced all year. The Lions beat the Trojans 1-0 in an Eastern Maine Class B quarterfinal last week but Norwood made 11 saves on 19 shots.

She helped preserve a 2-1 win as No. 10 MDI upset No. 7 Camden Hills in the preliminary round.

Norwood played soccer her freshman and sophomore years and tried golf last fall. This year she went back to soccer.

MDI coach Emily Ellis said Norwood played a little bit in goal when the Trojans’ starter got hurt a few years ago, but this was her first season as the regular ‘keeper.

“We decided we needed an athlete with good hands who was going to be aggressive, and she fit the bill,” Ellis said after Friday’s game in Belfast. “She’s just done awesome.”

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