Report available to public Bangor puts RAM into scouting, prep

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Last week’s release of a report about interscholastic sports has generated plenty of interest from the public.

Now, anyone can order a copy of “Sports Done Right – A Call to Action on Behalf of Maine’s Student-Athletes,” a 52-page report that makes recommendations for how to improve the experience of student-athletes at the high school and middle school levels.

The report is available through the Maine Center for Sport and Coaching. Each copy is $10.

Send check, money order or purchase order, along with complete return mailing address to Karen Brown, Executive Director, Maine Center for Sport and Coaching, 5766 Shibles Hall, Orono, ME, 04469-5766.

For more information or an order form, go to www.mcce.umaine.edu.

The report was compiled a panel of 17 Maine educators, administrators, coaches and other citizens and was released at the Augusta Civic Center last Thursday. The report deals with a variety of issues such as coaches’ training, the involvement of parents and community in high school sports, middle school sports, health and fitness and opportunities to play.

DAC, PVC cheering set

Two more cheerleading meets will be held Saturday in preparation for the upcoming regional and state meets.

The Penobscot Valley Conference’s Class A and B schools head to MDI High School for a 4 p.m. conference championship meet. Five Downeast Athletic Conference squads will compete at noon at the UMaine-Machias gym.

The regional meets are Jan. 29 and states are Feb. 5.

In the PVC meet, defending champion Brewer will likely get tough competition from the likes of Bangor, which won last weekend’s Big East Conference crown, as well and Hampden and John Bapst of Bangor.

Other teams competing include Nokomis of Newport, Old Town, Caribou, Old Town, Bucksport, Caribou, Ellsworth, Foxcroft, Hermon and Mount Desert Island.

Admission is $5 for adults and $3 for students.

Washington Academy of East Machias and Machias High head up the small group of DAC schools. The Raiders are the defending conference and Eastern Maine Class C champion, while the Bulldogs won the Eastern Maine and state Class D titles last year.

Other teams set to compete are Narraguagus of Harrington, Calais and Woodland.

Admission for the DAC meet is also $5 and $3.

The Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference teams will compete for that league’s crown Monday at the Augusta Civic Center.

Bangor going high-tech

The Bangor High basketball program is moving into the handheld computer age, a step already forged by the school’s football team.

Both boys and girls basketball squads have gone to a statistics program on a personal digital assistant (PDA) system such as a Palm Pilot. The boys have been using the program for the past few games, and the girls tried it out for the first time last week.

But it was the Rams football team that really pioneered use of the system at the school. Bangor assistant football coach Lance Fenimore said the company that markets the computer program, which is called Digital Scout, contacted the school. Bangor bought the package for football and basketball, but it’s also available for soccer, volleyball, baseball, softball and hockey.

Head football coach Mark Hackett said the coaching staff takes stats from game tapes Sunday and inputs them directly into the computer system – saving more than 10 hours a week, Hackett estimated. That’s because in previous years the football coaches would take stats off the game tapes but everything would be hand-written. This way, all of the information is all in the computer.

Then comes the good part.

Once the Palm Pilot is hooked up, all of the information can be printed out any way the coach asks for it. After scouring a tape of one opposing Pine Tree Conference football team last fall, for example, the computer program produced a 40-page scouting report showing the team’s tendencies on different plays, detailed accounts of the team’s success on different downs, and a list of all the offensive plays in a game.

The coaching staff prints out the report and gives a copy to each player.

“It’s incredible, because it cuts down on the numbers of hours we spend on this,” Hackett said. “Once someone puts it into the computer, it spits it out however you want it to. The rest of it is just coaching.”

The Palm Pilots are now in the hands of the basketball managers, who are just learning the ins and outs of the program. Digital Scout produced an 11-page report after a recent boys junior varsity game.

And the girls team is just starting to implement the program, too.

“It’ll be interesting to see how it goes. But we’ve got the video just in case,” Bangor varsity girls coach Tom Tennett said with a laugh.

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